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"description": "A new crop of short stories to check out this month",
"path": "/sci-fi-fantasy-short-stories-fiction-february-2026/",
"publishedAt": "2026-02-03T17:08:49.000Z",
"site": "https://www.andrewliptak.com",
"tags": [
"here",
"_Amazing Stories_",
"The ICE Man Goeth",
"All-Inclusive",
"Ansible Report",
"Commercial Ambitions",
"_Apex Magazine_",
"\"Unsettled Nature\" by Jordan Kurella",
"Piglet Delivers",
"Shrinkage!",
"\"Musings from Maryland\"",
"_Beneath Ceaseless Skies_",
"A Dirge for the Mirrorbirds",
"Precipice Sun",
"Like Thorns on Her Tongue",
"Medusa’s Ship, or The Thing About Bodies",
"Bloom Where You Are Planted",
"What Might Come of Today",
"To Atone for Evil",
"Hollow in The Hope",
"_Clarkesworld Magazine_",
"Remember Me in the Meat",
"Chip",
"Think of Me Before I Disappear",
"A Sleeper Ship Is Like a Game of Go",
"The Iron Piper",
"Painstaking",
"Three Fortunes on Alcestis as Told by the Fraud Baeliss Shudal",
"Will Tiny Black Holes Solve Dark Matter",
"The Literary Buffet: A Conversation with James Sallis",
"The Wondrous Nature of Existence: A Conversation with Michael Swanwick",
"Editor's Desk: 2025 Readers' Poll Finalists",
"_The Dark_",
"In Absentia",
"Nā Heʻe",
"Hunger",
"Within the Pink Paisley Walls",
"_Dark Horses Magazine_",
"_The Deadlands_",
"** _in which orpheus is a hmong daughter_**",
"On the Anthology Entitled “Frames of Colour and Un-Colour",
"Mushaboom",
"Babe",
"A Woman Is Screaming",
"Sole",
"Bible Verses for the Dying and the Heathen",
"Ask a Necromancer: C’est ici de l’empire de la Mort",
"_Flash Fiction Online_",
"Me an’ Streeter (an’ Vince) Chase a Comet",
"This Blue World",
"A Thimbleful of Need",
"Everyone Hates It When The Alien Shows Up At The Club",
"A Lesson On Learning Your Place In the Universe",
"In Brightness and in Darkness, We Sit",
"Future Tense Fiction",
"What Would Akanda Do?",
"The Dividing Towers of Mumbai",
"_GigaNotoSaurus_",
"The Winter of the Icebergirl",
"_Lightspeed Magazine_",
"Death Echoes Overlapping",
"Six Sides of a Fairy Tale",
"The Worldbuilder",
"Dream Destinations (From the Lost Traveler’s Tour Guide)",
"Sensor Ghosts",
"The Salt and the Cure",
"Warren’s Tentacle",
"A Handbook to Spirit-Hunting",
"Editorial: February 2026",
"Author Spotlight: Megan Chee",
"Author Spotlight: Alexander Weinstein",
"Book Review: _The Best Weird Fiction of the Year Volume One_ by Michael Kelly, ed.",
"Author Spotlight: Deborah L. Davitt",
"Book Review: _The Hospital at the End of the World_ by Justin C. Key",
"Author Spotlight: Susan Palwick",
"Book Review: _Reliquary_ by Hannah Whitten",
"_Nature Futures_",
"Eviction notice",
"18,000,000 minutes",
"Mid-cycle update",
"The future perfect continuous passive and other transitive disorders of the mind",
"_Nightmare Magazine_",
"The Ghost in Apartment 5K",
"Rest Stop",
"Twelve Facts About the Dermestid Beetle",
"when i die",
"Author Spotlight: Everdeen Mason",
"The H Word: Snakes Beneath the Kudzu",
"Author Spotlight: Marisca Pichette",
"Plumbing the Depths: Haunted Writers and Haunted Writings",
"_Reactor_",
"Agency",
"Of Two Bloods",
"Deathcap",
"_Small Wonders Magazine_",
"Drinking the Heron",
"Straw Gold",
"Grief Trawling",
"Stop Thinking, the Kid Can Hear",
"Mary’s Bag",
"The Beauty You Cannot Buy",
"A Simulacrum of Self",
"(Just) Alice",
"7 Things the Tychonaut Princess Elisabeth Did NOT Experience on her Marvellous Voyage to the So-Called Medicean Stars",
"_Strange Horizons_",
"Mother, Darling",
"A Night with Hui ‘Enehana ‘Ike",
"The River Speaks My Name",
"Plastic Paradise Awaits",
"Josh Pearce",
"The Sunfish Considers Flotation Therapy",
"Alison Clara Tan",
"Why You Don't Buy Your Wife a Dishwasher for Her Birthday",
"Larina Warnock",
"The Point",
"Darius Jones",
"They Leave",
"The Secret to Being a Dragon",
"Statement on ICE Operations in the USA",
"Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky",
"Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree",
"Hazelthorn by C. G. Drews",
"Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan Ballingrud",
"Arctic Knot by Ivan Leonov",
"Manga's First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905–1989 by Andrea Horbinski",
"Into the Sun by C.F. Ramuz, translated by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan",
"Lies Weeping by Glen Cook",
"Slow Gods by Claire North",
"_The Sunday Morning Transport_",
"Wounds",
"Realm of the Shorn",
"The Definition of a Second",
"Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly above the earth across the expanse of sky",
"_Uncanny Magazine_",
"Words That Wither, Words That Bloom",
"The Memory Hounds of Bak-Ankham",
"This Story Does Not Exist",
"A Field Guide for Broken Sons in Transit",
"The Parsley Girl",
"I Write in English Because I Can",
"Frognative Dissonance",
"Interview: A. W. Prihandita"
],
"textContent": "Welcome to another installment of Table of Contents: a roundup of the latest short fiction hitting the web for the SF/F world.\n\nYou can check out last month's installment here – it's been newly updated with the stories that came out over the course of January 2026, and you can check out prior installments of this column here.\n\n* * *\n\n## _Amazing Stories_ (February 2026)\n\n * \"The ICE Man Goeth\" by Tom Easton\n * \"All-Inclusive\" by Bruce Strand\n * \"Ansible Report\" by R. L. Farr\n * \"Commercial Ambitions\" by D. M. Woolston\n\n\n\n## _Apex Magazine_ (Spring 2026, Issue 152)\n\nSubscribe here.\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"Unsettled Nature\" by Jordan Kurella\n * \"Piglet Delivers\" by Maria Haskins — 2/17\n * \"Shrinkage!\" by Ashlee Lhamon — 2/10\n\n\n\n### Nonfiction\n\n * \"Musings from Maryland\" by Lesley Conner\n * \"Intellectual Colonialism and the Erasure of South and Eastern European Writing Voices: Another Tikka-Masala\" by Sophia-Maria Nicolopoulos — 2/5\n * Interview with Author Maria Haskins by Marissa van Uden — 2/19\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _Beneath Ceaseless Skies_ (February 2026, Issues 450 and 451)\n\nSubscribe here.\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"A Dirge for the Mirrorbirds\" by Emily C. Skaftun\n * \"Precipice Sun\" by Ewen Ma\n * \"Like Thorns on Her Tongue\" by R.Z. Held\n * \"Medusa’s Ship, or The Thing About Bodies\" by Natalia Theodoridou\n * \"Bloom Where You Are Planted\" by Melanie Mulrooney\n * \"What Might Come of Today\" by Leah Ning\n * \"To Atone for Evil\" by Megan Chee\n * \"Hollow in The Hope\" by Aimee Ogden\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _Clarkesworld Magazine_ __(February 2026, Issue 233)\n\nSubscribe here.\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"Remember Me in the Meat\" by Sarah Pauling\n * \"Chip\" by D.A. Xiaolin Spires\n * \"Think of Me Before I Disappear\" by Raahem Alvi\n * \"A Sleeper Ship Is Like a Game of Go\" by Claire Jia-Wen\n * \"The Iron Piper\" by Fiona Moore\n * \"Painstaking\" by Rich Larson\n * \"Three Fortunes on Alcestis as Told by the Fraud Baeliss Shudal\" by Louis Inglis Hall\n\n\n\n### Nonfiction\n\n * Will Tiny Black Holes Solve Dark Matter by Terry Franklin\n * The Literary Buffet: A Conversation with James Sallis by Arley Sorg\n * The Wondrous Nature of Existence: A Conversation with Michael Swanwick by Arley Sorg\n * Editor's Desk: 2025 Readers' Poll Finalists by Neil Clarke\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _The Dark_ (February 2026, Issue 129)\n\nSubscribe here.\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"In Absentia\" by __ Suzan Palumbo\n * \"Nā Heʻe\" by __ Wailana Kalama\n * \"Hunger\" by __ Michael Kelly\n * \"Within the Pink Paisley Walls\" by __ Kelsea Yu\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _Dark Horses Magazine_ (February 2026, Issue 49)\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"Helpless\" by Andy Kumpon\n * \"Whoever Said\" by Stephanie Halldorson\n * \"Harold The Harbinger\" by Rain Sullivan\n * \"02:28 Hours To Yuma\" by Wayne Kyle Spitzer\n * \"The Queen’s Justice\" by Solar Hoàng\n * \"I Miss You\" by Jeremee Nute\n * \"Islands In The Stream\" by Zeke Jarvis\n * \"Lifelong Sentence\" by Robin J. Bartley\n * \"A Full Moon Botheration\" by Lesley L. Smith\n * \"Long Ride Home\" by John Tavares\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _The Deadlands_ (Winter 2026, Issue 41)\n\nSubscribe here.\n\n### Fiction\n\n * ** _in which orpheus is a hmong daughter_**\" by Phoua Lee (poetry; online 2/2)\n * \"On the Anthology Entitled “Frames of Colour and Un-Colour\" by Dmitri Akers (fiction; online 2/5)\n * \"Mushaboom\" by Jeremy Morris (fiction; online 2/12)\n * \"Babe\" by gray lindsey (poetry; online 2/16)\n * \"A Woman Is Screaming\" by Joe Koch (fiction; online 2/19)\n * \"Sole\" by Aliya Whiteley (fiction; online 2/26)\n\n\n\n### Nonfiction\n\n * Bible Verses for the Dying and the Heathen by Robin Wheeler (nonfiction; online 2/9)\n * Ask a Necromancer: C’est ici de l’empire de la Mort by Amanda Downum (nonfiction; online 2/23)\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _Flash Fiction Online_ (February 2026, Issue 149)\n\nDonate here.\n\n### Fiction\n\n * “Me an’ Streeter (an’ Vince) Chase a Comet” by Christopher Degni\n * “This Blue World” by Samantha Murray\n * “A Thimbleful of Need” by Christine Hanolsy\n * “Everyone Hates It When The Alien Shows Up At The Club” by Elijah J. Mears\n * “A Lesson On Learning Your Place In the Universe” by Thomas Price, and\n * “In Brightness and in Darkness, We Sit” by Christopher Blake\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## Future Tense Fiction (February 2026)\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"What Would Akanda Do?\" by Samit Basu\n\n\n\n### Nonfiction\n\n * The Dividing Towers of Mumbai by Moira Shourie\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _GigaNotoSaurus_ __(February 2026)\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"The Winter of the Icebergirl\" by Renan Bernardo\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _Lightspeed Magazine_ (February 2026, Issue 189)\n\nSubscribe here.\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"Death Echoes Overlapping\"__ by Megan Chee (2/5)\n * \"Six Sides of a Fairy Tale\" by Audrey Zhou (2/5)\n * \"The Worldbuilder\" by Phoenix Alexander (2/12)\n * \"Dream Destinations (From the Lost Traveler’s Tour Guide)_\"_ by Alexander Weinstein (2/12)\n * \"Sensor Ghosts _\"_ by Deborah L. Davitt (2/19)\n * \"The Salt and the Cure _\"_ by Rukman Ragas (2/19)\n * \"Warren’s Tentacle _\"_ by Susan Palwick (2/26)\n * \"A Handbook to Spirit-Hunting _\"_ by Modupeoluwa Shelle (2/26)\n\n\n\n### Nonfiction\n\n * Editorial: February 2026 __ by John Joseph Adams (2/5)\n * Author Spotlight: Megan Chee __ by Phoebe Barton (2/5)\n * Author Spotlight: Alexander Weinstein __ by Erik Grove (2/12)\n * Book Review: _The Best Weird Fiction of the Year Volume One_ by Michael Kelly, ed.__ by Arley Sorg (2/12)\n * Author Spotlight: Deborah L. Davitt __ by Robin Jeffrey (2/19)\n * Book Review: _The Hospital at the End of the World_ by Justin C. Key __ by Melissa A Watkins (2/19)\n * Author Spotlight: Susan Palwick __ by Delia Cullity (2/26)\n * Book Review: _Reliquary_ by Hannah Whitten __ by Chris Kluwe (2/26)\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _Nature Futures_ (February 2026)\n\nSubscribe here.\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"Eviction notice\" by Celso Antonio de Almeida\n * \"18,000,000 minutes\" by Spencer Nitkey\n * \"Mid-cycle update\" by Lucien R. Starchild\n * \"The future perfect continuous passive and other transitive disorders of the mind\" by Timothy Quinn\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _Nightmare Magazine_ (February 2026, Issue 161)\n\nSubscribe here.\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"The Ghost in Apartment 5K\" by Everdeen Mason (2/4)\n * \"Rest Stop\" by Pedro Iniguez (2/11)\n * \"Twelve Facts About the Dermestid Beetle\" by Marisca Pichette (2/18)\n * \"when i die\" by Matthew Wollin (2/25)\n\n\n\n### Nonfiction\n\n * Editorial: February 2026 __ by Wendy N. Wagner (2/4)\n * Author Spotlight: Everdeen Mason __ by Devin Marcus (2/4)\n * The H Word: Snakes Beneath the Kudzu by Elizabeth Broadbent (2/11)\n * Author Spotlight: Marisca Pichette __ by Carrie Finch (2/18)\n * Plumbing the Depths: Haunted Writers and Haunted Writings __ by Mike Thorn (2/25)\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _Reactor_ __(February 2026)\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"Agency\" by George Sandison\n * \"Of Two Bloods\" by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward\n * \"Deathcap\" by Lara Elena Donnelly\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _Small Wonders Magazine_ (February 2026, Issue 32)\n\nDonate here.\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"Drinking the Heron\" by RJ Aurand\n * \"Straw Gold\" by Mari Ness\n * \"Grief Trawling\" by Suzanne J. Willis\n * \"Stop Thinking, the Kid Can Hear\" by Lucy Eller\n * \"Mary’s Bag\" by Marisca Pichette\n * \"The Beauty You Cannot Buy\" by Marie Vibbert\n * \"A Simulacrum of Self\" by Aimee Ogden\n * \"(Just) Alice\" by Diana Olney\n * \"7 Things the Tychonaut Princess Elisabeth Did NOT Experience on her Marvellous Voyage to the So-Called Medicean Stars\" by M. J. Pettit\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _Strange Horizons_ (February 2026)\n\nDonate here.\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"Mother, Darling\" by Allison Pottern\n * \"A Night with Hui ‘Enehana ‘Ike\" by Maʻemaʻeolehua Matsumoto\n * \"The River Speaks My Name\" by Ocoxōchitl la Coyota\n\n\n\n### Poetry\n\n * \"Plastic Paradise Awaits\" by Josh Pearce\n * \"The Sunfish Considers Flotation Therapy\" by Alison Clara Tan\n * \"Why You Don't Buy Your Wife a Dishwasher for Her Birthday\" by Larina Warnock\n * \"The Point\" by Darius Jones\n * \"They Leave\" by Garth Upshaw\n * \"The Secret to Being a Dragon\" by Carolina Marchioro\n\n\n\n### Nonfiction\n\n * Statement on ICE Operations in the USA by the _Strange Horizons_ staff\n\n\n\n### Reviews\n\n * Monday: Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky by Andy Sawyer\n * Wednesday: Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree by Anushree Nande\n * Friday: Hazelthorn by C. G. Drews by Cameron Miguel\n * Monday: Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan Ballingrud by Matt Holder\n * Wednesday: Arctic Knot by Ivan Leonov by Tristan Beiter\n * Friday: Manga's First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905–1989 by Andrea Horbinski by Rachel Cordasco\n * Monday: Into the Sun by C.F. Ramuz, translated by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan by Dawn Macdonald\n * Wednesday: Lies Weeping by Glen Cook by Roz Kaveney\n * Friday: Slow Gods by Claire North by Ian J. Simpson\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _The Sunday Morning Transport_ (February 2026)\n\n### Fiction\n\n * \"Wounds\" by Celia Marsh\n * \"Realm of the Shorn\" by David Bowles\n * \"The Definition of a Second\" by Carrie Vaughn\n * \"Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly above the earth across the expanse of sky\" by P. Lee\n\n\n\n* * *\n\n## _Uncanny Magazine_ (Issue 68, January / February 2026)\n\nSubscribe here.\n\n### Fiction\n\n * Words That Wither, Words That Bloom\" by Jules Arbeaux\n * \"The Memory Hounds of Bak-Ankham\" by A. W. Prihandita\n * \"This Story Does Not Exist\" by Kylie Lee Baker\n\n\n\n### Poetry\n\n * \"A Field Guide for Broken Sons in Transit by Joemario Umana\n * \"The Parsley Girl by Theodora Goss\n\n\n\n### Nonfiction\n\n * I Write in English Because I Can by Jana Bianchi\n * Frognative Dissonance by Riley Silverman\n * Interview: A. W. Prihandita by Caroline M. Yoachim\n\n\n\n* * *\n\nRemember to check back at the end of the month for updates as new stories come online, and to let me know in the comments what caught your eye!",
"title": "Table of Contents, February 2026",
"updatedAt": "2026-02-28T18:09:07.520Z"
}