Reviewing the Mail: Week of January 24, 2026

Two books came in the mail this week, from the fine folks at Tachyon:

Michael Swanwick's new story collection The Universe Box - which I think is his first major collection since The Dog Said Bow-Wow back in 2007 - is publishing very soon, on February 3rd. You can probably pre-order it, and copies of the final book (I have what I still call a "bound galley," since that's what we called them when I worked in the field) might even be wending their way through the system now. Universe Box collects seventeen stories from various places, mostly originally published from 2017 through 2023, but including one 2012 story and two original to this collection.

(Parenthetically, Swanwick has always been prolific in short fiction, so I suspect there's another collection between 2007 and now. Let me fire up ISFDB and investigate...ah, yes! there was a 2016 book, Not So Much Said the Cat, which I must have missed.)

Swanwick has been winning awards for his short fiction since before my SF career, so I recommend this even before reading it. Is it fantasy or SF? Knowing Swanwick, probably both - maybe both even in individual stories. But definitely at least one of them, each time.

The other book is already published: Theodora Goss's Letters from an Imaginary Country, which came out in November. This one is a themed collection, sixteen fantasy stories about storytelling, many of which seem to have a fabulistic or other-people's-stories background. Three of the stories here are original to the collection.

I have not read a book by Goss, though I think I've seen her stories in anthologies over the years. But this is a big interesting book with a connection that seems supple and intriguing, plus an introduction by Jo Walton, so it goes on the shelf and I'll see if I can manage to get to it.