Size / / /

The mower cable's puzzled into knots again

and somewhere, out of sight, a spider freezes

as that dropped screw rolls to a halt. Sadly

there are more ways of being wrong than right.

Adrift for thirty years myself I know

it's easier to be lost than found.

Consider it as manumission from

the rituals of fate and fingers crossed.

There are just less ways of being right than wrong:

that sweet spot missed despite much fumbling;

fruitless hours with tangled words; all those

frogs which just stayed frogs when kissed.




David Barber lives in the UK and hopes his interest in the future is reciprocated. He stares out of windows a lot trying to make sense of stuff. He was a scientist once, though he never stood on the shoulders of any giants. This is his first bio.
Current Issue
16 Mar 2026

The garden is the resting place of your vulnerabilities; there’s a reason you’ve left them here instead of carrying them with you. Typically you enter hardened and hurried, beelining straight for the correct plot and quickly releasing whatever is clutched in your hand without a second thought—today, an attempted weaving of leather and lace, strength and suppleness that your body cannot figure out how to wear, nor your words to narrate.
If you say there are rats, I will believe you, though I don’t hear or see them.
A ruffling of branches as they resettle for the night. We dare not ask why they are here.
Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity 
As part of a collective of African writers who have created an Afrocentric Sauútiverse of five planets, two suns and a spirit moon, a world of science and fantasy, where there is no written language, we play with technology and sound magic to scrutinise the world as we know it, and use speculative fiction as a response to our world. 
Friday: When Among Crows and To Clutch a Razor by Veronica Roth 
Issue 9 Mar 2026
By: Lio Abendan
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Strange Horizons
2 Mar 2026
Strange Horizons invites non-fiction submissions for our March 30 special issue on “Fungi in SFF.”
Issue 2 Mar 2026
Strange Horizons
Issue 23 Feb 2026
Issue 16 Feb 2026
Issue 9 Feb 2026
Issue 2 Feb 2026
By: Natasha King
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 26 Jan 2026
Issue 19 Jan 2026
Issue 12 Jan 2026
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