Ikea. Food court. Coffee machine. The old lady’s latte is done, but the last few drops keep dripping into her cup.
Drip.
She stands, staring, waiting. So do we all.
Drip, drip, drip.
She’ll never move. Her vigil is eternal. We shall stay here forevermore, shoppers no longer.
Watchmen.
Vigilants.
Drip…
I have a new story out today in Black Cat Weekly #230 – huzzah!
“To Rue, To Revel, To Revert” is… dark. Not going to sugarcoat it. In a world of holograms and brain chips, true justice means rewriting the soul. Any tyrant’s talents can be repurposed to serve our society, but not the way you’d imagine…
This story is about who you think it is, yes, but also every other tyrant like him. I hope you enjoy it.
I’ve just found out that I’m on the BSFA longlist!
My essay “When People Giggle at Your Name, Or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident” is in the Best Short Nonfiction category.
For those of you not in the know, BSFA stands for the British Science Fiction Association. BSFA members will have until February 19th to vote, and the next round will be the finalists.
.I just did some quick math, and my category has 28 nominees, which include Chuck Wendig (!) and Cory Doctorow (!!). I have no expectations that I’ll make it onto the shortlist, but it’s a tremendous honour to have made it on the longlist at all.
Upward and onward, y’all. Upward and onward.
2026 has been good to me thus far. I’m very very proud to announce a new published sci-fi short story. “To Dream of Better Worlds” poses a simple question: what if prophetic dreams are more than just dreams?
This story was a great way for me to combine some of my passions: sci-fi, strange history, and things that are undeniable but (thus far) unexplainable. For the record, every quote in that story was genuine – there was no misleading editing, eh.
I hope you enjoy the story! And afterwards, please feel free to check out the rest of the stories at Horrific Scribblings.
Here you go: https://horrificscribblings.com/to-dream-of-better-worlds/
My newest published story (the first of many this year!) is in the winter 2026 issue of The Colored Lens.
It’s part of my growing opus of time travel-related works (all of which are interlinked), and I had lots of fun adding my own spin to some of those old tropes.
This story is about the ethics of changing – or not changing – the timeline on a grand scale. It’s about the secret origin of Valkyries. It’s about cold calculations compiled into a cruel-seeming codex. It’s about the third and final chances…
The opening line: “When you’re a time traveler, every hour is a happy hour.”
Enjoy, eh.
Grigory Lukin.com 