Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it. B. Pladek's new short fantasy story "The Spindle of Necessity" (published in the May 20th, 2024 issue of Strange Horizons) is a captivating, closely-observed story of longing, literary connection, insecurity, queer community, and how we make use of the past. I think this will resonate with a lot of readers who wrestle with questions about representation and what used to be called #OwnVoices in fiction, and mixed feelings about art we love.

From the story:

Adrian was kind, and never told him outright he was projecting. "Finnes had a lot of gay friends, didn't you say? She probably knew enough to get that feeling right." "Haha, yeah." He tried to sound careless. "I guess it's doing a disservice to her as an author, to think she couldn't imagine that experience. Pretty sexist of me, too, right? Expecting a woman couldn't write beyond herself." He laughed. Above him the diner's blue lights blinked, affecting cozy authenticity. "Nah," said Adrian, in the tone that meant, I hadn't thought of it, but yes. ....... That night he walked for a long time before sleep. He was ashamed, and not even of the right things—like how Finnes's novels, problematic in the way of all aged art, rung him more than the modern books he was supposed to love; like how the community he longed for was rife with misogyny and racism; like how he could never tell if his fears were his own, or internalized transphobia: all the shameful truths that, before his transition, he'd seen as proof he didn't deserve it. No, it was the same damn romanticization of lovers who didn't exist—and maybe shouldn't, he realized, for all the reasons he'd just listed. Maybe the shames weren't so distinct. He walked. Up the lakefront, past the art museum, among the old, car-clogged streets of the east side; down one street which had been the city's Castro in the '70s; down another where the famous trans activist had once lived, before he moved west and died young, in '91. He listened, but the streets were mute, like a refusal. He felt like he was dragging himself along behind himself, an extra weight on his own legs. There was no one to relieve him, to pass the baton to. ........ "[The] books have been something of a refuge for you. Is that right?" "Yes, of course," he said bitterly. "That's the whole problem.".... "They're not real, they're nothing close to my life or anyone's life. They're wrong, don't you understand? And loving them makes me wrong." ........ You can't escape reality, he thought hazily, in books or dreams. But you couldn't live without dreaming either. And sometimes, if you were lucky, you dreamed yourself awake.