Harare Review of Books

232 pp. June 10, 2025, SFWA. SFF.

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SF/F collections are a wonderful way to read across the genre and to keep up with what’s happening in it; this one is no different. This is, of course, a much more prestigious anthology than many, as it showcases submissions to the Nebula Awards (and includes both nominated and winning stories). Featuring authors Isabel J. Kim, Thomas Ha, Angela Liu, Eugenia Triantafyllou (twice), Jennifer Hudak, Rachael K. Jones, Jordan Kurella, PH Lee, Caroline M. Yoachim, A.W. Prihandita, Christine Hanolsy, Aimee Ogden, and A.D. Sui, this is a great snapshot of the state of play in 2024.

From that list, if you’re a reasonable superfan, you’ll know the collection includes at least three short stories that went quite viral and which you may have encountered already: Rachael K. Jones’s “Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” is a brutal little tale about incarceration that loops round to its beginning; the haunting and wry “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim prompted a great deal of discussion which brought my attention to a list of Omelas “fanfic”; and then Caroline M. Yoachim’s “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read”, which has such an amazing structure and which may have rewired my brain. I also recommend these great novelettes: Thomas Ha’s “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” (also included in his just-released collection) which is on memory and how or if we should preserve the past; “Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being” by A.W. Prihandita, which I first read in Clarkesworld in 2024, and which has thoughtful and somewhat scary things to say about medical management of ‘minorities’ in the age of algorithms, if you choose to read it that way; Christine Hanolsy’s “Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka”, a story about a rusalka in love; and Aimee Ogden’s thrilling, amazing ‘eco-SF’ “What Any Dead Thing Wants” (spoiler: to not be, probably).

Other great stories: Jennifer Hudak’s spooky “The Witch Trap” is (right now) appropriate to the US season; Eugenia Triantafyllou has a story about body possession and obsession, “Joanna’s Bodies”; and then I must be one of the only two people who haven’t read A.D. Sui’s “The Dragonfly Gambit”, but the provided excerpt has made me move it up my tottering TBR.

And so! This collection is a must for any SFF fan, as Nebula Awards showcases always are. Very highly recommended. Many thanks to SFWA for a DRC (and for all the work they do), and to NetGalley.

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