This subversive debut short-fiction collection comes from one of the hottest talents in speculative fiction: 2025 Compton Crook Award winner and Pushcart Prize nominee Samantha Mills (The Wings Upon Her Back).
A subversive debut short-fiction collection from one of the hottest talents in speculative fiction: 2025 Compton Crook Award winner and Pushcart Prize nominee Samantha Mills (The Wings Upon Her Back). These riveting stories range effortlessly from fantasy and science fiction to literary fiction, from the here and now all the way into the farthest reaches of space. The central tale of this collection is Mills’ pivotal Nebula, Locus, and Sturgeon award-winning story “Rabbit Test,” which interrogates the past, present, and future of abortion rights.
Introduction by Meg Elison
A time-traveling fisherwoman keeps landing on the right shore, but at the wrong time. A pair of witches fight over the gate between life and death. A new consciousness, intent upon seeing all the wonders of the universe, visits a floating library. A rock-and-roll legend squares off against a town full of devils. Humanity makes first contact, but falters when put in charge of selecting the world’s representatives.
In her strange and emotional worlds, with stakes ranging from the epic to the personal, Mills creates ample room for humor and hope amidst tragedy and struggle.
Book Riot Five Exciting Upcoming SFF Story Anthologies
[STARRED REVIEW] “Some of the most powerful stories in the brilliant, genre-spanning debut collection from Nebula Award winner Mills (The Wings upon Her Back) focus on the contentious relationships between generations. The stunning title entry, for instance, toggles between the past and the future to track the progress and deterioration of abortion access in the United States. Then there’s the brief but impactful ‘Laugh Lines,’ presented in the form of a eulogy for the narrator’s mother that doubles as a paean to disability rights. These speculative pieces resonate deeply with the current moment, teasing out the many possible ways climate disasters and fascistic politics may shape humanity’s future, all while keeping an eye to the communities that support each other behind the scenes. Elsewhere, Mills delves into fantasy, in stories that are no less pleasurable and heart-rending. In the haunting ‘Adrianna in Pomegranate,’ a grief-stricken magician tries to reanimate his dead daughter, and his ex-wife must intercede before he succeeds, while the bittersweet ‘Spindles’ tells of an eight-year-old princess and her pet bear who embark on a quest to save their land from alien invasion. Even the shortest of these tales packs a powerful punch.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Mills examines the human spirit with a sharp eye and a gentle heart. Her characters dare to love, hope and fight within systems that try to keep them in place.”
—Eugenia Triantafyllou, author of Loneliness Universe
“Every entry is a wildly imaginative gut-punch of emotion, razor-sharp in its prose and execution. Mills has crafted, diamond-like, a deft compression of worlds and time, multifaceted in its insights around power, systemic injustice, motherhood, trauma, bodily autonomy, and revolution.”
—P. H. Low, author of These Deathless Shores
“Samantha Mills’ work is like a stained-glass window: beautiful, intricately crafted, and ready to let the light into the dark places of our lives.”
—Aimee Ogden, author of What Any Dead Thing Wants
“A debut collection of exciting, subversive stories, including the title story, about abortion rights, which won the Nebula, Locus, and Sturgeon awards. Other stories in this book feature a floating library, a time-traveling fisherwoman who can’t seem to get the landing time right, and two witches who fight over the gate between the living and the dead.”
—Book Riot
“Samantha Mills lifts you out of your everyday and guides you toward futures so blindingly bright you couldn’t stand to look at them if she didn’t show you how.”
—Nisi Shawl, author of Everfair and Filter House
“A diverse array of stories, each engaging and lively, brimming with heart and an urgent sense of purpose.”
—Speculative Shelf
“Samantha Mills’s stories have a palpable beauty and tenderness to them while also being sharp and sure as shivs…. A bold and burnished talent in the speculative fiction field.”
—Maria Haskins, author of Wolves & Girls and Six Dreams About the Train
“An incredible collection. If you’ve only read ‘Rabbit Test,’ you’re in for an amazing journey. Mills’s stories are equally human and trenchant, exploring the heart that beats inside worlds that cannot exist.”
—John Wiswell, author of Someone You Can Build a Nest In
“This was wonderful from beginning to end.”
—Disciples of Boltax
Praise for The Wings Upon Her Back
2025 World Fantasy Award Finalist
Compton Crook Award Winner
British Science Fiction Award Longlist Goodreads SciFi and Fantasy Book Club Selection Booklist Top 10 SF/Fantasy & Horror Debuts Parade Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books Washington Post 11 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy
Samantha Mills is a multiple award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy. Her critically acclaimed first novel, The Wings Upon Her Back, won the Compton Crook Award for year’s best SFF debut. In 2023, she received the Nebula, Locus, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards for her short story, “Rabbit Test.” Her short fiction has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, and others, and was included in the best-of anthologies The New Voices of Science Fiction from Tachyon Publications and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023.
A graduate of the University of Santa Cruz with a BA in Pre- and Early Modern Literature, Mills also received a Master’s in Information and Library Science from San José State University. In the other half of her life, she is a trained archivist specializing in primary documents.
Mills grew up in Southern California, where she still lives with her family and cats. When she isn’t working, writing, or taking care of children, she’s watching B movies, binding books, and crocheting stuffed animals. You can find more, including social media handles and a full list of her published work, at www.samtasticbooks.com.
Praise for the debut novel The Wings Upon Her Back
2025 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel Finalist
Compton Crook Award Winner
British Science Fiction Award LonglistGoodreads SciFi and Fantasy Book Club Selection Booklist Top 10 SF/Fantasy & Horror Debuts Parade Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books Washington Post 11 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books
I first learned of Samantha Mills in 2018 after Tachyon editor Jaymee Goh recommended her for the (then-forthcoming) anthology The New Voices of Science Fiction, edited by Jacob Weisman and Hannu Rajaniemi.
The book, published in 2019, lived up to its name, with many of the contributors—including Rebecca Roanhorse, Amal El-Mohtar, Rich Larson, Sarah Pinsker, Darcie Little Badger, Nino Cipri, S. Qiouyi Lu, and Kelly Robson—going on to establish themselves as leading voices in the field. The reprint of Mills’s second published story, “Strange Waters,” appeared right after future New York Times bestselling author Sam J. Miller’s contribution “Calved.” Although Mills had published only six short stories, she had already been longlisted for the British Science Fiction and Fantasy Award and the Locus Award.
Mills published five more short stories in 2020. “The Limits of Magic,” published in Apparition Literary Magazine, earned her a prestigious Pushcart Prize nomination.
With the publication of “Rabbit Test” (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 49, 2022), Mills metamorphosed from a writer of interest to the author of arguably one of the most acclaimed science fiction short stories of the century. The polemic, written in response to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, tells the story of Grace, who lives in a near-future dystopic society with curtailed women’s rights, closely monitored pregnancies, and an absolute abortion ban. Interspersed with vignettes about the long history of abortion, the powerful tale follows Grace over the next several decades. Garnering attention from diverse venues, including Library Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Locus, “Rabbit Test” ultimately won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards for Best Short Story. (Due to the controversy surrounding the 2023 Hugo Award nomination process, Mills withdrew the story for consideration.) It was also included in The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2023, edited by R. F. Kuang and John Joseph Adams, and translated into seven languages.
Shortly before the publication of “Rabbit Test,” Tachyon acquired Mills’s first novel, The Wings Upon Her Back. Under the stewardship of editor Jaymee Goh from Tachyon’s Malaysian office, the book came out in April 2024. Mills originally conceived the book as a nonpolitical, action-fantasy story, but she opted to include themes of totalitarianism and social upheaval as she constructed it. The book received almost universal acclaim, with critics often making special note of the all-too-timely political elements, especially praising the complex portrayals of fascism and religious zealotry. It won the 2025 Compton Crook Award and was a finalist for the 2025 World Fantasy Award.
A few weeks before the publication of Wings, Mills and her family made the trek from San Diego to Austin to witness firsthand the Great North American Eclipse, the last total eclipse viewable in the U.S. until 2044. My wife, Brandy, and I met with Mills and her husband, Randy, for brunch. She was delightful, quiet, and unassuming, which made her work more impactful. The four of us chatted for hours on a variety of subjects, including transphobia, immigration, Randy’s unabashed love for the San Diego Padres, and Mills’s day job as an archivist for a Japanese American historical society based in San Diego.
Now that she has signed a deal with Tachyon to publish her second novel and her first story collection—Rabbit Test and Other Stories, which is slated for an April 2025 release—I can look forward to being a member of Team Mills for at least the next half dozen years. I eagerly await what this extraordinary author produces next.
Rabbit Test and Other Stories
Samantha Mills
ORDER NOW AND RECEIVE A BONUS CHAPBOOK
This subversive debut short-fiction collection comes from one of the hottest talents in speculative fiction: 2025 Compton Crook Award winner and Pushcart Prize nominee Samantha Mills (The Wings Upon Her Back).
Rabbit Test and Other Stories
by Samantha Mills
ISBN: 978-1-61696-451-1 (print); 978-1-61696-453-5 (digital)
Published: 21 April 2026
Available Format(s): trade paperback, digital
A subversive debut short-fiction collection from one of the hottest talents in speculative fiction: 2025 Compton Crook Award winner and Pushcart Prize nominee Samantha Mills (The Wings Upon Her Back). These riveting stories range effortlessly from fantasy and science fiction to literary fiction, from the here and now all the way into the farthest reaches of space. The central tale of this collection is Mills’ pivotal Nebula, Locus, and Sturgeon award-winning story “Rabbit Test,” which interrogates the past, present, and future of abortion rights.
Introduction by Meg Elison
A time-traveling fisherwoman keeps landing on the right shore, but at the wrong time. A pair of witches fight over the gate between life and death. A new consciousness, intent upon seeing all the wonders of the universe, visits a floating library. A rock-and-roll legend squares off against a town full of devils. Humanity makes first contact, but falters when put in charge of selecting the world’s representatives.
In her strange and emotional worlds, with stakes ranging from the epic to the personal, Mills creates ample room for humor and hope amidst tragedy and struggle.
Book Riot Five Exciting Upcoming SFF Story Anthologies
[STARRED REVIEW] “Some of the most powerful stories in the brilliant, genre-spanning debut collection from Nebula Award winner Mills (The Wings upon Her Back) focus on the contentious relationships between generations. The stunning title entry, for instance, toggles between the past and the future to track the progress and deterioration of abortion access in the United States. Then there’s the brief but impactful ‘Laugh Lines,’ presented in the form of a eulogy for the narrator’s mother that doubles as a paean to disability rights. These speculative pieces resonate deeply with the current moment, teasing out the many possible ways climate disasters and fascistic politics may shape humanity’s future, all while keeping an eye to the communities that support each other behind the scenes. Elsewhere, Mills delves into fantasy, in stories that are no less pleasurable and heart-rending. In the haunting ‘Adrianna in Pomegranate,’ a grief-stricken magician tries to reanimate his dead daughter, and his ex-wife must intercede before he succeeds, while the bittersweet ‘Spindles’ tells of an eight-year-old princess and her pet bear who embark on a quest to save their land from alien invasion. Even the shortest of these tales packs a powerful punch.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Mills examines the human spirit with a sharp eye and a gentle heart. Her characters dare to love, hope and fight within systems that try to keep them in place.”
—Eugenia Triantafyllou, author of Loneliness Universe
“Every entry is a wildly imaginative gut-punch of emotion, razor-sharp in its prose and execution. Mills has crafted, diamond-like, a deft compression of worlds and time, multifaceted in its insights around power, systemic injustice, motherhood, trauma, bodily autonomy, and revolution.”
—P. H. Low, author of These Deathless Shores
“Samantha Mills’ work is like a stained-glass window: beautiful, intricately crafted, and ready to let the light into the dark places of our lives.”
—Aimee Ogden, author of What Any Dead Thing Wants
“A debut collection of exciting, subversive stories, including the title story, about abortion rights, which won the Nebula, Locus, and Sturgeon awards. Other stories in this book feature a floating library, a time-traveling fisherwoman who can’t seem to get the landing time right, and two witches who fight over the gate between the living and the dead.”
—Book Riot
“Samantha Mills lifts you out of your everyday and guides you toward futures so blindingly bright you couldn’t stand to look at them if she didn’t show you how.”
—Nisi Shawl, author of Everfair and Filter House
“A diverse array of stories, each engaging and lively, brimming with heart and an urgent sense of purpose.”
—Speculative Shelf
“Samantha Mills’s stories have a palpable beauty and tenderness to them while also being sharp and sure as shivs…. A bold and burnished talent in the speculative fiction field.”
—Maria Haskins, author of Wolves & Girls and Six Dreams About the Train
“An incredible collection. If you’ve only read ‘Rabbit Test,’ you’re in for an amazing journey. Mills’s stories are equally human and trenchant, exploring the heart that beats inside worlds that cannot exist.”
—John Wiswell, author of Someone You Can Build a Nest In
“This was wonderful from beginning to end.”
—Disciples of Boltax
Praise for The Wings Upon Her Back
2025 World Fantasy Award Finalist
Compton Crook Award Winner
British Science Fiction Award Longlist
Goodreads SciFi and Fantasy Book Club Selection
Booklist Top 10 SF/Fantasy & Horror Debuts
Parade Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books
Washington Post 11 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy
[STARRED REVIEW] “A triumphant debut novel.” —Booklist
[STARRED REVIEW] “An absolute must-read.” —Kirkus
[STARRED REVIEW] “Intricate and intriguing.” —Publishers Weekly
[STARRED REVIEW] “Complex and haunting.” —Library Journal
Samantha Mills is a multiple award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy. Her critically acclaimed first novel, The Wings Upon Her Back, won the Compton Crook Award for year’s best SFF debut. In 2023, she received the Nebula, Locus, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards for her short story, “Rabbit Test.” Her short fiction has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, and others, and was included in the best-of anthologies The New Voices of Science Fiction from Tachyon Publications and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023.
A graduate of the University of Santa Cruz with a BA in Pre- and Early Modern Literature, Mills also received a Master’s in Information and Library Science from San José State University. In the other half of her life, she is a trained archivist specializing in primary documents.
Mills grew up in Southern California, where she still lives with her family and cats. When she isn’t working, writing, or taking care of children, she’s watching B movies, binding books, and crocheting stuffed animals. You can find more, including social media handles and a full list of her published work, at www.samtasticbooks.com.
Praise for the debut novel The Wings Upon Her Back
2025 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel Finalist
Compton Crook Award Winner
British Science Fiction Award LonglistGoodreads SciFi and Fantasy Book Club Selection
Booklist Top 10 SF/Fantasy & Horror Debuts
Parade Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books
Washington Post 11 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books
[STARRED REVIEW] “A triumphant debut novel.” —Booklist
[STARRED REVIEW] “An absolute must-read.” —Kirkus
[STARRED REVIEW] “Intricate and intriguing.” —Publishers Weekly
[STARRED REVIEW] “Complex and haunting.” —Library Journal
www.samtasticbooks.com
I first learned of Samantha Mills in 2018 after Tachyon editor Jaymee Goh recommended her for the (then-forthcoming) anthology The New Voices of Science Fiction, edited by Jacob Weisman and Hannu Rajaniemi.
The book, published in 2019, lived up to its name, with many of the contributors—including Rebecca Roanhorse, Amal El-Mohtar, Rich Larson, Sarah Pinsker, Darcie Little Badger, Nino Cipri, S. Qiouyi Lu, and Kelly Robson—going on to establish themselves as leading voices in the field. The reprint of Mills’s second published story, “Strange Waters,” appeared right after future New York Times bestselling author Sam J. Miller’s contribution “Calved.” Although Mills had published only six short stories, she had already been longlisted for the British Science Fiction and Fantasy Award and the Locus Award.
Mills published five more short stories in 2020. “The Limits of Magic,” published in Apparition Literary Magazine, earned her a prestigious Pushcart Prize nomination.
With the publication of “Rabbit Test” (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 49, 2022), Mills metamorphosed from a writer of interest to the author of arguably one of the most acclaimed science fiction short stories of the century. The polemic, written in response to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, tells the story of Grace, who lives in a near-future dystopic society with curtailed women’s rights, closely monitored pregnancies, and an absolute abortion ban. Interspersed with vignettes about the long history of abortion, the powerful tale follows Grace over the next several decades. Garnering attention from diverse venues, including Library Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Locus, “Rabbit Test” ultimately won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards for Best Short Story. (Due to the controversy surrounding the 2023 Hugo Award nomination process, Mills withdrew the story for consideration.) It was also included in The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2023, edited by R. F. Kuang and John Joseph Adams, and translated into seven languages.
Shortly before the publication of “Rabbit Test,” Tachyon acquired Mills’s first novel, The Wings Upon Her Back. Under the stewardship of editor Jaymee Goh from Tachyon’s Malaysian office, the book came out in April 2024. Mills originally conceived the book as a nonpolitical, action-fantasy story, but she opted to include themes of totalitarianism and social upheaval as she constructed it. The book received almost universal acclaim, with critics often making special note of the all-too-timely political elements, especially praising the complex portrayals of fascism and religious zealotry. It won the 2025 Compton Crook Award and was a finalist for the 2025 World Fantasy Award.
A few weeks before the publication of Wings, Mills and her family made the trek from San Diego to Austin to witness firsthand the Great North American Eclipse, the last total eclipse viewable in the U.S. until 2044. My wife, Brandy, and I met with Mills and her husband, Randy, for brunch. She was delightful, quiet, and unassuming, which made her work more impactful. The four of us chatted for hours on a variety of subjects, including transphobia, immigration, Randy’s unabashed love for the San Diego Padres, and Mills’s day job as an archivist for a Japanese American historical society based in San Diego.
Now that she has signed a deal with Tachyon to publish her second novel and her first story collection—Rabbit Test and Other Stories, which is slated for an April 2025 release—I can look forward to being a member of Team Mills for at least the next half dozen years. I eagerly await what this extraordinary author produces next.
Rick Klaw
Austin, Texas
Other books by this author…
The Wings Upon Her Back
Samantha Mills
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