[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, June 1st, 8th, 14th, 15th, & 29th 2026
“A Funny Thing Happened on the Limbhackers Forum” by Katharine Tyndall (6/1)
“Throne of Men, Wilds of Sky” by Morgan Wodring (6/8)
“For a Handful of Salted Teeth” by Marisca Pichette (6/14)
“Dear Trilobites” by RJ Taylor (6/15)
“The Wisdom of the Galaxy” by Will McMahon (6/29)
Reviewed by Malory
There’s an interesting mix of unusual stories and formats this month, with some pretty heavy subject matter examined across five stories that are all worth your time reading.
First up, Katharine Tyndall crafts her tale as a forum thread on a limb-upgrade hacking board. Things kick off as requests for tech support, where there’s a poster called Roverino who wants help jailbreaking his new arm. It all then quickly widens into a discussion about kids amputated by their own parents, adults choosing it for themselves because “it’s the future,” and whether Roverino beat someone unconscious to get hold of the arm in the first place.
What I enjoy is that no one in the thread gets to be the story’s moral center. There’s a user called Gelspite who tends to moralize, but an Anon poster picks apart Gelspite’s post history, while ConsciousHack enjoyably hands out hacking links to thieves on principle. Tyndall’s refusal to wrap all of this up neatly is, for me, very satisfying.
Morgan Wodring delivers the second story from inside a changeling’s skull. Alcedo has spent years posing as a human king, keeping the land fed and unflooded by trapping a pair of star-spirits in a tank and wringing a wish out of them once a year. The trigger warnings undersell nothing here. This is a violent and unsettling piece, with bodyshock horror that is key to the plot rather than existing for schlock value.
Third up, Marisca Pichette has two professional crime-scene cleaners sent into a manor house to scrub up after a suspicious death, only for them to discover that their employer is an ancient body-snatcher responsible for the slaughter. The back half of the story turns into a properly fun battle piece with barricaded doors, a curtain-rope escape, and a landing in a bed of sword lilies. At its heart, this is a fun, and very well-plotted, gothic horror.
RJ Taylor’s story is the quietest, and, in my opinion, the best of those published this month. It takes the form of a letter from a palaeontologist to her fossils, written while a hurricane rages outside, her husband already dead, and her son dying of “the latest plague.” There’s no real twist to things here, and certainly no rescue. However, the power of it all comes from the comparison of two hundred and fifty-two million years of trilobite survival set against the speed of her own family’s wipe-out. It’s short and affecting, and is the standout fiction of the month.
Finally, Will McMahon’s closing story is set in a supermarket deli during the 2008 recession, where the narrator’s coworker, Roz, insists that aliens abduct him on weekends to teach him “the wisdom of the galaxy.” The story never really confirms or denies whether he’s right, and doesn’t need to. This is a story really all about finding some dignity in a crappy job, and it’s delivered in a well crafted working-class voice I enjoyed.
Overall, I’d highlight that this month’s stories were an enjoyable read as a coherent whole, with just enough lightness to offset some gruesome violence. And I’m not sure what happened to a second story on the 14th of June, “The Keyhole” by Natalia Theodoridou but it’s listed but is no longer (or never was) accessible.
Malory is an author from the UK and is the winner of the 2026 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award.