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- Anaxagology for August 2025
Anaxagology for August 2025
In this issue: My review of Thomas Ha's unsettling new collection *Uncertain Sons and Other Stories,* an intro to my new website, upcoming readings, recent sales, a Locus review, new fiction, and more!
David Anaxagoras
August 29, 2025
If you are watching Stephen King's The Institute (or if you’ve read the book) and are ready for a deeper mystery, higher stakes, faster pace, and characters who truly break your heart, check out my original audiobook The Tower.
In my novel, a group of captive children must uncover the true nature of the Tower—and themselves—before it's too late. What begins as survival becomes something much stranger—and more human. Give The Tower a spin now and see why listeners say it's “truly creepy,” “surprisingly emotional,” and "full of suspense and adventure."
The Tower is available at Libro.fm, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, and wherever audiobooks are sold.
Members of the SFWA or HWA, I have free review copies of The Tower available. Reply directly to this email or drop me a note at [email protected].
Introducing DavidAnaxagoras.com 2.0
If you've been to my website DavidAnaxagoras.com recently you may have noticed I've rearranged the furniture. In fact, I've completely rebuilt the site from the ground up. I wanted something clean, fast, and easy and maintain. For visitors, that means less friction, less loading time, more privacy, and more frequent updates, and more ways to explore.
You'll notice a distinct lack of images, decorative jimjams, and fancy animation. This is because my website is an extension of my plain-text philosophy. It's about the words, not the razzle-dazzle. It's the web, the way it was meant to be.
For the terminally tech-curious: under the hood, the site is written in Markdown and powered by Zola, a static site generator. It’s just HTML and CSS. No database. No cookies. No trackers. No paywalls. No ads. No external fonts. No surveillance. No bullshit.
I hope you'll drop by and explore the new site. If you're not sure where to start, try the Visitor's Bureau. You can also find out what I'm doing right now. Or browse my bibliography. You can even search for my fiction by vibe.
News
I'll be helping to kick off October on Story Hour on the first of the moth with three of my favorite horror flash fiction pieces, including a Stoker long-lister, a story that's not available online, and my latest from Lightspeed. You can watch on YouTube or via Zoom. More details next month!
Recent sale
I’m super excited to announce that Lightspeed has accepted my SF novelette, “Ladd’s Robot Repair,” for publication.
When a fiercely independent scavver boy’s walker breaks down deep in a dangerous and ruined city, he’s forced to team up with a glitchy, overprotective nanny-bot — and must decide whether survival is worth the cost of sacrificing the only companion who truly cares for him.
This one means a lot to me — it’s a post-apocalyptic adventure with mutant children, ravenous signal-beasts, and a rusted robot butler who won’t stop trying to care for a kid who refuses to be cared for. At its core, it’s about connection, repair, and learning to let someone in.
This one’s a real banger and I had a blast writing it. I previewed this story in the May issue of Anaxagology and I have a dozen more stories planned in this world (so far). Publication date to come — stay tuned!
Locus review
I'm delighted to share a wonderful review of my flash fiction "The Last Time I Went on a Prowl with Farrell Jenkins" featured in the latest issue of Locus Magazine. Reviewer Charles Payseur beautifully captures the heart of the friendship between Autumn and the enigmatic Farrell Jenkins as they navigate the bittersweet balance between growing up and holding onto wonder. As Charles writes, it’s “a reminder that magic still exists in the world, regardless of how old you get or serious your demeanor... Magic remains, waiting for those who can see it.” You can get a copy of the story in Worlds of Possibility, or watch my reading on Story Hour.
New fiction
Content Warning: This story includes graphic details of the devastating effects of gun violence on children. While it might seem insensitive, there is sadly never a “more appropriate” time to discuss this subject because children are constantly being victimized by guns. Also, the whole point of this story is that we must turn to face the horror and not allow these children and the truth about gun violence to be erased.
My new sci-fi/horror/biopunk flash-fiction, "Five Dispatches from Conflict Zone W-924B Regarding Post Battle Deployment of A. Thanatensis" is out now and free to read at Lightspeed.
In a war-scarred future, a field scientist investigates a body-erasing bioweapon designed to hide the human cost of war—but memory has roots, and what grows back doesn’t forget.
A casket hides a lot of crimes. Children buried without limbs. Skin blackened. Jaws, eyes, ears ripped away. A ragged hole where a face used to be. A casket doesn’t spare the first responders, the authorities who arrive late after the destruction, the body collectors, the embalmers. A child’s body done in by violence is an open wound in the world that can never be closed.
This is an unsettling tale about truth that refuses to stay buried. I wrote this story in response to the deliberate slaughter of children with guns in peace and war, and the way in which these young victims are hidden and erased from our collective consciousness by the media and the government. I hope you’ll check it out. I'll be back with story notes next month.
Pro-tip: you can listen to the audio-version of this story through Lightspeed's website (just click Listen on the story page) or look for Lightspeed Magazine's podcast on your favorite listening app.
SFWA members, you can help others discover "Five Dispatches..." by adding or upvoting this story on the Nebula Reading List.
Book Review - Uncertain Sons and Other Stories by Thomas Ha
Uncertain Sons and Other Stories by Thomas Ha.
Undertow Publications.
Trade paperback (284 pages). $20.00.
September 2025.
Thomas Ha’s short story collection Uncertain Sons and Other Stories is a haunting, unsettling exploration of the familiar made strange and the strongly familiar. These tales pull the rug out from under our sense of self and the narratives we cling to, urging us to step outside our comfort zones and confront our fears.
Ha is no stranger to accolades—his fiction has been nominated for multiple awards, he frequently appears in prestigious genre publications like Clarkesworld, and his stories have been included in The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy. Yet this collection taken as a whole feels like something completely new and different—a landmark moment in weird fiction, the dividing line between before and after. Like the otherworldly Behema of the title story, its disparate parts form a beautiful and terrifying whole.
Tilted Reality
In “Window Boy,” the heartbreaking opener, a lonely kid befriends another boy he sees only through a "window"—a video screen that filters out the frightening darkness and dangers of his peculiar world. But it can't stop the truth from leaking through. The window blots out the muzzle flashes of a gun, but not the gun itself, nor the violence it represents. As in many of Ha’s stories, the world is recognizable but disturbingly off-kilter. The owner of the gun? A friendly mailman who arrives at night—and when he lifts his visor, “his eye-lights shone in the dark like the little display parts on their microwave.”
In “Alabama Circus Punk,” a repairman shows up after dark, but with far less kindness. Here, Ha folds machine intelligence into domestic drama with a family unit (actually aspects of the same construct) victimized as corruption spreads through cognition itself. Words break down, meaning erodes, and we witness the horror of language collapsing into nonsense.
I considered, then, for the first time, that something wasn’t operating properly within the house system. I could have been Hammer Jiggled at some point, maybe well before this, and I would have no way of knowing if Snow.
Dawning Horror
The horror in Ha's stories often unfolds with a gradual, dawning realization. His tales are monsters hunched in the dark, and as we approach they slowly turn their faces to us. By the time we see them fully, we are being consumed.
We often meet characters who are just trying to find a way to live through the weirdness. Nothing could be more human. Again, this is us.
“Balloon Season” begins with what should be a simple family tale of summer heat, working on the house, kids getting into pajamas—but preparations for sundown reveal an existential threat: monstrous balloons descending from the sky. Ha spares us nothing:
A tether flings out from the glistening underside of the balloon and sinks into someone’s back…their body starting to swell, filling with liquid…until it pops like an over-easy egg, the armless, dripping shape of a parasitic anchor emerging from inside.
The story’s true devastation comes not from the monsters, but from the narrator's realization that he is not the man he hoped he was, fleeing while knowing he has failed. Ha cuts us to the core with the horror of not living up to the identity we cling to, the person we imagine ourselves to be.
Wrong World
Threaded through the collection is the sense of children (and childlike figures) navigating liminal spaces—not quite grown, not quite safe, not quite belonging. In “The Sort,” a boy and his father, genetically modified in a world that no longer allows it, arrive in a subtly hostile town where difference is mocked and contained. The last surviving modified tiger slumps in a cage, humming under his breath. The boy feels an immediate kinship. As he later confesses:
We’re so different from everybody, I feel like we’re in the wrong world sometimes.
The boy’s empathy curdles into something darker as he recognizes the world’s rejection of both the tiger and himself. Maybe the tiger—and by extension the boy himself—shouldn’t exist at all. The moment is chilling in its authenticity. The boy’s quiet devastation reveals the price extracted from those treated as different.
Reckoning and Hope
In “House Traveler,” a man wandering through fog encounters a woman who explains: “Everything here is a representation of a kind….When your species interacts with me, I amplify, but I don’t create. It’s only you.”
Ha’s stories amplify. They magnify our distortions until they can no longer be ignored. But they also amplify compassion, kinship, and resilience. For all their creeping dread, Ha's stories hold moments of fragile hope. A child plants something new. A brotherhood refuses to let the past be erased. A boy risks himself to save creatures beyond his own comprehension. Even as the fog closes in, there are lights—small, human, enduring.
This collection is extraordinary—a definitive volume of weird and darkly delightful fiction. Like us, Ha's characters stagger half-blind through the fog, meeting monsters, reflections, and themselves. But if they can survive, hope, and carry on—then maybe so can we.
eBook ARC provided by the publisher for purposes of review.
Writing Reptile Books - from the eBay store
New in the shop this month: A classic leather-bound Easton Press edition of Left Hand of Darkness, signed by Ursula K. Le Guin. Special offer for Anaxagology readers: Grab Left Hand of Darkness for 15% off. Click “Make an Offer,” deduct 15%, and mention Anaxagology. Browse the shop for more great books and comics.
This month, I’m excited to feature Jo Miles (they/them) and their fantastic newsletter. Jo writes short stories and novels across the spectrum of speculative fiction, featuring vivid characters, quirky world-building, and a sense of hope. Their novels include Warped State, the first of a space opera trilogy that’s like Star Trek meets Leverage, and their stories have appeared in magazines including Lightspeed, Uncanny, and F&SF. In Jo’s newsletter, you can expect fun extras related to their books, behind-the-scenes info about each new story, SFF book and media recommendations and other cool SFF-adjacent stuff from around the web, plus cat pictures. Subscribe to Jo Miles's free monthly author newsletter here: https://www.jomiles.com/newsletter/. After signing up, you will get a free prequel story to Warped State that can’t be found anywhere else.
ICYMI
If you’re just joining the party, here’s a rundown of what I’ve been up to and where you can find my work.
My post-apocalyptic adventure novelette, "Ladd's Robot Repair,” about connection, care, and learning to let someone in, is forthcoming in Lightspeed Magazine.
I was a guest on Story Hour and read three of my favorite flash fiction stories. You can watch the video on the Story Hour YouTube Channel.
I am the author of the middle grade mystery horror audiobook original, The Tower (Recorded Books, 2025), narrated by Christopher Gebauer. Available wherever audiobooks are sold, or check your local library. My guest post about The Tower was recently featured on My Favorite Bit.
My most recent story, "Five Dispatches from Conflict Zone W-924B Regarding Post-Battle Deployment of A. Thanatensis" is available in the August 2025 issue of Lightspeed Magazine. Other recent fiction includes "The Last Time I Went on a Prowl with Farrell Jenkins," and "The Everlasting Wound of Polyphemus." Visit my Bibliography for a full list of fiction and other works.
I wrote for Nickelodeon’s Glitch Techs, an animated sci-fi adventure about teens who hunt video game monsters that have broken out into the real world. I also created and co-executive produced Amazon Studio’s first live-action kids and family series, Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street, about an ordinary suburb that hides extraordinary magic.
About
Anaxagology is a free monthly(ish) newsletter from author and speculative fiction writer David Anaxagoras featuring essays, previews of works in progress, behind-the-scenes story notes, reading logs, reviews, and the occasional giveaway. Subscribe now! You can learn more about Dave at his website, or follow him on Bluesky.
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