[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, September 1, 2025

“The Heartbreak Hotel on Plutonic Planet” by Carolyn Zhao

Reviewed by Francine Taylor

“The Heartbreak Hotel on Plutonic Planet” by Carolyn Zhao begins with the narrator explaining how she broke her own heart, jumped into a pool, got chlorine in her eyes, and when she came up on the other side, she was on Pluto. Now, she and her friend Case have a job doing room service there. When Case’s father shows up in the lobby, Case is not happy to see him—and his father promptly disappears back to Earth.

At first, I had no idea what was going on. Why Pluto? What did swimming have to do with it? But it was a confusion that felt deliberate. It teased me with details, brush strokes of memory that slowly began to form a picture. I knew the story was going to either stumble to a clumsy halt or slam into me so hard I couldn’t breathe. For me, this one slams. It isn’t easy to understand and I’m still scratching my head over some of the details, but it’s a story I think will stick in my memory for some time.