REVIEW: “Flekke” by Joshua Jones Lofflin

Review of Joshua Jones Lofflin, “Flekke,” Flash Fiction Online 151 (June 2026): 8-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Infertility, infidelity.

After having spent many years now review speculative fiction on this blog, I’ve learned that there are many things that I will forgive in a story if it is in a speculative genre. When the speculative overlay is missing, I’m much, much more judgemental. In the case of this story, I honestly don’t understand what the point is — why tell an ordinary story about ordinary life and ordinary sins, when there are so many extraordinary stories that could be told instead?

This one was definitely not for me.

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REVIEW: “An Obituary to Birdsong” by Tehnuka

Review of Tehnuka, “An Obituary to Birdsong,” Flash Fiction Online 151 (June 2026): 11-12 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The ecology of this story may be unfamiliar, but watching its collapse is not. The obvious sadness of the story is the loss of the birdsong and all it entailed, but the smaller grief of how Sangeetha died I found more poignant.

(First published in If There’s Anyone Left, 2023.)

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REVIEW: “Europan Culture (Seven Theses)” by Meagan Kane

Review of Meagan Kane, “Europan Culture (Seven Theses),” Flash Fiction Online 151 (April 2026): 28-31 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I’m really not sure what I think about this story. Perhaps my cognitive dissonance comes from the title, which led me to think the story was going to be very different from how it was. But I also wonder if I would’ve liked the story even if it had a different title; there was just something unsettling about the way Conamara’s very being and existence was handle, by the unnamed narrator, or maybe by the author.

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