E.M. Linden

NEW THOMAS HA STORY

I did this last year and I'm trying to make it an annual Thing, so here are a few short fiction writers in their first two years of publishing worth considering for Astounding Award nomination! I'm highlighting a work I loved from each of them (it's hard to keep it to just one, but c'est la vie)

Ichthyosis - PSYCHOPOMP.COM This is how it begins.

So Nebula noms close tomorrow? The day after? I didn’t make an eligibility post because lolol, what are spoons, but I did write a story with a queer throuple, a (big) fish, the sea off the Coromandel Coast, and a whole lotta body horror messiness plus yearning in @fantasymagazine.bsky.social

Scrambling to fill out nominating ballots? I was too, and so I did lots of rereading and settled on my Top Ten SFF Short Fiction of 2025

(Also featuring: a Recommended Reading List update with my book of the year added)

www.tarvolon.com/2026/02/26/t...

Some not-to-be missed work in here (and a few things for me to un-miss at the last minute)! I thought “Never Eaten Vegetables” and both the Thomas Ha pieces listed here were especially great.

Finally, “The Starter Family” by @sagetyrtle.bsky.social is a nightmarish dystopia given fresh energy via the choice of perspective, with the lead being the beneficiary contemplating the costs of action and of silence giganotosaurus.org/2025/06/01/t...

New Niches | Reckoning Because of the heavy chop that day, there is no time for a tour. “You shouldn’t have a problem finding things,” the captain tells me. She’s wearing a neon orange vest over her life jacket and a neon o...

“New Niches” by Jackie Roberti is a meditative character study that’s also a compelling case against climate fatalism, beautifully threading the needle between naive optimism and doomerism reckoning.press/new-niches/

Liecraft For a long time now I’d been practicing liecraft five or six times before breakfast. I’d roll over to Khao’s side of the bed and...

“Liecraft” by @moskatanita.bsky.social features an audacious fantasy world powered by magical lies, giving rise to heart-wrenching betrayals where every revelation is experienced indirectly. A jaw-dropping marriage of premise and style www.apexbookcompany.com/a/blog/apex-...

Barbershops of the Floating City - Uncanny Magazine Content note: child abuse   You used to be in a band. Now you cut hair. The Institute hired you because you’re the daughter of the Floating City’s Founder’s fourth mistress, the one who always cooks u...

“Barbershops of the Floating City” by @angelaliu.bsky.social grabs you with second-person and weird memory stuff and only gets better as it peels back the layers behind a tender but tragic mother/daughter relationship www.uncannymagazine.com/article/barb...

“The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead” by @emlinden.bsky.social is a beautifully melancholy mosaic told by the dead left behind when a people must abandon their sinking island podcastle.org/2025/02/18/p...

The Name Ziya - Reactor A girl reckons with what she must lose--and who she has become--in order to be accepted at the empire's most prestigious university.

“The Name Ziya” by @wenyilee.bsky.social features a lead who must give up her magic and her culture to join an elite academy, but it eschews the standard revolutionary plot in favor of a character study that’s sharper and more complicated reactormag.com/the-name-ziy...

ICYMI: I wrote up mini-reviews of my top ten sci-fi/fantasy short fictions of 2025. Check it out, and/or stick around for a thread of favorites!

First off, I am absolutely delighted that Asimov’s unlocked “The Tin Man’s Ghost” by Ray Nayler. It’s an alt history nuclear proliferation story that’s also a meditation on personhood and how it gets denied. So good, so underread asimovs.com/wp-content/u...

In My Country by Thomas Ha Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.

“In My Country” by @thomasha.bsky.social is weird and unsettling. It’s a robust polemic against a totalitarian surveillance state in a way reminiscent of Orwell or Bradbury, but it’s more subtle and refuses to be limited to a single target or theme clarkesworldmagazine.com/ha_04_25/

Beneath Ceaseless Skies - Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh by Marie Croke Outside the preburial cottage, the pier creaked. I saw no shadow under the doorway, yet I froze, afraid Adamet was listening. I imagined, yet again, an anger filtering over his calm countenance. Wonde...

“Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh” by @mariecroke.bsky.social is an emotionally and morally complicated tale of struggles within a community and within a family to a (magical) burial ground beset by lethal new denizens www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/our-...

I’m not sure anything rose on reread more than “Wilayat in Seven Saints” by Tanvir Ahmed. The seven constituent folktales nail the mythic vibe while coming together into something bigger that forces the lead to act in the present kaleidotrope.net/archives/aut...

Flights of Foundry Wants a New Platform! Help Flights of Foundry move from Webex to a platform designed for virtual events

Flights of Foundry has been cobbled together with chewing gum and poorly suited platforms for six years. Just imagine what we’ll be able to do with something better! You can help make that happen:

givebutter.com/FoFnewplatform

Seeing @flashfictiononline.bsky.social's "tiny gods" theme reminded me of this story by @emlinden.bsky.social in @diabolicalplots.com
www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-1...

OKAY I FINALLY FINISHED IT

My favorite speculative anthologies and short story collections of 2025!

www.patreon.com/posts/2025-f...

Spread it far and wide!

Luna Welcomes Tade Thompson’s Historical Fiction novel, Antara. We are delighted to welcome Tade Thompson to the Luna family, and the superb Antara, an historical fiction novel, on the pre-Islamic warrior poet of renown. We have acquired WEL rights from Alexander ...

Here we go.

It's Friday, and this dropped.

Luna Welcomes Tade Thompson’s Historical Fiction novel, Antara. We are delighted to welcome Tade Thompson to the Luna family, and the superb Antara, an historical fiction novel, on the pre-Islamic warrior poet of renown. We have acquired WEL rights from Alexander ...

Welcome @tadethompson.bsky.social and the superb Antara, an historical fiction novel, on the pre-Islamic warrior poet of renown 😍 Big thanks to Alexander Cochran at @greyhoundliterary.bsky.social! Antara will be out in 2027. Cover by @alisonsampson.bsky.social. @publishingscotland.bsky.social

To Whom it May Concern by Plangdi Neple "They were born dead, spirit hovering over their lifeless pudgy forms." | Short Story #1

Queer women
➕️
Angry spirits
🟰
Bloody revenge

open.substack.com/pub/strangep...

A Thimbleful of Need Need, I decided, tasted of honey and salt. I didn’t like it. Still, I knew to test the tincture before paying for it and so I touched a single drop to my lips. The cloying sweetness clung to my ton…

Start your week off with some short fiction! We’re half way through a month of desires, & Christine Hanolsy’s “A Thimbleful of Need” is a romantasy (of sorts, if I may) with an edge
#flashfiction #fantasy #writingcommunity
@christinehanolsy.com
www.flashfictiononline.com/article/a-th...

If you're in a position to vote on this, do the South Pacific a solid and vote for Brisbane.

The last time Worldcon was scheduled down here it was 2020 in Wellington and it didn't happen in person. Will have been 18 years by 2028 since we got an accessible in-person con. Put the World in Worldcon.

Today is your last chance to vote!

The Republic of Memory NetGalley helps publishers and authors promote digital review copies to book advocates and industry professionals. Publishers make digital review copies and audiobooks available for the NetGalley comm...

My book, THE REPUBLIC OF MEMORY, is available for request on NetGalley.

"When you speak a different language, you become another person..."

bit.ly/4rTIGgE

I was on the SFWA committee to create the first-ever Nebula Award for poetry and it is live for nominations. Deadline 3/1. Please nominate at least one poem! www.sfwa.org/2025-ne...

Hugo Noms have opened and I want to get in quick with this: there is a fabulous and vibrant contemporary SFF novella scene and the quality is *not* disproportionately located at tordotcom, which puts out brilliant work but does not have a monopoly on it.

5 titles for your consideration follow:

I didn’t make an eligibility post this year, because I am out of spoons and all kitchen utensils, but Hugo noms are open, and if you consider anything from me, I’d love it if you considered my @fantasymagazine.bsky.social story “Ichthyosis," that involves the sea, a queer throuple, and a fish.

Oh my goodness gracious! "Ghosts of Summer" is included in Guran's review! Aaaaahhh! Thank you so much!

Definitely check out the review; there are some truly spectacular stories listed there alongside "Ghosts of Summer."