[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, February 10, 2025

“Ticket po Mamser.” by Caroline Hung

Reviewed by Chuck Rothman

The February 10 issue of Strange Horizons consists of one story by Caroline Hung. Meifong is in an airport in the middle of a societal collapse where nothing is as it should be. The story is a Kafkaesque battle with bureaucracy as Meifong keeps having to come up with different papers in order to get on a plane to flee the country. There’s a lot of good in the first half of the story as we see her growing frustration, but I didn’t like the ending, an exercise in futility (though with a metaphorical touch of hope at the end).

Chuck Rothman’s novel The Cadaver Princess will be published by Experimenter Publishing, the book imprint of Amazing Stories.