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Table of Contents: May 2025

Here's a rundown of this month's short fiction to read

Table of Contents: May 2025
Images: Analog, Clarkesworld, and Lightspeed Magazines

Welcome to a new feature for Transfer Orbit: Table of Contents, a monthly roundup of the short fiction that's being produced within the science fiction and fantasy community. I've been thinking about running something like this for a little while now, and figured it would be a useful resource to direct readers to the magazines and writers who are are producing excellent stories each month.

This is a bit of a trial run, but here's what I'm planning:

  • I'll aim to get this out close to the first of the month, and it'll include publications publishing new stories on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.
  • This'll be a bare-bones list by publication, with a listing for their fiction and nonfiction entries in each issue. This won't have summaries of the stories.
  • This list will include links when they're available, but I won't be going back to update each month's list after it's published. Click on the link for each publication to find the latest stories.
  • This list will likely go out to a smaller subset of supporting subscribers I call the "Firehose Group" – folks who've requested that they get everything, but it'll be linked in the book lists and end-of-week roundups.
  • I've set up a template with a much larger list of publications: some don't publish every month, and you'll see them when they have a new issue. If I've missed something that is out, or if a new issue goes up after each list is published, let me know and I'll get it added up.

Let me know what you think. If you find stories that you really like, you're highly encouraged to recommend them in the comments! I want to get back into the habit of reading more short fiction, and I'll try and remember to highlight what I've enjoyed.

Okay, here are the short stories coming out in May 2025:

Apex Magazine (May-June, Issue 149)

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Fiction

  • "Shadows Below Seaway Trains" by Ai Jiang
  • "I Remember a One-Sided Die" by Francis Bass (5/6)
  • "Seven Ribbons" by Beth Goder
  • "Heart Seeds" by E. Thede (5/20)
  • "Lies As the Natural State of Things" by Rich Larson (6/3)
  • "To Kill a Language" by Rukman Ragas (Flash fiction)
  • "Extenta" by Daniel Roop (flash fiction, 5/13)
  • "Things the Older Boy Understands" by Sierra Branham (flash fiction, 6/10)
  • "As It Comes" by Derek Alan Jones
  • "Swan Song" by Liam Hogan (5/27)
  • "The Fifth Horseman" by Cressida Roe (6/24)
  • "The Liberation of Brother Buffalo" by Michael Boatman (5/1)
  • "The Neighbors by L. Marie Wood (6/5)

Nonfiction

Analog Science Fact and Fiction (May/June 2025, Vol. XCV)

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Fiction

  • "Bluebeard Womb" by M.G. Wills (Novella)
  • "Isolate" by Tom R. Pike (Novelette)
  • "And So Greenpeace Invented the Death Ray..." by C. Stuart Hardwick (Novelette)
  • "The Scientist's Book of the Dead" by Gregor Hartmann (Novelette)
  • "Interconnections and Porous Boundaries" by Lance Robinson (Novelette)
  • "The Robot and the Winding Woods" by Brenda Cooper (Short story)
  • "Outside of the Robles Line" by Raymund Eich (Short story)
  • "Retail is Dying" by David Lee Zweifler & Ronan Zweifler (Short story)
  • "Groundling" by Shane Tourtellotte (Short story)
  • "North American Union V. Exergy-Petroline Corporation" by Tiffany Fritz (Short story)
  • "Short Selling the Statistical Life" by C.H. Irons (Short story)
  • "Momentum Exchange" by Nikolai Lofving Hersfeldt (Short story)
  • "Mnemonomie" by Mark W. Tiedemann (Short story)
  • "Methods of Remediation in Nearshore Ecologies" by Joanne Rixon
  • "Siegfried Howls Against the Void" by Erik Johnson (Short story)
  • "The Iceberg" by Michael Capobianco (Short story)
  • "Amtech Deep Sea Institute Thanks You For Your Donation" by Kelsey Hutton (Flash fiction)
  • "The Shape of Care" by Lynne Sargent (Flash fiction)
  • First Contact, Already Seen" by Howard V. Hendrix (Flash fiction)
  • "Data Corrupted" by Bruce Boston (Poetry)
  • "Homecoming" by Brian Hugenbruch (Poetry)

Nonfiction

  • The Day Seems as Long as a Year by Kevin Walsh
  • Guest Editorial: Our Lost Earth Days by Howard V. Hendrix
  • The Alternative View, John G. Cramer
  • Guest Alternative View by Richard A. Lovett
  • The Reference Library by Sean CW Korsgaard
  • Brass Tacks

Asimov's Science Fiction (May/June 2025, Vol. 49)

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Fiction

  • "The Hunt for Lemuria 7" by Allen M. Steele (Novella)
  • "Quantum Ghosts (Part II)" by Nancy Kress (Novella)
  • "The Passage" by John Richard Trtek (Novella)
  • "The Fight Goes On" by Harry Turtledove (Novelette)
  • "The Tin Man’s Ghost" by Ray Nayler (Novelette)
  • "Trial by Harry" by Michael Libling (Novelette)
  • "In the Forest of Mechanical Trees" by Steve Rasnic Tem (Short story)
  • "The Humming of Tamed Dragons" by A.M. Dellamonica (Short story)
  • "Woolly" by Carrie Vaughn (Short story)
  • "Baggus Plasticus" by Ciarán Parkes (Poetry)
  • "Introducing My Friends to My Dad" by Chiwenite Onyekwelu (Poetry)
  • "Stellarium" by Stuart Greenhouse (Poetry)
  • "Micro Circuit" by Sai Liuko (Poetry)
  • "Train" by David Rogers (Poetry)

Nonfiction

  • Guest Editorial: The Writes of Spring by Rick Wilber
  • Reflections: The Other Schliemann by Robert Silverberg
  • On the Net: Moonshots by James Patrick Kelly
  • Thought Experiment: Crime and Punishment in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange by Kelly Lagor
  • On Books by Kelly Jennings

Beneath Ceaseless Skies (May 2025, Issue #431)

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Fiction

Clarkesworld Magazine (May 2025, Issue 224)

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Fiction

Nonfiction

The Dark (May 2025, Issue 120)

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Fiction

The Deadlands (Spring 2025, Issue 38)

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Fiction

Flash Fiction Online (May 2025)

Donate here.

Fiction

Nonfiction

GigaNotoSaurus (May 2025)

Fiction

Lightspeed Magazine (May 2025, Issue 180)

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Fiction

Nonfiction

Nightmare Magazine (May 2025, Issue 152)

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Fiction

Nonfiction

The Sunday Morning Transport ()

Fiction

Strange Horizons (May 5th-19th)

Donate here.

Fiction

Nonfiction

Small Wonders Magazine (May 2025)

Donate here.

Fiction

Uncanny Magazine (May-June, Issue 64)

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Fiction

  • “Unfinished Architectures of the Human-Fae War” by Caroline M. Yoachim (5/6)
  • “Barbershops of the Floating City” by Angela Liu (5/6)
  • “Vivisection” by Anjali Sachdeva (5/6)
  • “The Breaker of Mountains and Rivers” by Aliette de Bodard (6/3)
  • “Hi! I’m Claudia” by Delilah S. Dawson (6/3)
  • “All the World Is Fog” by DaVaun Sanders (6/3)
  • “Pale Serpent, Green Serpent” by Ewen Ma (5/6)
  • “A Full Belly” by Elizabeth Hart Bergstrom (poetry, 5/6)
  • “Letter to My Future Reader” by Margaret Rhee (poetry, 5/6)
  • “moth boy” by Praise Osawaru (poetry, 6/3)
  • “Post-apocalypse Love Poem” by Gospel Chinedu (poetry, 6/3)

Nonfiction

  • “The Uncanny Valley” by Michael Damian Thomas
  • “Doing the Math” by Kelly Sue DeConnick (5/6)
  • “Get Lost! How Whereness Deepens Fiction” by Alex Jennings (5/6)
  • “Fantasy Musical Theatre: Sensawunda, Activate!” by Tina Connolly (6/3)
  • “Disney Presents: Second Person POV: Vloggers, Happy Haunts, and Short Stories that Use ‘You’” by J.R. Dawson (6/3)
  • Interview: Angela Liu by Caroline M. Yoachim (5/6)
  • Interview: DaVaun Sanders by Caroline M. Yoachim (6/3)

Read one of these stories? Let us know in the comments what you read and what you enjoyed!