Review of Dafydd McKimm, “The Ten Declarations of Bozo, Supreme Jongleur of Planet Clown” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 1-5. — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
In 5 short pages, McKimm takes us from the enforced off-world immigration of a persecuted people through populism all the way to straight up fascism. Every step seems natural and appropriate and right, which is part of what makes the story all the more terrifying.
Review of Holly Lyn Walrath, “Ghosts in the Shell,” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 70 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was the itty-bittiest of little flash fic stories — but Walrath nevertheless manages to pack quite a bit into that one single solid paragraph of text. It’s all introspection and yet it manages to convey a rich breadth of history and scene-setting, capped off with a satisfying ending. I love seeing a well-crafted piece of fiction like this!
Review of Josh Pearce, “Buttons and Soap,” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 68 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
The structure of the poem meant I had to read it a couple of times in different orders — once straight through, once with just the parentheticals and once with just the non-parentheticals — to see if I could determine how it should be read, because the first read through just left me confused. The parentheticals alone do make sense, and have a nice rhythm and rhyme to them; but what is left behind when they are extracted didn’t feel to me like it held together.
The upshot is that I spent more time confused about this poem than I did reading it, which unfortunately means this one didn’t work for me.
Review of Veda Villiers, “Dawn, the Humor Bot,” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 64-65 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I don’t know if this poem was written before or after Trump 2.0, but there’s a certain apocalyptic despair woven through it that makes it feel very timely and appropriate for early 2025. But the poem ends on a note of hope — something we very much need.
Review of Mark Dimaisip, “The Experience Machine,” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 62-63 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Kudos to the editors for placing Dimaisip’s poem immediately after Whalbring’s poem reviewed here: In this ordering, Dimaisip’s reads like a sequel to Whalbring’s. If the latter poem offers up a potential future, the former provides us with a singular, specific, concrete reality of that future.
I’m not sure how I would’ve reacted to this poem on its own, but in read conjunction with the other one, I really liked it.
Review of Marcus Whalbring, “Aging is a Word That Means ‘Slowly Becoming a Machine’,” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 60-61 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I’ve come to really love and look forward to the poetry selection in each Radon Journal issue; the poems are exceptionally curated and there’s always at least one in every issue that is really, really good. In this issue, that poem is this one: Gorgeous and raw and aching and honest. I loved it.
Review of Trevor Cunnington, “The Rag Pickers of Asteroid 482,” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 57-58 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This poem felt very much like a flash fic story that had been reformatted to become a poem, which is a bit unfortunate — because as a poem it was a bit underwhelming, but a story, I think it would’ve really intriguing and engaging!
Review of Vincent Endwell, “The World Has Been This Way For a Long Time,” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 44-47 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This title intrigued me, as there was a delightful ambiguity in what it is signalling — would this be a happy story or a sad one? It could be either!
And then it turned out to almost be neither, rather instead it was mostly a quiet story, “speculative” in the sense that the narrator spent a lot of time wondering what if, what if, what if. But at the end, there is definitely some solace that we as the reader can take away.
Review of David Lee Zweifler, “Dad Jokes,” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 35 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
At one page, Zweifler set expectations high before I even started reading it: You’ve really got to nail it, in such a short space. Between the title, and the opening lines that are filled with grief and uncertainty, I wasn’t sure if I was going to end up wholly let down by the end.
And I so wasn’t. That finally line brought a slightly anxious, slightly sad story into something flooded with hope.
Review of Eleanor Lennox, “The Fish in the Garden,” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 13-19 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Death, and the aftermath of death.
I love stories that focus on the day-to-day, the mundane, the almost-humdrum; there’s enough high-stakes terror in the real world nowadays that I don’t need that in my fiction, too. This story was a perfect example of the former, a quiet meander through the details of life during the 11-year trip to Titan, full of exquisite little snapshots and so sad. What a beautifully put together story this was.
SFF Reviews