Have you ever played chess against yourself? Really tried to outthink your own mind? Bet against your natural instincts, only to realize that such a bet is still instinctual? Or set out to do something “you would never do,” only to watch that designation evaporate the moment after you’d done it? The technological event horizon—an idea I first learned about some twenty years ago and haven’t stopped quixotically futzing over since—functions a little like this. For a hopelessly basic science student like myself, it presents as a kind of dividing line in temporal space. Absolutely everything I can ..read more

Content warning: Show warnings This page contains: Body transformation Dysphoria Scars/scarification Self-harming behaviors Sex Spiders/insects “Nuca” © 2024 by delila   Maculated tree branches of arylide yellow twist into knots as the river rumbles below our footbridge. When my palm lands on a twig, I can feel my other mouth, the one that likes to talk back, the one hidden beneath my ponytail, recoil with cold. We walk on slippery rotten wooden boards to stretch our legs after the drive from the city and before we dip into the hot springs. Carme treks ahead of me and has tucked h ..read more

Liliana Colanzi’s first collection in English, Our Dead World (2017), was so intriguing and strange that, when I found out about her second collection, You Glow in the Dark, I nearly jumped through the computer to get a copy. In that first book, Colanzi imagined, among other things, a cold, lonely colony on Mars; a meteorite potentially controlled by aliens; and a girl pushed into a nervous breakdown by her fanatical mother (à la Stephen King’s Carrie [1974]). You Glow in the Dark offers readers a similarly vibrant and diverse constellation of stories, but here Colanzi is also playing with tim ..read more

Content warning: Show warnings This page contains: Body transformation Childbirth I started out a promise, I knew what path I could walk, what rest I should have, whom to kiss & whom to tease; then life, with its metaphors, happened: —Nome Patrick Emeka Mnemonic skills test positive: inaccurately positive. The past years are wads of silk stretched in lengths At my frontal lobe. The holograph of life flashed Itself through the marketplace; a falsetto, tugging at The chattering of the square where I became. Camera shutters. These feet, tender at first, gave little kicks at the belly th ..read more

Juniper “Gin” Cain is a mystery to the supernatural underworld of Reno, Nevada. She possesses superhuman abilities, quick healing, and vampires puke up her blood if they try to drink it. Yet no one can correctly identify to which supernatural taxonomy she belongs. She’s alive, so not a vampire; can’t do magic, so not a witch. But she works security for a casino run by a vampire, and she’s just as capable of bouncing the things that go bump in the night as any other guard. When a irradiated zombie stomps into the casino and attacks a regular, Gin’s response leads to questions during the upcomin ..read more

Content warning: Show warnings This page contains: Disregard for personal autonomy Death/dying Drug use Spiders/insects Graduate Assistant Four Fronds Turning had made the best guacamole that Mike had ever tasted in his original or post-revival life, and it was all wrong. The Jaxican had cut open the avocados in the five minutes before they went from over-firm to black, and then mashed them the exact right amount. Tart lime juice burst on Mike’s tongue, followed by the slow heat of cayenne pepper. Chunks of tomato added bite to the mix. The alien had even made tortilla chips, thick enoug ..read more

Content warning: Show warnings This page contains: Death/dying There was always more than distance. There are trajectories, orbits, the delta-V of any object in motion. There are equations which will predict these motions; cold hard facts that show that comet Swift-Tuttle will not return for x years. Its debris will still cause the meteor shower I am watching again, and I will understand, only vaguely, how it is that the whole universe moves. Twenty years later, thirty years later, my birthdays have gathered and these meteors still fall to the earth. Consumed in the friction of air that ..read more

Atoms Never Touch, the debut novel from micha cárdenas, is built on a nifty speculative premise. Every time Rea becomes deeply intimate with a lover, she shifts from one universe into a second, alternate one in which she and her lover never met. Over and over, at the very moment she grows closest to those she loves, she loses them. From this premise, cárdenas spins a story of the intertwined lives of three trans women (Rea, Cora, and Luz), who rotate around each other across universes of possibility, creating space for queer and trans joy and community in the midst of oppression. micha cárdena ..read more

Content warning: Show warnings This page contains: Blood Death/dying Spiders/insects Beyond the pale, the pallor and slow-burn violet death: the burrowing spiders, backs the size of satellites, orbiting your hair a halo webbed and weaving and electric bright with roots of neon to spear inside that soft spot under your ribs they’ll tickle and preen, tickle and preen and yes I crushed a fistful of mushrooms between my teeth and lay on my bed for six straight hours stuck under this dark belly looking up at legs gathered together like popsicle sticks hot-glued and holding and her blood windi ..read more

Content warning: Show warnings This page contains: Body transformation Death/dying Spiders/insects On the night my father died, My mother is caught hunting Mosquitoes to protect our Bodies from being stung Like insects do to flowers. Something visits the earth, Forgets its beauty and casts An alien glow over the lowering Of my father into his grave. I catch all the auroras before They fall into my father’s grave And this is the only thing whispering Darkness into my mothers eyes. I carry the pebbles and arrange Them around my mother’s ache I forget to glitter. Because I know No other lig ..read more