Anaxagology for December 2025

Where the hell have I been?

As I sometimes (defensively) say, I'm a professional writer, not a professional newsletter-puter-outer. While there was no Anaxagology for September or October…or November, the good news is that I was too involved in writing a new story to make newsletters. I hope you don't feel neglected, but if you do — you are not alone. I tend to ignore nearly everything in my life when I'm writing. No house plants survived my novel. One more reason to be happy you are not a plant.

What's the story, you ask? It's a new post-apocalyptic novelette that follows in the world of "Ladd's Robot Repair," (forthcoming in Lightspeed Magazine). I threatened to write a series of Ladd stories and so far I have 15 planned. This new one involves a glitchy courier bot, entropy monks, creatures with iron teeth that feed on electromagnetic waves, and an army of feral, clown-painted lost boys. It's a blast - and it's nearly twice as long as the first Ladd story.

And then — I outlined the next story after that.

So, yeah. I've been busy.

News

OUT NOW: The 2025 Story Yearbook

The 2025 Story Yearbook is a small collection of the stories I published this year — science fiction, fantasy, a little horror, a drabble, and an excerpt from my middle-grade horror novel, The Tower. Each piece includes a brief introductory note about the spark that led me to write it. I think of it as a yearbook: a snapshot of who I was, creatively, for a little while.

I'm making the collection FREE to download and share with friends. No sign-ups, no accounts, no email required.

What’s inside

• A personal Introduction about why I write

• Every story I published in 2025

• Behind-the-scenes notes on what inspired each piece

• An excerpt from my middle-grade horror novel The Tower

• A few bonus surprises

Visit https://davidanaxagoras.com/yearbook for more information or to download the eBook.

New Story Sale

I'm thrilled to announce that my science-fiction short story "'We Require an Engine', Said the Testicle Collective" has been acquired for publication by Translunar Travelers Lounge! It’s absurd, tender, and — yes — exactly what the title says.

When a collective of escaped testicles kidnaps his dairy cow and demands a spaceship to flee Earth's toxic masculinity, a grizzled ex-rocket engineer must build their ride — and finally confront his own emotional baggage.

If you like your speculative fiction weird and weirdly heartfelt—with a side of wacky B-movie vibes—I hope you’ll check it out when it, uh, drops. Coming February 2026!

Appearances

I returned to Story Hour this October to read a trio of my favorite short horror pieces, including Stoker Award long-lister, "Your Dasher Has Accidentally Awakened the Crawling Chaos by Gazing into the Loathsome Geometry of the Taco Pup Mega-Muncher Meal Box." I had an absolute blast. If you missed it, you can watch the video on YouTube.

Reading Log

Capsule reviews of vintage SF short stories

"Born of Man and Woman" (1950) by Richard Matheson in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Summer 1950. This is Matheson's first short story sale...which was to F&SF...at the age of 22. I try not to hate him for that. The story is told through diary entries made in broken English by a mistreated child chained in the basement. Matheson uses the child's voice and innocence to affect a slow, unsettling reveal of their true, horrifying nature. But the real horrors are the child's emotional wounds—the isolation and deep sadness of familial rejection. We ultimately recoil, not from the child, but from the child's treatment at the hands of their barbaric parents.

"Hail and Farewell" (1953) by Ray Bradbury in Young Mutants, Asimov, Greenberg, Waugh, eds. A heartbreaking story about a boy who never ages, doomed to watch as friends, family, and love remain out of reach forever. This is a mournful meditation on loneliness and loss when everything changes but you do not. Bradbury often gets unfairly maligned as sentimental and overly nostalgic, but this story is a sharp example of his unwillingness to pull punches. Nostalgia isn't simply comfort here, it's the shadow of love lingering long after loss. It's the slow, soul-grinding reckoning with the consequences of being stuck in childhood, forever adrift in a world that has no real place for you, and it is devastating.

"Little Boy" by Jerome Bixby (as Harry Neal) in If, October 1954 (available via Project Gutenberg). Seven-year-old Steven survives by his wits and his knife in post-apocalyptic New York, fearing Men and hunting squirrels for food until he crosses paths with another young survivor—a girl—and rediscovers something long-buried in himself. Writer Jerome Bixby (writing as Harry Neal for some reason) is best know for introducing sci-fi audiences to another "little boy"—Anthony, the monster from "It's a Good Life," adapted as an iconic episode of The Twilight Zone. In this "Little Boy," Bixby explores the post-apocalypse through the POV of a feral child survivor, giving us the immediacy of terror stripped of adult perception. When Steven meets a girl survivor, he has to relearn how to relate to another human being, and struggles to understand the difference between an aggressive baring of the teeth and a smile. Just as the kids form a bond, they are "rescued" by the military for reintegration to society. Perhaps in the cold war era this would have been viewed as a good thing. But with talk of cleaning up the kids and sending them to camps to relearn how to be good little citizens, it strikes this modern-day reader as a somewhat disturbing end. The kids might have been better off outside the system that destroyed the world in the first place. Bixby has something to say about resilience in this story and does acknowledge the role that adults played in destruction, but it's hard to tell where he, and the story, come down on the ending. It's a story that's left me thinking a lot, though, and that's not a bad thing.

"A Boy's Best Friend" (1975) by Isaac Asimov in The Complete Robot (1982) (collection) by Isaac Asimov. Originally published in Boy's Life and not reprinted anywhere but this collection. A boy lives on the moon with his family and a robot-dog companion but protests when his parents' try to give him a real dog as a replacement, insisting that he loves his mechanical mutt. This is a juvenile SF tale. Stories for kids don't have to be simplistic and moralizing but this one sure is. Everything in this story is undercooked—the boy's relationship with the unfortunately-named robutt (robot+mutt) is too thinly drawn to believe the boy's relationship with it, and his parents are so lacking in character they might as well be robots themselves. It's not too much to expect better from Asimov of all writers, even if this is "just" a kids story. With "AI" now upon us, and startups attempting to foist "AI" companions on the population, this story should be more relevant than ever. Instead, it's disappointingly glassy-eyed and firmly Golden Age despite it's 1975 publication date. Asimov has little to say about this issue beyond "emotional attachment to technology is okay, actually."

Writing Reptile Books - From the eBay Store

In the shop this month: A classic leather-bound Easton Press edition of Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. This edition is extremely hard to find and is no longer available from the publisher. Includes a full color frontispiece by Walter Velez and an introduction by Spider Robinson. Special offer for Anaxagology readers: Grab Starship Troopers for 15% off. Click “Make an Offer,” deduct 15%, and mention Anaxagology.

Coming soon to the shop: Easton Press leather-bound editions of Martian Chronicles and Flowers for Algernon. Browse the shop for more great books and comics.

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.

Coming Soon:

• "'We Require an Engine', Said the Testicle Collective," SF short story forthcoming in Translunar Travelers Lounge

• "Ladd's Robot Repair," SF novelette forthcoming in Lightspeed Magazine.

I was a guest on Story Hour October 1st, 2025, and helped kick off Spooky Month with some of my favorite horror fiction. In my previous appearance on June 18, 2025 I read three of my favorite fantasy flash fiction stories. Follow the links to watch on YouTube.

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 free to read in 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, and the occasional giveaway. Subscribe now! You can learn more about Dave at his website, or follow him on Bluesky.