[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, April 20, 2026

“Underneath the Underneath” by Audrey Zhou

Reviewed by Dave Truesdale

Audrey Zhou’s “Underneath the Underneath” takes place in a land much like our own, in many ways easily recognizable to us all, where humans live in a small fishing village and deal with the same hopes and fears we encounter in our day to day lives, and in others obviously of a fantastical nature, namely with sea dragons that are hunted like Earthly whales for food and their by-products, and whose scales contain certain hidden biological elements known only to a select few, and are regarded as a great treasure.

The story focuses on the plight of Mina, a married woman who is not happy with her husband or her expected role in society. She is constantly reminded, and thus shamed, by members of her family that she has no children while it is expected that she have several to maintain the female population of her people (the early back story explains this societal need and how it dovetails with the existence of the dragons via passed down folklore). Psychologically and emotionally torn between what her culture expects and what she wishes for herself, she seeks the advice of an elder female relative and is surreptitiously offered an option for her consideration. We are given to sympathize with Mina and the problem she has chosen to face.

Without giving away pertinent details the reader would do well to discover on their own, this story seems to be—if not a tight fit—then at least kissing cousins in basic concept with two famous SF short stories dealing with the same theme: Ursula K. LeGuin’s 1973 Hugo winning short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” and Karen Joy Fowler’s 2002 Nebula winning short story “What I Didn’t See.” In both stories a female is trapped between what she finds in her society as morally (or otherwise) unacceptable and her choice either to remain and try to address the problem, or simply turn and escape from it altogether, the latter being the solution in both the LeGuin and Fowler stories (which have accounted for numerous discussions over the years debating which choice is the more correct one). How Mina tussles with her inner desires and feelings in this story—which she finds have more than one layer to them—forms her final decision and reveals in part the choice of title.

It would appear that Audrey Zhou has accomplished what she set out to do in this (line by line) well written and constructed story, so that is a plus, but as far as her treatment of the noble theme is concerned, a fresh perspective falls disappointingly short—a missed opportunity.