From spaceship crime scene investigators to viola-playing shapeshifters, from multiverse murders to magical locksmiths, from mavkas to chikwambos. My ten favorite short science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories from February are delightfully weird and a little unnerving.
“The Flaming Embusen” by Tade Thompson
Jero is an investigator sent from Earth to look into an incident involving two spaceships, the BurningNitel and the Embusen. The ships hail from two systems that treat AI droids differently: one sees them as robots and the other as sentient beings. Jero is also being haunted in a way by his daughter’s “relativity ghost” due to the strange nature of the gates that make space travel faster and easier. This is a story that starts as a standard sci-fi mystery set in space and becomes something so much more emotional and thoughtful. (Uncanny—January/February 2025; issue 62)
“Flying in the Dark Night | 闇夜を飛ぶ” by Mayumi Inaba, translated by Yui Kajita
Reading this felt like experiencing a nightmare. Reality folds in on itself and as much as you know it’s not actually happening it’s hard to shake yourself out of the stress. Written in first person POV, the narrator, a mother and wife, comes to consciousness walking in “endless dark.” Creatures taunt her from the darkness until it changes her physically and psychologically. Who she was before is just out of reach, and it will take all of her inner strength to get back to it. (Samovar—February 3, 2025)
“Have You Eaten Yet” by Ian Li
Although this is only 325 words, it packs a wallop. Our narrator lives on New Shanghai on the moon, but longs for his home back on Earth. As they walk through the neighborhood, they meet Chinese aunties seeking connection through food. There is something so charming and sweet about this story. Even in immigration, you can still carry your culture with you. It may not be the same, but it doesn’t have to be totally altered either. (Worlds of Possibility—February 2025)
“How His Sins Caught Up to the Unpierceable Laoji” by Wen Wen Yang
Laoji may have supernatural protection, but he’s also just an arrogant man with a destiny he thinks he’s bested. When the story opens, he’s holding court at a bar, entertaining his admirers and knocking down his detractors. He unexpectedly meets his match in an unassuming barmaid. It’s hard not to like this little tale of revenge. It’s clever and satisfying. (Small Wonders—February 2025; issue 20)
“The Inheritance” by C.T. Muchemwa
Taona, the only son of a wealthy man from Harare, Zimbabwe, does not mourn his father when he dies. His father’s girlfriends and his half-sisters do, but Taona never had any real relationship with the man. But that doesn’t stop his father leaving him a Honda Fit as his inheritance. More precisely, it’s the thing inside the Fit that he wants Taona to have: a chikwambo, or “money goblin.” Here’s where the story takes on a horror twist—it’s the first of two stories in this spotlight to feature someone eating human flesh—and that ending will leave you gasping in surprise. Pitch perfect. (FIYAH—Winter 2025; issue 33)
“The Last Chance Locksmith” by Niall Spain
I always get a kick out of stories where the main character knows they live in a trope-laden fantasyland. Heather was a main character once and is determined to be an NPC, but her skills are too important for her to hide in the background. Troupes of adventurers are constantly washing up on her and her partner’s doorstep needing her help to save the world or whatever, and Heather is sick of it. This morning, her coffee is interrupted by yet another motley crew battling a fire monster on her doorstep. This is the quintessential Tales & Feathers story. It’s cozy, amusing, knowing, queer, and has just enough edge to keep things interesting. (Tales & Feathers—February 2025; volume 3)
“Lucinda Espinosa’s Twenty-Seventh Death” by M.R. Robinson
Luce barely escaped from Last Stop and the woman who tried to kill her, but now she’s back, years later, and so is Finch. Finch promised to kill Luce all those years ago and she’s here to keep her word, no matter how much Luce tries to talk her out of it. This is a story bigger than two lovers with blood on their hands. Finch is forced to keep killing iterations of the woman she loves as she tries to find the one who will change her fate. M.R. Robinson’s piece is a little bit western, a little bit queer love story, and a little bit sci-fi multiverse weirdness with two anti-hero main characters you’ll love spending time with. (Fusion Fragment—February 2025; issue 24)
“Mavka” by A.D. Sui
A.D. Sui is back in the spotlight for a second month in a row with this Eastern European folktale. Although the story doesn’t spell it out, it seems to be set during the famine of 1921-1922 in the South of Russia. Although the famine had several causes, the Bolsheviks stealing supplies from peasants made things much worse, leading to a not insignificant portion of the population in the Volga and Ural regions to resort to cannibalism. This is where Sui, who is from Ukraine near where the worst of the famine struck, starts her story. Andriy captures what our narrator believes is a mavka, a forest spirit, and they consume its flesh. But hunger twists the memory into a haze. What is legend and what is truth overlaps until neither can be distinguished. (PseudoPod—February 21, 2025; #963)
“The Otter Woman’s Daughter” by Eleanor Glewwe
Our narrator and her mother are both otter shapeshifters. Her father stole her mother’s skin and hid it, trapping her in his house. When they finally find her skin and escape, our narrator and her mother return to the wilderness. While her mother thrills in being an otter again, our narrator misses human things like going to school and playing her viola. This is, in a way, an immigration story. A woman forced by a man to leave her home but desperate to return, and her child who is as much from the new land as the old one and who doesn’t want to have to choose between them. (Cast of Wonders—February 2, 2025; #629)
“Rebirth of the Rain” by Vivian Chou
“I am the rain. I am no longer Haoyu, but a water droplet as wide as a shed tear. A moment ago, I was kneeling over my brother’s body. The rain diluted his blood on my hands, my robes reeking of metal and sweat. My particles intermix with the blood oozed out of my brother’s abdomen, iron and salt coagulating.” Two siblings find themselves on opposite sides of a war. The regret and guilt the survivor feels over the death of Zhang drives a reincarnation, from human to water to grass to rabbit food and eventually to the sea. Over and over our narrator becomes something new, and with each rebirth better understands the fragility of life and mourns the time wasted. (Penumbric—February 2025; volume 8, issue 5)
