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Articles by Crystal Sidell
the ante By Crystal Sidell
The thing is; I don’t set out to write neurodivergent characters. I write people – fictional people who are drawn from the people around me, the way I experience the world, and my understanding of these experiences. Too bad if other people refuse to afford my experiences as being real or relatable.
Drowning Machine
My back drags along the riverbed, catching on rocks. Limbs flail with the currents that sweep me over and under somersaulting in continuous turns like the acrobat I dreamt of becoming as a young child, under the spell of dazzling kaleidoscopic lights, smell of popcorn and buzz of circus music pumped through ancient speakers. The light teases me each trip ‘round, rippling through the barrage of bubbles and cutting through clear water like glass.
Now You Know By Arthur H. Manners
I have bees in my brain. A venom-fanged hydra prowls my chest. My mind is loosed on ice skates and all the world is a rink. You used to tell me I’m fine, man up and put yourself right. Real men don’t fret, being weak is a choice, just get a job and keep it, everyone else can handle it so why can’t you? Exasperated, you take me on a job, piloting two-person drones, our minds melded by the box in your van using science neither of us understands.
Thousand Petal Song
The Lightning Road cuts far across the Cosmos, a streak of dazzling gold amidst the star-studded void. Paved in otherworldly stone, the road climbs over sleeping giants, past ringed planets and frozen worlds, connecting one unknown to the next. Xiaofei used to like watching it from the hills outside home, the grass soft beneath her bare feet as fireflies sang in the night. This time, she walks along the celestial route herself. Her sneakers crunch over the gravelly path.
A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
The debut novel of Freya Marske, A Marvellous Light takes place in a fantastical version of Edwardian England, riddled with secrets, curses, and conspiracies.
Wages for Dreamwork
Sometimes as I lie in bed, more-than-half asleep, I take a step that seems to be toward wakefulness—but I go astray. This feeling reminds me of circling a tree with one big stride. Just for a moment, I guess the dark woods disguise me from myself. When I find myself, I find myself restored: it wouldn’t be surprising if these absences were signs of some specific activity of neurochemical maintenance and repair.
Even Greater Mistakes by Charlie Jane Anders
I love short stories. I love everything about them. When done right they can pack an emotional punch that novels can’t touch. In the right hands, they’re like magic, making you care about characters in just a few pages. Everything you get from them is stronger for their brevity.
The Truth About Doppelgängers
Content warning: This page contains: Disregard for personal autonomy Blood Body transformation Death/dying Drug use Mental health issues Violence/combat You have to know what you’re looking for. I learned this after—after I glimpsed their not-quite white saw-edged teeth in my peripheral vision, neatly filed and gleaming when I dared to look straight at them.
Things Allergic to Sleep
Content warning: This page contains: No content warnings I will count to infinity knowing the impossibility of getting there, then attack primes who will inflict pain, still 2, 3, 5… If I go subatomic, will I desire a particular flavor of quark? I’d like clarity on the color red and all of its friends. Do we see the same shade or is it a hue? My favorite color is green mixed with a smidge blue, but is color real or reflection of light? Whales sound sad when they sing.
28 March 2022 By Strange Horizons
If I go subatomic, will I desire a particular flavor of quark? The Truth About Doppelgängers You have to know what you’re looking for—the charmer’s affinity for deep-red things, their seamless smiles In the second episode of Critical Friends, Aisha, Dan, and Maureen discuss the role of trust in criticism: how is is built and lost, and how can the reader decide whether a particular piece of criticism is worth paying attention to? Wednesday: A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
The Agents by Grégoire Courtois, translated by Rhonda Mullins
“Do you finally know who you are?” This question, coming near the end of the French surrealistic science fiction novel, The Agents, encapsulates the entire two-hundred-plus-page journey that is this strange, hypnotic text.
Soft Science by Franny Choi
The British mathematician and logician Alan Turing famously proposed a test of machine intelligence based on the “imitation game”: a man and a woman proceed into separate rooms and other party guests must figure out which is which, based on questions the guests devise and typed responses they receive from the hidden contestants. I have never played this game, but it sounds straight out of the 1950s, turning on a conviction that gender defines how we use language.
Pol Pot's Fantasized Daughter
Fiction, of course, means stuff that didn't happen. Fantasy fiction, of course, means stuff that couldn't happen. Again and again, though, we encounter stories and novels that knock the wind out of each of course and unsettle our assumptions.
On the Wall By Colleen Doran, Jo Walton
Trees. Tall trees and short trees, trees in autumn colours and trees winter-stark, branches bared against the sky. Trees with needles, trees with leaves golden, brown, and every possible shade of green. Trees in sunlight. Trees weighed down with snow. Trees that covered this land from the mountains to the sea with only a few clearings cut in them where men huddle. At first I could see nothing but trees. Nothing else stayed still for long enough.
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