Huddled in the cleanest of the bathroom’s stalls, Lindsey flips open a new browsing window on her phone. Russian Royalty in the East End Mall Starbucks – w4w, she types. via Pocket

CONTENT WARNING: If there is already a layer of artifice to you, if already you are pretending, but failing at pretending, why would it matter if someone, or something—I am talking about a BetterYou—pretends to be you, but does a better job at it? W…

CONTENT WARNING: “You work as what, a fisherman?” I nearly jump clean out my skin at the sound of she voice, tough like sugarcane when you done chew the fibres dry. “Fisherm …?” I stutter. She sweet like cane, too? Shame make me fling the thought ’w…

This is a city of many faces. It folds itself into dark corners. It stretches out its fingers of neon signs and asphalt. It unrolls itself like a magic carpet. It changes from day to day. It had a heart that beats in the center, though no one knows …

Me gills hurting me now. Dem spots just below me ears what does plump up wid pressure and let me know dey been working too hard for too long. Let me know is time to rise. I must soon break de surface of de water and fill up me lungs wid air. via Poc…

I was just trying to boxtroll that asshole into quitting, like I’d gotten the two guys before him to do. I swear I wasn’t trying to get him all dead and shit. It wasn’t my box that did it. via Pocket

The girl does not come to Mebuyen, so Mebuyen goes to the girl. She is standing ankle-deep in the river, looking down, her mouth open. via Pocket

Strange Horizons - The Palace of the Silver Dragon By Y. M. Pang, Art by Galen Dara via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2QkRudx

Strange Horizons - How High Your Gods Can Count By Tegan Moore, Art by Nora Potwora via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ypuPoW

via Pocket

Strange Horizons - Tamales in Space, and Other Phrases For the Beginning Speaker By Gabriela Santiago, Art by Kali Gregan via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2PGIoYj

Yellow caution tape around the crucifix says: DO NOT CROSS. The irony’s not lost on me. Neither is the stench—a nauseous mix of worn hymnals, wooden pews, and the dried blood of a slain deacon. via Pocket

Wanda knew better than the mesmerism that swept the spacestation. She had seen plenty of it in her long life. Wanda knew what close proximity did to one another, and their ideas. see them, wanda? they would all whisper look how they all float around…

This story was first published in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination (Nov/Dec 2016) and was shortlisted for the inaugural Nommo Award for best African SF short story. via Pocket

Pamela swallowed a cactus and grew spines. They shot up through her pores, inches long and thick and stiff. They lay flat with the hair on her head. Everywhere she had hair, she grew spines instead. She enjoyed it, that first day, feeling them push …

Just ahead of The Incredibles 2, there is a groundbreaking short film, Bao: the first computer-animated Pixar short directed by a woman, Chinese-Canadian Domee Shi. via Pocket

Klein Kelly’s body fell from the ninth-story window and plummeted into the flooded mega-campus below, puncturing the water’s glasslike surface with a sickening thunk. Foul water grabbed at the weight of her sneakers and her thick denim jacket. She w…

How convenient, this loose-fitting thing called a kimono. When the sky was not light enough to see me properly, not dark enough for people to feel too alarmed, that was the time of day I'd walk around among humans. I loved the thrill. Just waiting f…

Strange Horizons - Copy Cat By Alex Shvartsman, By K. A. Teryna, Art by Shel Kahn via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2LVrJmv

Strange Horizons - Quietly Gigantic By K. C. Mead-Brewer via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2LFZ5kC

Strange Horizons - Every Good-bye Ain’t Gone By Eden Royce, Art by Geneva Benton via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2mVOPKE

Strange Horizons - Dying Lessons By Troy L. Wiggins via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ApJVPF

Strange Horizons - Venus Witch’s Ring By Inda Lauryn via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2Ou5KQY

Strange Horizons - The People Who Sleep Beneath the Waves By Malena Crawford via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2K6NXvW

Strange Horizons - Hide Me in the Shadow of Your Wings By Christopher Caldwell via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2K6NObS

I believe that every child in the city should learn to climb trees. City folk train their children to swim and to dance, to run and play games, to cross the horizontal plane in every possible motion, but they always ignore the vertical. via Pocket

Strange Horizons - The Metal Eater of Luminous Smoke By Minsoo Kang via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2K1a8rm

No one will sleep until the Princess learns the Stranger’s name. Liù the slave girl, who has loved the Stranger since before his exile, when he was a Prince, when he smiled at her—Liù alone knows who he really is. via Pocket

Look at what we woke. We feed them lies and watch them burn for it. via Pocket

Three months after the two men had pushed a needle into his thigh, Sheru learned something new about being sad. It happened just after the last of the strange dreams. They were not the kind of dreams that you’d expect a dog to have. The dreams he’d …