Short Reviews – July to September, 2025

Andrew Leon Hudson

I noticed an unfairness: that, with our Winter issues primarily given over to crime (and our final slew of short reviews being focused on short crime fiction only), any genre fic published in October, November, and December was excluded from these short reviews.

In 2026 I’ll rectify this oversight, with the Spring round up reaching back to cover October to January, Summer taking February to May, and Autumn wrapping up the twelve months with June to September, and the Winter issue continuing to pick at the calendar year’s criminal offerings.

As for right now, here are our recommendations for recent spec-fic shorts available at the mere click of a link – all three of them bite-sized flash stories you can enjoy in just a few minutes.

B ree Wernicke’s flash story Five Different Realities to Explore, and One to Avoid covers a hell of a lot of ground for less than a thousand words: loyal service, unrequited love, alcoholism, the disdain of one’s peers, parallel universes, demonology… what hasn’t it got?

It appears in Orion’s Belt, a literary speculative-fiction online magazine which specialises in “the strange and poignant and awe-inspiring, stories that have a cosmic scale and intimate personal stakes”. Although “awe-inspiring” is a pretty big ask for almost anything, so let’s set that demanding claim to one side for now, otherwise this seems to perfectly encapsulate everything they look for in a story.

T he previous story makes a passing mention of succubi, and the next – in NewMyths – certainly occupies proximal conceptual space, involving one of those supernatural entities which, like the oh-so-always vampire, want something most vital from the current human subject of their interest.

Getting to Know You sets itself apart in a couple of ways, not most in that the being it gives us isn’t so familiar it feels clichéd before we even find out what author Clarissa Grunwald is going to do with it. “Being” is, in fact, the best word to describe it.

And it was no slip to say “not most”, by the way. The twist in the tale gives this one a special hint of urgency that is as pleasing as the moment we find out what is at hand.

L ast but by no means least, a story we would reluctantly have had to turn down at Mythaxis, since we go entirely advertising-free. But our painful loss is Metastellar’s gain!

Adverts by Rick Danforth takes place between stations on a subway somewhere in a future that is surely just a matter of time. As anyone who uses it knows, public transport has long been a key ecological niche for ads to flourish in – there’s no audience as appealing to a marketeer as one with no choice but to sit there and take it. The real trick is achieving engagement, and if this story proves prophetic then some ground-breaking campaign might even make that the next step… literally.

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