[Post originally published: May 08, 2026]

My guest today is the great Samantha Mills, who is a multiple-award winner and recently published her collection Rabbit Test and Other Stories by Tachyon. The title story, Rabbit Test, was one of my favorite pieces published in 2022 and explores the history and the future of abortion. If you haven’t checked it, I highly recommend it! She can be found at BlueSky and Instagram.

By the way, Samantha is also a Hugo finalist this year for her short story, 10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days, which appeared in Uncanny. So join me in congratulating her for this achievement!

Tell me more about Rabbit Test and Other Stories and how you picked the stories that appear in the collection.

Rabbit Test and Other Stories contains my favorite stories that I’ve written over the last decade. When the opportunity came up to assemble a collection, I went through everything I’d done to decide what I wanted in permanent book form. If it still gave me an emotional reaction, it was in! There are two pieces here that weren’t previously published. “The Death of the God-King” was written for the collection, a love story about the end of kings. “A Shadow Is a Memory of a Ghost” was my favorite piece that I hadn’t been able to place with a magazine, so I was excited to be able to include it here. It’s about a pair of nemesis witches fighting over the gate between life and death. The other stories run the gamut of science fiction, fantasy, and mashups of the two. There’s a fisherwoman lost in time, trying to get home to her children. A messy space crew visits a library and the anchoress walled up within it. A young woman and her hellhound fight devils in the American Southwest. I write whatever strikes my fancy!

I know how the current state of the world impacted the title story, Rabbit Test. I love it and it was one of my favorite pieces published in 2022. But how does the current state of the world impacted the other stories in the collection? And what can you tell me about them?

Ah, thank you! “Rabbit Test” is definitely the most direct example of me grappling with current events in fiction, but even in more fantastical settings, I keep returning to themes of bodily autonomy and life under oppressive regimes. The most recent story (and current Hugo nominee!), “10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care For the End of Days,” was written in December 2024, when I was anxiously imagining all of the chaos about to be unleashed when our new president took office in January, but I wrote it as a series of potential apocalyptic events unfolding due to a doomsday cult opening a hellgate. “Four of Seven” takes place in a mining colony company town in space, and is a reflection of the future our billionaire tech overlords would love to reign over one day. Even the most humorous installment, “Kiki Hernández Beats the Devil” is at its heart about the slippery slope of making deals with malicious actors. It’s the stew I’m living in, so it creeps in.

What is a piece of fiction that you think didn’t get enough attention?

Oh, I had so much fun writing “Anchorage,” which is about a…sentience… that is masquerading as a bot on a space crew. The story takes place when the crew encounters an anchorage—a library pod floating in space with an anchoress walled up inside. The narrator is extremely enthusiastic and also very bad at metaphors. It’s an unusually sweet story for me, with a quieter resolution. My bigger, bolder pieces tend to get more attention, but I also love work that is about small moments between people (or things that are kind of like people).

Show me an illustration that you love and tell me why!

I’m a sucker for anything Art Nouveau adjacent, so I was happy a few years ago to discover Emily Balivet, an artist who has been selling her prints online for twenty years now. Her illustrations are dreamy and full of color with detailed pattern work. This one is called “Twelve Women with Birds.” It feels like a forgotten fairy tale.

Tell me more about The Wings Upon Her Back and what we can expect next from you!

The Wings Upon Her Back is a science fantasy novel told in two timelines, about a woman who joined a warrior sect in her youth and helped a charismatic new leader take control of their city-state. Twenty-six years later, she is disillusioned with the cause and has to untangle the truth of what really happened back then, and how it relates to the five gods of technology sleeping above the city.

Next up, I am currently finishing a new novel, also for Tachyon Publications! This is another standalone high fantasy, about two sisters trying to break into a mountain fortress run by a ruthless medical tycoon. Once that’s finally turned in, I have a pile of short story ideas I’ve been dying to get to.