REVIEW: “Salt” by Emily Anderson Ula

Review of Emily Anderson Ula, “Salt,” Flash Fiction Online 124 (January 2024): 16-19 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

One of my perennial complaints about a lot of SFF stories is that they seem to occupy a world in which religion doesn’t exist (nor does anything that would fill the same role). So when I get a story that is all about googling solutions to demon possession, it scratches an itch that’s always lingering. Consequently, I really enjoyed this story! Even if it was terribly sad.

(First publishing in The Blood Pudding April 2021).

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REVIEW: “Post Hacking for the Uninitiated” by Grace Chan

Review of Grace Chan, “Post Hacking for the Uninitiated”, Clarkesworld Issue 205, October (2023): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

Straight into the action with this one! A sharp yet soft tale of things lost or taken away, and what it takes to take the power back. With hints of a much larger space opera world-building going on in the background, I’d love to see more stories set in this universe. The story stands very well on its own, of course. The parts that focus on Orin’s thoughts and memories are particularly poignant.

A bittersweet story that left me wanting more!

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REVIEW: “The Pieces of Her” by Lora Gray

Review of Lora Gray, “The Pieces of Her,” Flash Fiction Online 124 (January 2024): 12-15 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Death of a partner.

Gray shows excellently well how to combine quite a lot into quite a little. We got a full dose of SF via the building of human-robot hybrid pilots, and a full dose of personal relationships gone wrong via Denise, Miranda, and Lilith. The story operates well at both levels, which is a difficult thing to pull off!

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REVIEW: “Imago Dei” by Josh Pearce

Review of Josh Pearce, “Imago Dei,” Flash Fiction Online 124 (January 2024): 8-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Cults, forced insemination.

Creepy and disturbing, this story took mundane things that are already horrible, and combined them with the horrible fantastical, to make something even worse. Not the sort of story I normally seek out, but I thought it was pretty brilliantly done.

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REVIEW: “How to Safely Store Your Dragons” by Marisca Pichette

Review of Marisca Pichette, “How to Safely Store Your Dragons,” Flash Fiction Online 123 (December 2023): 21-23 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The “tl;dr” of this story is: Dragons are flammable buggers, don’t forget it; but the story itself is so much more than this, it’s cute, fluffy fun, something that you can read and feel happier about life afterwards.

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REVIEW: “Five Books from the Alnif Crater Traveling Library” by Stewart C. Baker

Review of Stewart C. Baker, “Five Books from the Alnif Crater Traveling Library,” Flash Fiction Online 123 (December 2023): 16-19 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was a series of vignettes (which nevertheless held together well enough to constitute a proper story) about life on Mars.

As much as I enjoyed the story, it did feel a bit of a strange choice coming, as it did, immediately after Rachael K. Jone’s “Seven Ways to Find Yourself at the Transdimensional Multifandom Convention”. Both are structurally similar and use a conceit which I think works better in isolation, rather than in conjunction.

(First published in Nature Magazine, September 2021.)

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REVIEW: “Seven Ways to Find Yourself at the Transdimensional Multifandom Convention” by Rachael K. Jones

Review of Rachael K. Jones, “Seven Ways to Find Yourself at the Transdimensional Multifandom Convention,” Flash Fiction Online 123 (December 2023): 11-14 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was a fun, funny, and touching story, which I liked quite a bit even if it is in 2nd person (my least favorite way of telling a story).

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REVIEW: “De Profundis, a Space Love Letter” by Bella Han

Review of Bella Han, “De Profundis, a Space Love Letter”, Clarkesworld Issue 205, October (2023): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

“Dear Yuwen,

This is the last night of your existence.”

When a story starts like this, you can’t help but continue. Can I call it a space opera about stories? I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of this one. As long as feelings exist, there will always remain a very real need for good storytelling. The flood of AI-generated stories aren’t cutting it, as it turns out. A human tries to change that.

An enchantingly grand novelette.

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