For those who aren’t regulars, I supplement my full read of Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus each month with smaller spotlights on magazines where I may have found 2-3 stories that draw my attention. If possible, I try to keep those to a single issue, but for weekly or biweekly releases, I’ll sometimes roll a couple months up into a single spotlight. This month, I’ll be looking at Uncanny issue 63, the May/June 2025 issue of Asimov’s, and a handful of recent stories from Beneath Ceaseless Skies. 

Asimov’s

The three stories that jumped out at me from this issue of Asimov’s are all by familiar authors—in fact, two of them were set in the same universe and followed the same characters as previous stories I’d highly enjoyed. 

The Hunt for Lemuria 7 by Allen M. Steele is a direct sequel to the 2023 novella “Lemuria 7 is Missing,” which won the Asimov’s Reader Award that year. The sequel continues the epistolary format, with the story of a missing ship told via various interviews and clippings stitched together. I found that an excellent narrative choice for the uncertainty of the first story, but it’s hard to maintain that level of mystery for a second straight tale. The sequel is still well-written and engaging, but going back to the well on the format doesn’t deliver the same impact the second time. 

The Tin Man’s Ghost by Ray Nayler takes place about a year after the exceptional “Charon’s Final Passenger,” but while the lead character is the same, it’s a functionally standalone story set in Nayler’s ongoing alt history universe in which reverse-engineered alien technology dramatically changes the course of the 21st century. The returning lead is one of the few able to safely use a device that allows her to experience the memories of the dead, and this story sees her view the world for the first time through the eyes of a deceased robot. 

And as much as I loved “Charon’s Final Passenger,” I like this one better—it may be my favorite novelette of the year so far. It digs wonderfully into questions surrounding nonhuman minds and their societal treatment, all while revisiting moral and philosophical questions around nuclear proliferation from an alternate history perspective. And the plot is just as compelling as the themes, with a quality lead character and a complicated, hard-hitting ending. “Charon’s Final Passenger” is currently free to read, and it may be worth checking that out first to see if you like Nayler’s style, but if you do, this one is “buy the issue for this story” caliber. 

Finally, the short story Woolly by Carrie Vaughn is a tale of genetic engineering gone wrong and one person trying to do the best they can to make things better even when society doesn’t seem to care and the law is actively adversarial. It’s an enjoyable tale that will strike a chord for those who bemoan unprepared people bringing home exotic pets, and there’s enough levity to deliver some smiles. 

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Beneath Ceaseless Skies issues are just two stories apiece, so while I had four from the last couple months on my TBR, it just so happened that none shared an issue. So I’m just rolling them all up into this post. 

While none of the four were in the same issue, there was a surprising amount of thematic overlap, with three of the four featuring childbirth in a central role. The Midwife in the Palace of the Forest King by Jelena Donato sees a midwife called into the forest by a monster to aid in the birth of the Forest King’s child. Despite the short length, it establishes local legends well enough to provide a satisfying payoff as the lead sees their truth with her own eyes. It also delivers a satisfying and somewhat bittersweet ending, though it may rush a bit through the action-packed final third on its way to that conclusion. 

The next two childbirth stories both feature children of prophecy and how to handle an innocent who may one day bring your doom. The Tale of How You Were Born by Eleanor Elizabeth Fog eschews the traditional child-murder in favor of a gentler, more hopeful approach. It’s a pleasant story, but it isn’t one that delves too deeply into the agony of the decision. 

Nine Births on the Wheel by Maya Chhabra, on the other hand, plants itself firmly in agony and doesn’t leave until the conclusion. It’s not the agony of a difficult decision, but rather that of a mother whose children are repeatedly killed by a brother doing everything he can to prevent the prophesied nephew from overthrowing him. Despite the repetition—there are, as the title suggests, nine births—the story does a remarkable job maintaining the mother’s sharp terror, pain, and despair. It may not be pleasant, but it’s deeply compelling, and it delivers a significant measure of catharsis with the ending. This is a retelling of a well-known Hindu religious text, but because of my lack of familiarity with the original, I can only evaluate it as a story and not as a retelling. 

The fourth in my Beneath Ceaseless Skies reading is the odd story out, an adventure fantasy instead of a childbirth story, Cry, the Carob King by Thomas Ha. It’s a bit different from Ha’s usual fare in that it’s a fantasy quest tale—though admittedly one in a setting that can get more than a bit weird—rather than sci-fi or horror, but it still manages to get meditative in moments. This one’s a good read, but it’s not the place to start with Ha unless you’re specifically looking for adventure fantasy. 

Uncanny 

There were three stories that caught my eye in issue 63, starting with The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends by Eugenia Triantafyllou. It’s a lightly speculative, metafictional novelette told via a series of Goodreads reviews from a pair of friends engaging in a series-long buddy read. There’s a lot here that rings true about finding stories at the right time and how people can fail to appreciate something profound if they aren’t in the right headspace, and the interpersonal story provides a satisfying backbone. But there were a few hints about a speculative element that didn’t fully develop, leaving this one as a good story with just a little bit missing. 

The Island with the Animals by Stephanie Malia takes place in the height of a pandemic, starring a therapist struggling to connect to clients over video calls who decides to try dipping a toe into the video game du jour—a grotesque, Dr. Moreau-inspired game involving vivisecting animals and stitching them together to satisfy the demands of clients. It’s well-written and surreal, delivering some real internal turmoil as the lead wrestles with her feelings about virtual violence. But at the same time, it feels more like a starting point than a story, without an ending that provides the reader something to remember. 

Finally, Red, Scuttle When the Ships Come Down by Wen-Yi Lee is an anti-colonial tale of revolt on an island mining colony under British control. The writing is engaging and sometimes dreamlike, with parenthetical asides in first-person plural from a strange, alien perspective. Ultimately, the speculative element is as strange as the plot is straightforward, and I was left more with images than with a solid sense of what was going on deep down. 

May Favorites

• “Nine Births on the Wheel” by Maya Chhabra (short story, Beneath Ceaseless Skies) 
• “The Tin Man’s Ghost” by Ray Nayler (novelette, Asimov’s).