Strange Horizons kicks off July with two short stories and two poems, on top of their normal bounty of nonfiction (which I’m not covering here). The works are fairly different, one story looking at a conflict, a war, a destruction, while the other looks at portal fantasies and the weight and burden carried by those who go elsewhere and have to return. They are linked, however, in that they both approach the idea of willful ignorance. In the first, for people who don’t want to face that doing the same thing that has consistently failed is…going to fail. And in the other, that doing the same thing that has consistently failed is…going to fail. The stakes are completely different, and the situations are different, but both find people trying to push not the truth but a narrative that will maybe allow people to live “normally” rather than dealing with the messy situations they’re all is. It makes for some fine reading, and I’ll get to the reviews!
