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Table of Contents: September 2025

The short stories hitting the web in September

Table of Contents: September 2025

Here's the latest installment of Table of Contents, which rounds up this month's short fiction releases. You can check out the list of stories from August here (which I've updated with new links) and past installments of this series here.

Here are the short stories coming out this month:

Apex Magazine (July-September, Issue 150)

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Fiction

  • "Changeling" by Frey Lylark (9/9) (Flash)
  • "Mother Sun" by Amy Nagopaleen (9/23)

Nonfiction

"Words for Thought: Short Fiction Review" by AC Wise (9/30)
"Review of The Inescapable March by Hana Carolina" by Rebecca E. Treasure (9/4)

Analog Science Fact and Fiction (September / October 2025 Vol., XCV No. 9 & 10 )

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Fiction

  • "Suspended Animation" by Jay Werkheiser & Julian Michael Carver
  • "Not in My Valley" by M.L. Clark
  • "In a Desolate Garden" by Auston Habershaw
  • "Donacon" by Paul E. Franz
  • "Elector" by Stephen Case
  • "Rust" by David D. Levine
  • Ontario Lacus" by Pauline Barmby
  • "You are Hearby Notified That You Are the Future of Art" by Anya Markov
  • "Scarecrow" by Timothy Quinn
  • "Boys and Girls Together" by Larry Niven
  • "Genius, Borrowed and Brief" by Julia Darcy
  • "Analog Equivalent Foodstuffs" by Kate Macleod
  • "A Shot in the Dark" by Avery Parks
  • "Temple in the Night" by Louis Evans
  • "Seedling" by Al Onia
  • "Carried on the Wind" by Steven Mohan, Jr.
  • "The New People" by David McGillveray
  • "A Simple Martian Burial" by Tom Jolly
  • "Girl With the Tattooed Soul" by Mark W. Tiedemann
  • "Music of the Spheres" by Jim Murdoch
  • "Looking Back" by Arthur H. Manners

Nonfiction

  • Drycanes and Wasps, Kevin Walsh
  • Guest Editorial: The Blind Men and the Hurricane, Stanley Schmidt
  • The Alternate View by John G. Cramer
  • In Times to Come
  • Guest Alternate View: The Solar Storm That Nearly Created Armageddon by Richard A. Lovett
  • The Reference Library by Sean CW Korsgaard
  • Brass Tacks

Asimov's Science Fiction (September / October 2025 Vol. 49 Nos. 9 & 10)

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Fiction

  • "The Ghost" by John Kessel
  • "The Signal and the Idler" by Ted Kosmatka
  • "A Tide of Paper" by Leah Cypess
  • "The Last of Operation Shroud" by Alexander Jablokov
  • "Tenth Contact" by Bruce Sterling and Paul Di Filippo
  • "Strays" by Scott William Carter
  • "The Expurgator" by Shiwei Zhou
  • "The Night Heron Rescue" by Alice Towey
  • "Lolo’s Last Run" by E.M. Kerkman
  • "Frankenstein’s Book Launch" by Karen Heuler

Poetry

  • "Lover Lost" by Richard Schiffman
  • "Eating With the Dead #2" by Mary Soon Lee
  • "History" by Vonnie Winslow Crist
  • "Fine Print" by Ursula Whitcher
  • "Ten Indicators of Time Drift" by Robert Frazier
  • "The Last Gods" by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Nonfiction

  • Editorial: 500 by Sheila Williams
  • Reflections: History as Blip by Robert Silverberg
  • On the Net: Car Talk by James Patrick Kelly
  • Thought Experiment: The Shining and the Shining and the Shining by Kelly Lagor
  • On Books by Kelly Jennings

Augur Magazine (Issue 8.1)

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Fiction

  • "Fateful Reinventions" by Toria Liao
  • "Orders" by Grace Seybold
  • "Beachside Sundays" by Ash Wahking
  • "If gender is a performance, then all the world’s a stage. Either we should get season tickets, or go on a whim" by Jonathan Bessette
  • "Strange Children of the Sour Gas" by EC Dorgan
  • Phi Nang Lum" by P.W. Jarungpiterah
  • The Belly of The Rock" by Busayo Akinmoju
  • Welcome to Spruceway" by Brianne Battye
  • Elegy with Transformation Myth" by Sarah Hilton
  • The Epitaph of Antigone" by Fatima Shafiq
  • Letter from Distant Star to the Earth" by Jesse Holth
  • Dark Night Suffused with Stars" by Huijia Li

Clarkesworld Magazine (September 2025, Issue 228)

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Fiction

Nonfiction

The Dark (September 2025, Issue 124)

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Fiction

Dark Horses Magazine (September 2025, Issue 44)

Fiction

  • "Angles on an Obscure Plane" by M. M. Valencia
  • "Dead People Problems" by Simon Berry
  • "Astyanax and the Red Spider" by Travis Flatt
  • "Mr. Rumple's Revenge" by George Larson
  • "The Big Empty" by Wayne Kyle Spitzer
  • "Passing the Torch" by Thomas Drake
  • "The Smell" by Ethan Cordeta
  • "The Replacement" by David Lewis
  • "The Haze" by Kate Bergquist
  • "Yellow Eyes" by Jordan Miller

Flash Fiction Online (September 2025, Issue 144)

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Fiction

  • “Silence, in the Doorway, with a Gun” by Nadia Radovich
  • “The Last Items of the Forgotten Hero, or The Grandchild’s First Dragon” by Guan Un
  • “Yet Another Unforgettable Luncheon” by Leo Rein
  • “Out of Print” by Wen Wen Yang
  • “Emerald Gears” by Beth Goder
  • “The Things You Bought for the Robot” by Stefan Alcalá Slater, and
  • “The Forest Through the Teas” by Wendy Nikel

Lightspeed Magazine (September 2025, Issue)

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Fiction

  • "Last Meal Aboard the Awassa" by Kel Coleman (9/4)
  • "Beginning Before and After The End" by Jake Stein (9/4)
  • "The Place I Came To" by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko (9/7)
  • "Apeiron" by Cadwell Turnbull (9/11)
  • "The Girlfriend Experience" by C.Z. Tacks (9/18)
  • "On an Unusual Kind of Spatially Distributed Haunting" by Bogi Takács (9/18)
  • "City of One" by Stephen S. Power (9/25)
  • "Human Voices" by Isabel J. Kim (9/25)

Nonfiction

  • Editorial: September 2025 by John Joseph Adams (9/4)
  • Book Review: Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura, translated by Yuki Teijima by Chris Kluwe (9/4)
  • Author Spotlight: Kel Coleman by Alex Puncekar (9/7)
  • Author Spotlight: Cadwell Turnbull by Mayookh Barua (9/11)
  • Book Review: Novic by Eugen Bacon by Melissa A Watkins (9/11)
  • Author Spotlight: C.Z. Tacks by Phoebe Barton (9/18)
  • Book Review: Where Are You Really From by Elaine Hsieh Chou by Arley Sorg (9/18)
  • Author Spotlight: Isabel J. Kim by Delia Cullity (9/25)

Luna Station Quarterly (September 2025, Issue 063)

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Fiction

  • "Daisies for Going Out, Pansies to Return Home" by Amy Power Jansen
  • "Going to sea, mother" by Luscha Makortoff
  • "Underhill Wines" by Tanya Pond
  • "The Accidental" by K.M. Veohongs
  • "Top Five Places to Worship Him, Most Terrible" by L. Fox
  • "To the Moon, Not Back" by Emma Francois
  • "Grandma and the Krampus" by Teresa Milbrodt
  • "For Love and Country" by Yelena Crane
  • "The Price of Gold" by Sanya Dimova
  • "Women of Nowhere" by Lyra Bird
  • "Conveyance" by Isobel Mackenzie
  • "HeartsEase" by Brittany Hague
  • "The Three Songs" by Gio Clairval
  • "Where the Wind Sleeps" by Emmie Christie
  • "Terra" by Laura Stone
  • "Self-Portrait as ChatGPT" by Sarah Chin
  • "The Penitent" by M. J. Klimmek
  • "A Spell for Summer" by Robin Cassini
  • "The Visitor" by Frances Koziar

Nightmare Magazine (September 2025, Issue 156)

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Fiction

  • "Autogas Ferryman" by Champ Wongsatayanont
  • "Finishing Touches" by Adam-Troy Castro (9/10)
  • Safe Face" by Ash Huang (9/17)
  • "Blood-Orange" by L.M. Harris (9/24)

Nonfiction

Small Wonders Magazine (September 2025, Issue 27)

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Fiction

  • "Gifted and Talented" by Marika Bailey
  • Marie Brennan
  • Melanie Mulrooney
  • Michael Zahniser
  • Lydian Kind
  • Dawn Lloyd
  • Indigo Rue
  • Brian U. Garrison
  • Jordan Hirsch.

Uncanny Magazine (September / October 2025, Issue 66)

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Fiction

Poetry

Nonfiction

Check back at the end of the month: I'll update the links to the stories that haven't come out at the time of publication.