[On May 10, 2021 Strange Horizons officially expressed its political support for Palestinian solidarity. The views of Tangent Online reviewers are not necessarily those of Strange Horizons. Fiction critiqued at Tangent Online is, as much as is humanly possible, without prejudice and based solely on artistic merit.]

Strange Horizons, March 30th, April 6th & 13th, 2026

“Nights and Weekends in the Shoggoth Loop” by Yri Hansen (March 30th)

“The Houses of the Stars in Heaven” by Ferdison Cayetano (April 6th)

“Skinfolk” by Jamie McGhee (April 13th)

Reviewed by Seraph

“Nights And Weekends in the Shoggoth Loop” by Yri Hansen

This was an interesting variation on a type of story that leaves a lot to be desired in many cases. This felt like a genuinely interesting merger of a couple of different types of stories, but it also didn’t try too hard to be any of them. The Shoggoth Loop, a series of buildings made from the controlled, still-living bodies of Lovecraftian monsters is… an upscale restaurant district. Putting aside the rather glaring questions of how the hell you even begin to observe things like hygiene whilst dining in the still living body of a monstrous building-sized otherworldly predator, the premise is pretty reasonable. The creatures exude a substance that attracts prey in the wild, one that it is highly hypnotic and extremely rare and dangerous to extract. In typical human fashion, of course, this means that it is an expensive delicacy that people will go right into the literal jaws of death to experience, since the dining room is just a few dozen feet from the creatures’ toothy maw. It is an almost surreal story in the sense of how utterly normal it is under the surface of the alien setting: it’s just another restaurant with cooks, servers, and managers, and all of the stress and issues that go with working in a place you could never afford to eat. The story was notable, for me, in the contrast between how completely believable it was (once you accept the initial premise), and how out of this world that initial premise is.

“The Houses of the Stars in Heaven” by Ferdison Cayetano

It’s always interesting to me when a story starts out with someone coming to terms with the fact that they have died. Death is just the end of one thing and the beginning of another, after all, and it provides a unique perspective when so many stories, and so much of life, involves just staying alive against the odds. This story takes us past the gates of death into the realms of the gods, and questions what purpose life serves. I am very often a sucker for any kind of mythology, but I just couldn’t find the headspace to connect with this one, and it was mostly the form the story took. It is written from the perspective of one who has been in the lands of the gods for a longer time, a teacher of sorts, as if in conversation with the reader who has newly arrived from the world of the living. I was able to follow the one-sided conversation format just fine and track what was (and was not) being said, but it made it hard to really connect with the story the way I would have liked.

“Skiinfolk” by Jamie McGhee

With any cyberpunk-styled setting, the concept of body augmentation is just part and parcel of the experience. Sometimes it involves replacing internal organs for more efficient versions that won’t break down, sometimes much more obvious modifications like entire limbs. In this case, as the title suggests, it is perhaps the most obvious of all: the skin. Ogden is allergic to the synthetic skin, you see, and much of the story revolves around navigating a world where you are stuck in your own skin whilst everyone around you can simply wear Augmented skin in whichever outlandish color and shade they so desire (and of course can afford). Celestial purple? Dolphin-blue cerulean? Pure sunlight? Easy. Learning to live in your own skin and be able to look yourself in the mirror? Not something any amount of money can buy, but it isn’t as simple as it sounds.