So I had a completely different entry planned out...but I just read a story that blew me away so completely that I just really want to plug it here: Kij Johnson's 'At the Mouth of the River of Bees,' in the archive section of Scifi.com/scifiction. It's a beautiful, passionately sad story about dogs and humans, bees and magic. By the end of it, I was crying as I read. (And yes, I am a sucker for dog stories. But no short story has affected me so strongly for a long, long time.)

So, please, go read it. Especially if you have a pet, or ever had one. It struck me after reading it just how rare it is to read a piece of fiction that treats that relationship, and the grief that can go along with it, as a serious, powerful issue. Any story that does that, AND works as a beautiful, quirky speculative fiction piece on top of that, is something to really cherish.