It’s a new year, so I’m bringing you a bunch of new-to-this-spotlight authors. Several of the stories featured this month are about finding ways to resist, big and small, to the horrors being inflicted upon you. Do what you can, my friends. Let these ten excellent science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories inspire you.
“Anoint Your Body, Holy Substrate” by Beau Farrow
Now, I’m not generally a fan of mushrooms and fungi or body horror, but this story was too tempting to pass up. Our narrator wakes one day to discover oyster mushrooms growing along their collarbone. More mushrooms begin to appear on—and eventually in—their body, but they aren’t afraid…even though they probably should be. This story is thoroughly creepy and weird and I adored it. (The Skull & Laurel—January 2025; #2)
“Dinosaurs Once Lived Here” by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu
A scribe records the god Anansi telling a story about the destruction of the earth. The recollection unfolds in seven parts, from the death of Lagos to a flight to the stars. “All is lost to the fire until hell is a place called Earth.” Yvette Lisa Ndlovu’s piece is about consequences and survival, of loss and progress, of death and rebirth. (Will This Be a Problem?—January 2025; #5)
“Hannah and Grackle, Lost in the Woods” by Susan DeFreitas
Two young women, Hannah and Grackle, take a job building cabins in the Appalachian mountains. Jim, the guy who hired them, warns them to stay away from the wicked witch in the woods. But when Jim disappears and the women run out of food, the witch is their only option. This story is more hopeful than I anticipated and left me feeling rejuvenated. (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet—January 2025; #49)
“A Heap of Petrified Gods” by Adelehin Ijasan
This story just about broke my heart. The more I thought about it, the sadder I got. On the surface, it’s about our narrator trading memories and traditions for extensions on a visa to remain in the country they immigrated to. Underneath that, it’s about the ways immigrants give up their homeland cultures in a new land, sometimes by choice, sometimes by force, and sometimes the distinction between the two is blurred. (Lightspeed—January 2025; #176)
“The Husband” by P.C. Verrone
Vampires are having a moment in culture right now, but P.C. Verrone takes a different tack. A vampire seduces a man and makes him his new bride, much to the chagrin of his three other women brides. Being a vampire is way less fun than the man expected, mostly because of their patriarchal bloodsucking husband. Verrone explores gender roles and queerness by intersecting and conflicting those themes with common vampire tropes in some interesting ways. (PodCastle—January 14, 2025; #874)
“Meet Me Under the Molokhia” by Sage Hoffman Nadeau
January means a new set of Grist Imagine 2200 hopepunk-esque climate fiction stories. I always enjoy the stories in this annual digital anthology, and this one was one of my favorites for this year. To combat pollution, a near future Egypt has bioengineered carbon sinks called molokhia, named after a famous Egyptian soup made from jute. While hanging out under one of these one day, Nadia meets Zhara, a being that may or may not be a djinn. A connection sparks between the women. (Grist Imagine 2200—2025)
“Muddy Memories” by Dana Vickerson
You wake, groggy and disoriented. You remember children and events, but the whole picture remains foggy. “Memories swim by like slippery catfish just beneath the murky surface, begging to be caught.” The reveal toward the end was surprising and heartbreaking. Starting this year, On Spec will be a digital-only publication. While I was sad to hear about their financial constraints, I’m glad we still have this magazine around. Especially if it means we keep getting stories like “Muddy Memories.” (On Spec—January 2025; #130)
“Rent-A-Joe” by A.D. Sui
“Mornings are a pain in the ass and this one blows them all out of the water.” Gotta love A.D. Sui’s opening line of this story she describes in her author’s note as “a gay Severance.” Joe has a normal day job, but at night he rents his body out to the highest bidder. With his mind locked away, he has no memory of his nighttime activities. He meets Carmy, the guy who invented the device that lets Joe be two different people, and who has nefarious plans for Joe. A story about poverty, exploitation, and consent. (Saros SF—January 2025; #1)
“The Scythe and Other Mechanisms” by T.E.Z. Moore
This is about a scythe, but only sorta. The scythe is the means, but not the point. We jump from a Farmer harvesting a field crop—“Across, follow through. Let the weight of the blade do the work. Scht. And again. Scht. And Again.”—to a battlefield of desperate peasants to George Washington playing the gentleman farmer while enslaved Africans toil in the fields. I was surprised to learn this was T.E.Z. Moore’s first published piece. There’s a lot of talent here, and I look forward to seeing more from them in the future. (The Deadlands—Winter 2025; #37)
“We Will Not Dream of Corals” by Mário Coelho
“Alone on a lonely beach, Júlia watched the Atlantic Ocean spit out the world’s richest man.” This is the second story in this spotlight involving invasive organisms sprouting from humans. In a not too distant future, Júlia has watched her planet suffer blow after blow from greedy corporations and egotistical rich guys. Portugal, where she’s from, has been battered by natural disasters with unnatural causes. An encounter with some strange corals leads to a global revolution and an anthozoic infestation. Reckoning stories always get my resistance engine going, so this story felt like perfect timing with the current state of the world. (Reckoning—January 2025; #9)
