Asking the Wrong Questions

Readers of this blog will know how much I admire the writing the of Aliya Whiteley, not least because of how varied it is. She has written fungal horror ( The Beauty ), satire ( Greensmith ), planetary romance ( Skyward Inn ) and much else. And even within those genres, her writing is often hard to pin down, taking strange and unexpected turns and refusing an easy summation. I reviewed Whiteley's latest novel, The Misheard World , in last month's issue of Locus, which also gave me an opportunity to tease out a common thread that is becoming apparent in much of her writing. It's common, in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, to say that a certain work is about the power of storytelling. Often what's meant by this is something rather misty-eyed: the power of stories to inspire, to give meaning, to imbue the world with magic and wonder. In a career that has spanned some ten novels and novellas in a range of genres and styles, Aliya Whiteley has returned often to th...

"The Barrow Wight" by Michael Herring, 1981 'No!' said Frodo; but he did not run away. His knees gave, and he fell on the ground. Nothing happened, and there was no sound. Trembling he looked up, in time to see a tall dark figure like a shadow against the stars. It leaned over him. He thought there were two eyes, very cold though lit with a pale light that seemed to come from some remote distance. Then a grip stronger and colder than iron seized him. The icy touch froze his bones, and he remembered no more. Having had their fill of songs, folksy rhymes, and the charms of Goldberry , the hobbits continue on their journey in this chapter. And basically instantly run into more mortal peril. This time, what should (again) have been a straight shot to the East Road instead finds them trapped by a barrow-wight, a creature who has infested one of the many burial mounds scattered across this part of the countryside, and who ropes them into its plans for ritualized murder. The...

[This review was published in the September 2025 issue of Locus. After some back and forth exchanges, I was informed that the editors of Locus's website had decided not to run the review online. I am reprinting it here, both for my own records, and because I think this is one of the most intriguing science fiction novels published last year, one that is worthy of more public discussion.] Looking out at the Tokyo skyline in an early scene in Rie Qudan's Sympathy Tower Tokyo , architect Sara Machina considers Zaha Hadid's iconic Olympic stadium, designed for the 2020 games. The expensive, controversial design, Sara tells us, was nearly abandoned and replaced by a more conventional structure. To Sara, however, the stadium feels inevitable: "only [Hadid's] stadium could supply Tokyo with the beauty it desperately needed. If it went unbuilt, the city would never be content. The stadium would be built because it had to be built; it would exist because it had to exist....