Review of Francesco Levato, “A Bone Deep Ache,” Flash Fiction Online 151 (April 2026): 24-27 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
An apocalypse, monsters, religion gone wrong…all of these could have provided a foundation for a horror story on their own, but Levato combined them all into something truly gruesome.
Review of Myna Chang, “Ten and Out,” Flash Fiction Online 151 (April 2026): 20-23 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This story was both perfectly formed in its flash fic form, and something where I would happily read the 300-page version of the same story. The characters could have been put into pretty much any genre or context, and I would have loved them just as much.
Review of Kid Casey, “For Solomon Fishkowski Who Carved Chess Sets in Siberia,” Flash Fiction Online 151 (April 2026): 17-19 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a curious little piece, not intended to be speculative even though it felt like it was, deep in its bones. I would have enjoyed it more had it not been in my least favorite POV, 2nd person.
Review of Sam E. Sutin, “Remembering Dodem Ansibar,” Flash Fiction Online 151 (April 2026): 13-16 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I adored reading Ansibar’s obituary — and then reading it again, and then again for the third time! This was delightfully fun.
(P.S. SM, if you’re reading this, I’m a logic professor who ALSO enjoys the Axiom of Choice, and would be happy to chat about the job market.)
Review of David Farrow, “The Last Eleven Seconds,” Flash Fiction Online 151 (April 2026): 8-12 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: War.
These eleven seconds last an eternity, and every second I took reading it, I wanted them to last even longer.
Review of Christopher St. Prince, “Second Film,” Flash Fiction Online 150 (March 2026): 33-36 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Drug and other substance use and abuse.
I’ve learned to become leery of the stories the FFO editors tag as “literary” as opposed to something more overtly speculative. These stories always end up feeling more sordid, less imaginative, more disappointing than the speculative stories they publish — which I’m sure is more a reflection on me and my tastes as a reader than it is on the stories themselves. Given all that, this was nevertheless a tight, well-put together story with just enough of an undertone of horror to make it feel like it fits the scope of this blog.
Review of S.L. Harris, “Moonmouse,” Flash Fiction Online 150 (March 2026): 29-32 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
“People carry their ruin with them wherever they go” (p. 31) is the repeated moral of this story — and yet, despite this grim conclusion about humanity, the story itself is hopeful, almost joyful, a real contrast to the rest of the stories in this issue.
(First published in Short Édition January 2026.)
Review of Andrew Kozma, “The Sacrificials,” Flash Fiction Online 150 (March 2026): 7-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This is capital H Horror of the sort that I find really, really unsettling. It’s vivid and destructive and horrible merely for the sake of horrifying. Beautifully constructed, but deeply unpleasant to read!
And I don’t know if this was intended to be read as a metaphor for gun control (or the lack thereof) in the US, but read as such, it’s also a pretty powerful story.
Review of Bree Wernicke, “The Oil King,” Flash Fiction Online 150 (March 2026): 25-28 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Ellalee is a dried up, dried out little old woman in a dried up, dried out little old town, whose only business is waiting for her son Malcolm to return — nothing else, not even the horrors coming in from the desert, is anything she needs to worry about. The “horrors” in this story are easily readable as a metaphor for environmental pollution; but somehow, it is Ellalee herself who becomes the most horrifying thing in the entire story, because she has completely abrogated any responsibility for anything, content to let the horrors take over her town and do nothing.
Review of Shelly Jones, “Float. Sink. Tread. Swim.” Flash Fiction Online 150 (March 2026): 20-23 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
There’s so many things in this story that I’d ordinarily put into a content note — the death of a parent, death of a child, the involvement of child protection services, religious persecution where the religious people are the persecutors rather than the persecuted — that it felt like the entire review would be in the content note if I did so. This story is every bit as sad and heavy as you might predict from the title.
(Interestingly, given where it was first published, it has no wizards, and does not take place in space.)
(First published in Wizards in Space, April 2024.)
SFF Reviews