July 2026 Round-up and Short Fiction Miscellany

I’ve gone heavy on the short fiction this month, with a pair of Magazine Minis and my regular magazine review, alongside a couple of longer reviews from my Hugo reading. But as always, that’s not everything, and I have more sci-fi and fantasy short fiction to recommend. Let’s get to it!

Short Fiction

As I mentioned, I’ve had three previous short fiction reviews, with a couple solid recommendations in a Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus review and a fascinating trio from Reckoning in the second of two Magazine Minis. But I also read quite a few stories from various other sources.

July Favorites

The Ugly Chickens (1980 novelette) by Howard Waldrop. This one has already received its flowers, with Nebula and World Fantasy awards more than 40 years ago, but it’s not one you hear about often these days, and it’s still an excellent read, following an ornithologist chasing reports of a dodo sighting to the backwoods of Mississippi. I’ve only read a few things by Waldrop, but he can craft a yarn that’s both entertaining and poignant, and this is perhaps the best example I’ve seen so far.
Laws of Night and Silk (2016 short story) by Seth Dickinson. An emotionally intense tale of a mage tasked to raise a child in intense isolation in order to hone their magic as a weapon against a much more numerous enemy. There’s a compelling plot arc here, but there’s also a lot of musing about both difficult parenting decisions and societies sacrificing their own children.
We Must Love as God Loves (2026 short story) by Rajiv Moté. The second parenthood story among my miscellaneous favorites and also the second parenthood story specifically by Rajiv Moté on my monthly favorites list, this is a short tale of a father in a town that has made uneasy peace with the Fae in the surrounding forests. The framing comes from the local pastor’s exhortation to the townspeople, but that exhortation is put increasingly to the test as the lead examines the deep-seated fears about his own family. This packs a real emotional punch in less than 2,000 words.

Strong Contenders

A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide (2014 short story) by Sarah Pinsker. A compelling study of a character whose experimental prosthesis carries an unshakeable conviction that it is not a high-tech limb but rather a highway in another country entirely. It’s not a story that offers a lot of answers or explanations, but it’s a fascinating dive into the cognitive dissonance that entails.
Power to Yield (2020 novella) by Bogi Takács. Another fascinating dive into the mind of a character, this one in a society where her autistic neurotype is widespread, but where special interests can still run the gamut from helpful to neutral to problematic. The first half of the novella follows the lead diving deep into research of a revolutionary figure from recent history, before the second half digs into a nonsexual exploration of causing and experiencing intense pain that is vital for the survival of the small outpost. I found the former to be riveting and the latter merely interesting, but the whole is still impressive in its imagination and well worth the read.

Others I Enjoyed in July

My Suicides (2026 novelette) by Debbie Urbanski. A deeply meditative story from the perspective of a mother whose suicidal thoughts are personified as separate beings that pursue her through the years, whispering a few lies and a lot of truths all the while. Again, this is more a character exploration than a plot-heavy tale, feeling very much like it could be a fictionalized therapy exercise. That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the read, but. . . well, the trigger warnings should be fairly obvious here.
The Plague Comes from Chinatown (2026 short story) by Claire Jia-Wen. Horror often doesn’t hit me quite like it hits many other fantasy reviewers, but this is a bloody tale that’s worth a serious look for more horror-friendly readers. Perhaps more than anything else, it’s exceptional from a craft level, with the perspective shifting between first person and several different second-person segments, but it also hits hard from a thematic perspective, digging into a fictional analogue of the real-world scapegoating of Chinese enclaves, even while fetishizing Chinese women.
Into Your Sun-Blessed Life (2026 novelette) by Isabel Yap. The story of a girl being groomed and lauded for her translation ability between her own language and the tongue of their conquerers invariably calls to mind R.F. Kuang’s Babel, and the setup reminds me a bit of Wen-yi Lee’s outstanding novelette “The Name Ziya” as well. But this tale handles the perspective a little bit differently, with a lead who, through a combination of youth, naïveté, and actively closing her ears to the external noise, maintains ignorance of the cost of her translation work, even as she navigates the confusing feelings of friends and family struggling to watch her garnering better and better opportunities.

Novels and Novellas

Reviews Posted

Automatic Noodle (2025 novella) by Annalee Newitz. The attempt to balance cozy fiction with a prejudiced post-apocalyptic setting ends up muddling both elements.
The West Passage (2024 novel) by Jared Pechaček. A quest story in an intensely weird setting, with fascinating worldbuilding and compelling prose, though a plot that can drag at times.

Tar Vol on

Science Fiction and Fantasy