Water: life-giver, death-bringer.
Exquisite description, lyricism and suspense make Simon Gilbert’s ‘Perfect Water’ in @nightmare-magazine.com that much more enthralling.
Deftly constructed all the way to its disturbing climax.
www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/perf...
#horror #sff #booksky
The sea gives and it takes, its flow constant, its tides relentless.
In ‘The Sea Child’ by Justin Wesley Ferguson in @bcsmagazine.bsky.social, an eerie child haunts a bereft mother with something hard to name: an absent presence, a present absence, an ocean where a person should be.
#fantasy #sff
What is the proper punishment for wayward creatures trying their best?
What is the name for the kind of gravity that brings hurt people together?
I simply adore Kelsey Hutton’s heart-warming ‘The Carina Nebula’, in @analogsf.bsky.social and @escapepod.org. Chambers-esque.
#sff #scifi #hopepunk
Good news, sapients: there are three profanities in the first sentence of this week's story, a reprint of "The Carina Nebula" by Kelsey Hutton! It's the best way imaginable to prepare for the belgium weekend.
And you for writing! Can’t wait for my next! It’s been a while since I’ve read a story that let its characters’ inner lives take centre stage like that. Felt a little like something I’d expect to read in Granta, yet here it is: resplendently haunting with its leering portal and liminal realm. Great!
Well, I’m just delighted to have found your work. What’s most astonishing is how much emotional breadth and narrative scope you deliver in such a nugget of a piece. Those are some serious chops. Anyway, such a pleasure. So excited for my next IW read!
Invincible bodies don’t make invincible minds; the powers which bring us fame and fortune leave us lonely and hollow.
@izzyxen.bsky.social’s ‘The Mighty Impervious Woman Considers Retirement’ in @uncannymagazine.bsky.social examines our yearning for untouchability, our inescapable pain.
#scifi #sff
Where do we hide the selves we wish we were? In the words we say, or the words we don’t?
@angelaliu.bsky.social’s ‘What We Mean When We Talk About the Hole in the Bathroom’ in @uncannymagazine.bsky.social is an understated, unflinchingly unromantic character study.
#sff #paranormal #magicalrealism
Holy shit. Imagine that.
Haha! I love this! 🤣😂🧡
In @stevetem.bsky.social’s In the Forest of Mechanical Trees’ in @asimovssfmag.bsky.social, a few of greying salvagers never stop believing, full of rustic charm and understated grit. Ingenuity and mutual aid prove the future, however dark, is ours for the shaping
#sff #clifi #scifi #postspocalyptic
Loved it, actually 🎆🎇 Masterfully done.
You, uh… ever checked the basement then?
Funny story: I actually performed the original nursery rhyme for my class in fourth grade 🤣 If I recall, my rendition was, so to say, neither here nor there.
I’m dead 😵😂
How would you describe your sense of humour? Deadpan speculative absurdism with undertones of self-effacement?
Gonzo-grade goof-flop?
The subtly receding agency of a pregnant newly-wed woman. The troubling origins of an otherwise pristine new apartment block.
Deceptively simply structure. Incisive social critique.
@unheimlichmanvr.bsky.social’s ‘Billy Blue’ in @nightmare-magazine.com is creepy, poignant and fresh.
#horror #sff
YES
Well, fuck! Then let the good times roll! Hear ye, and long live!
A four-headed four hats off to you, sir. Extraordinary.
I fucken love ‘Grottmata’ in @nightmare-magazine.com
Anticolonial eco-occultism has never hit so hard, a post-Lovecraftian detour through a war-torn town.
Patient, suspenseful, artful, intimate. Conceptually weighty, stylistically sophisticated.
@thomasha.bsky.social does it again.
#horror #sff
Treat yourself. Save yoursel. Educate yourself.
Buy this.
Congrats! Excited to read it 🤩
Reading about legends like Judy-Lynn del Rey who carved out a space for themselves in a hostile industry, and pushed it forward, leaves one awed and humbled.
A toast to under-appreciated greats.
#sff #scifi #fantasy #womeninpublishing
@io9.com @denniswise.bsky.social
gizmodo.com/the-woman-wh...
Is it escape? Or reprieve?
In the SF tradition of literalising a metaphor to explore its emotional resonances, @mishtryoshka.bsky.social’s Cryptid or Your Money Back in @asimovssfmag.bsky.social brings a scalpel to the problem of feeling wrong in your own skin - and cuts deep.
#sff #queerlit #scifi
Soulful striving in dystopian days, through art, love and wisdom.
🇿🇦🇺🇸 SA/USA
📖✍️ essays, poetry & SFF
✊🌍🌳⚒️ eco-socialism
☸️❤️🔥🍁🍂🪦 secular spirituality
⚔️🪐🧝👽🧛🏼🧌 heroic geekery
🎲 TTRPGs & miniatures
🥁🎹🎤 jazz fusion & prog rock
🥊🥋 MMA
🧠🌶️ AuDHD
🧠🦵chronic pain
🤎🤍 mixed heritage
🌈⚧️ genderqueer
💍🧡🥰😍🐝 soul-bonded
What are we if not beings that yearn for worlds that don’t exist - or don’t exist yet? If not beings that build worlds - and destroy them?
@izom-chisom.bsky.social’s Prerequisites for a Possible Predicted World in @clarkesworldmagazine.com reignites our wonder against despair.
#sff #afropunk #scifi
@historyneverwas.bsky.social’s Last Dam Standing in @analogsf.bsky.social depicts an almost cosy community of #mutualaid, albeit amidst ecological collapse. Mournful, a preemptive grief.
But something about a resilient, capable female scientist enduring the apocalypse still fuels my #hope.
#sff
How did we become more concerned with whether tools can think 💭 than whether thinking beings should be made to live as mere instruments 🛠️?
Oh, right. ‘We’ didn’t
Bosses did, because they can’t profit off of #freedom
#Automation to squash #labour costs, though? Techno #dystopia is good #business.
This story simply drips with insight, unpicking each thread of the human soul with exquisite perceptiveness.
Unlike the LLMs of our world, machine consciousness emerges here with all the rich yearning and sociality of our own.
Masterfully narrated by @hollygodarkly.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy.
Can a robot heart bleed?
Can a bit-built mind want?
Will women ever be free?
Is unprofitable art just junk?
Kylie Lee Baker’s gut-punch of a drama’s greatest critique is not our false notion of machine consciousness, but our own failure to appreciate the majesty and preciousness of our own
#sff #ai
If this country was truly “pro-life,” we would have Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, gun reform, universal child care, and a living wage.
The right-wing agenda isn’t about “life.”
It’s about control.
GM: Charisma check.
Mamdani: [rolls natural 20]
GM: that’s a d6 how did you
Mamdani: [direct to camera] Did you know you can check out board games at your local public library? 😊