Ancillary Review of Books

Purple background, white text, which says Indian feminist science fiction grapples with female foeticide, caste erasure, honour killings, sex-ratio crises - concerns that emerge from refusing to separate gender from caste, class, environment, geography. "Indian Feminist Science Fiction: A History (Part 1)" -- Amritesh Mukherjee

In this first of two essays, Amritesh Mukherjee gives an overview of Indian feminist SF - starting in 1905, with _Sultana's Dream_, then jumping to the 1980s, and following several themes over the next three decades...

Read now! It's free ! www.speculativeinsight.com

Pitch your troubled problematic reads to @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org is what I'm saying.

Why can’t we be friends? Review of Hailey Piper’s No Gods For Drowning Robert Welbourn Under Review:No Gods for Drowning. Hailey Piper. Bad Hand Books, March 2026. Hailey Piper’s No Gods for Drowning is a thoroughly enjoyable novel, with Piper writing compelling chara…

Why Can't We Be Friends? @robertwelbourn.bsky.social reviews the re-release of Hailey Piper's NO GODS FOR DROWNING (@badhandbooks.bsky.social)

The front of the 2025 Ignyte Finalist medallion, silvery metal with the Fiyah/Ignyte lgo.

The back of the 2025 Ignyte Finalist medallion, silvery metal with art by Nilah Magruder, a haloed figure holding a sword.

Card with art by Nilah Magruder, a Black haloed figure holding a sword and with flames around thr bottom, beautiful metallic print.

Back of the card thanking the Ancillary Review of Books & editors for contributions to speculative literature.

Well this is gorgeous! Was not expecting anything this beautiful just for the @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org being an @theignyteawards.bsky.social finalist:

Calls for Reviews & Essays: June 2026 The Ancillary Review of Books publishes reviews and essays with an emphasis on utopian impulses and systemic injustices. ARB seeks to build a community of radical thinkers writing about amazing, sp…

Calls for Reviews & Essays: June 2026

Call for book review essays - book list C21 is inviting scholars and researchers to contribute book review essays for upcoming issues. We currently have a selection of titles published in 2025 available for review, spanning film and …

Call for book review essays - book list c21.openlibhums.org/news/923/

Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity: Finding the Self in Other Black speculative poetry works this way too. It’s text that is flexible and immediate. It’s a safe space to explore Afrocentric text rooted in story, song, dance, rhythm that natural flows from my …

Grateful to see my smol essay on the self and identity, the politics of belonging, is a BSFA Awards finalist. 🥹
Congratulations to all finalists! @strangehorizons.bsky.social , @bloomsburyacademic.bsky.social
strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

Hey all, if you are the kind of person who goes to or pays attention to or even, yes, complains about Worldcon (because you care about the state of speculative fiction & its communities), I *implore you* to take ten minutes and submit a program item or two before the deadline. Thread! 1/13

Non-Fiction Submission Guidelines How to submit or query about essays, round-tables, interviews, and columns.

🚨🚨Submissions call. 🚨🚨

Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”

Please send in your mycelial pitches to gautam.strangehorizons@gmail.com.

For word-count, formats, and remuneration:

strangehorizons.com/submit/non-f...

Walls, Desires, and Ambiguous Utopias: Review of Mahyar and Mahbod Amouzegar’s Tomorrow Brings Joy: Elysium Christine D. Baker Under Review:Tomorrow Brings Joy: Elysium. Mahyar A. Amouzegar and Mahbod Amouzegar. University of New Orleans Press, January 2026. In Tomorrow Brings Joy: Elysium, Mahyar and Ma…

Walls, Desires, and Ambiguous Utopias: @klaxoncomms.com reviews Mahyar and Mahbod Amouzegar’s TOMORROW BRINGS JOY: ELYSIUM (University of New Orleans Press)

Just finished listening to this. Unsurprisingly: great!

But I was particularly here for the sections on religion in SFF. When Liz said "what draws people back to religion is not the mechanistic, it's the mystery" I was just here nodding emphatically along.

Tapping the sign in solidarity

We have news - we're expanding the Tasavvur family! If you're interested in volunteering for any of the roles we've mentioned, or want to know more, email your CVs to hello.tasavvur@gmail.com.

🔮 - #SouthAsian #SpeculativeFiction

Snap! Criticism: Okotie and Thien Dan Hartland In a letter on May 14, 1981, Philip K. Dick was characteristically pugnacious: “I will define science fiction, first, by saying what sf is not. It cannot be defined as ‘a story (or nov…

What future for the novel of the future? What are the bits of SF that might enable it to persist, or help the novel itself survive? How might writers reuse them?

My latest Snap! column for @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org: “SF can formally as well as intellectually contribute to the effort of revival.”

Snap! Criticism: Okotie and Thien Dan Hartland In a letter on May 14, 1981, Philip K. Dick was characteristically pugnacious: “I will define science fiction, first, by saying what sf is not. It cannot be defined as ‘a story (or nov…

Novel temporalities: for the latest Snap! Criticism, @danhartland.bsky.social looks at recent work by Simon Okotie & Madeleine Thien to highlight how speculative and formal elements interact.

Another Hugo nomination-time thread! And in this one, I'll be talking about novellas.

(this thread will probably go long, sorry-not-sorry)

A Meal of Thorns 44- PALADIN OF SOULS with Liz Bourke Reviewer and historian Liz Bourke joins to discuss religion, historical overlaps, and examinations of gender in Paladin of Souls and fantasy more generally. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, a…

A Meal of Thorns #44: Historian & SFF critic @hawkwinglb.bsky.social joins the podcast to talk about Lois McMaster Bujold's PALADIN OF SOULS, part of an interconnected fantasy series with interesting approaches to religion & historical sources:

Happy birthday Joanna Russ. Someone issue her collected weird fiction already

Intergalactic Mixtape #41 Hey! It was a quiet week on my feeds, but I was also not on them as much because I downloaded PowerWash Simulator 2 (you can PET THE CATS) and reread...

Intergalactic Mixtape is live!

So look out for my Audiofuturism World Tour 2026-27, and look out for your nervous system and your joints and your organs. I'm gonna look out for mine.

Check out my latest review for @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org 👇👇👇

Essay: Finding #SFinTranslation

www.sfintranslation.com?p=16357

All We Have Are The Connections That We Make: Review of James Sallis’s World’s Edge Robert Welbourn Under Review:World’s Edge. James Sallis. Soho Press, February 2026. James Sallis’s World’s Edge is a collection of five short stories that argue a strong point, summed up in the fi…

All We Have Are The Connections That We Make: @robertwelbourn.bsky.social reviews James Sallis's WORLD'S EDGE (@sohopress.bsky.social)

Image of half Jirel of Joiry, half Molly Tanzer (That's me) with text reading The Person whose pledge gets us over the line for the next author raise will win a short story critique from Molly Tanzer, up to 5000 words. You can gift this if you don't want it!

So thrilled the @newedgeswordmag.bsky.social 2026 crowdfund is doing so well! Double art, reduced shipping, three author raises, three raises for the artists...and we're well on our way to the next author raise. Whoever pushes us over the next author raise will win a short story critique from me!

support - The Ignyte Awards We live in immensely difficult times and hope our supporters are utilizing their discretionary income to prioritize giving to causes which aid in our collective survival and the dismantling of oppress...

With the caveat that there are much more important things in need of financial support in our fucked up times, the support page for the Ignytes is back up for the 2026 cycle.

ignyteawards.fiyahlitmag.com/support/

This is magnificent endeavour and a terrific list of reviewers. Some new to me who I am now following. We need more of this, and not necessarily for award validation but just to spread the word that genre criticism is in the midst of a golden age.

Profane Illuminations III: Sophia J. Unsworth’s The Silent House and Other Strange Stories, Corey Farrenkopf’s Haunted Ecologies, and Ysabelle Cheung’s Patchwork Dolls Zachary Gillan In 2020, following protests in Hong Kong and the beginning of the epidemic, Ysabelle Cheung wrote an essay called “What Happens to Writing When We Stop Pretending Anything Makes Sens…

Profane Illuminations III: More of my thoughts on weird fiction collections! Sophia J. Unsworth’s The Silent House and Other Strange Stories! Corey Farrenkopf’s Haunted Ecologies! Ysabelle Cheung’s Patchwork Dolls! We've got fragments and grief, italics, recordings, birds, liminal houses...

The World in Worldcon Jake Casella Brookins In this op-ed series, ARB editors share some informal thoughts and opinions about the Hugo awards, Worldcons, and other aspects of the SFF award and convention scene. What are…

Read and nominate @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org.

The team over there does high-minded, high-brow analysis of SFF with a strong social justice lens. Jake, Misha, Bianca, Zachary, Cynthia, Liz, Lane, and Gary have been knocking it out of the park.

ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/05/23/t...

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Profane Illuminations III: Sophia J. Unsworth’s The Silent House and Other Strange Stories, Corey Farrenkopf’s Haunted Ecologies, and Ysabelle Cheung’s Patchwork Dolls Zachary Gillan In 2020, following protests in Hong Kong and the beginning of the epidemic, Ysabelle Cheung wrote an essay called “What Happens to Writing When We Stop Pretending Anything Makes Sens…

Profane Illuminations 3: @megapolisomancy.bsky.social talks absences & presences, ghosts & birds in Unsworth's THE SILENT HOUSE (Tartarus), Farrenkopf's HAUNTED ECOLOGIES (@journalstone.bsky.social), and Cheung's PATCHWORK DOLLS (@blairpub.bsky.social)

Outlander and Scotland: Cultural Influences and Historical Perspectives – Luath Press

Romance scholars/fans: is there any writing that looks at "Celtic Femininity" or depictions focusing on femininity in Celtic contexts in romance lit?

I thought I'd find more in this re: Outlander, but the Celtic and gender elements seem quite separate in it

(luath.co.uk/products/out...)