Uncertain Sons and Other Stories

by Thomas Ha

Uncertain Sons is a startling and masterful collection exploring familial love and trauma; societal and technological anxieties; identity and class; and alternate near-future irrealities. Sharp, incisive, imaginative, and visionary, Thomas Ha's debut heralds the arrival of a vital new voice.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Collections, Short Story Collection

284 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2025

Reviews

[Bill Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Ha's "Alabama Circus Punk" (in The Best Weird Fiction of the Year, Vol. 1), and was very excited to come across this. The stories I've read are a kind of dark, open-ended science fiction that address real issues in our messy, broken world; the only other writer I've come across who works (sometimes) in a similar vein, and does this at a comparable level, is Brian Evenson, one of my absolute favorites.

I was very impressed by "Window Boy"; there are lots of rave online reviews, so won't say more. "Cretins" opens like a much more conventional story set in pretty much our world, but the dark turn it takes, and keeps extrapolating, was really surprising and moving in a very strange way. The terse ending is so beautiful and profoundly disturbing.

"The Mub" is a relatively (!) light and enjoyable piece. "House Traveler" plays with a relatively familiar sci-fi trope, but there's enough intrigue and nice writing that it works for me.

"Where the Old Neighbors Go" continues to showcase Ha's impressive range. Its witchcraft-based conflict arc is quite traditional, but there are some clever ideas. The writing and the narrator's voice are beautifully done, so I didn't even mind that it's a little chatty for my usual preferences. I live on a little street where an old-timer disappears every few years, so I can relate. And of course I love the digs at the folks who call the shots and remake the real estate these days:

"But these new things that are coming up now --- they're emptier and hungrier, no patience for the craft. They don't get any enjoyment out of the chase the way some of us do."
"Then what do they want?"
"What does any monstrous little toddler want? They want to take everything you have, just as soon as they can swallow it."

"Balloon Season" starts out almost like a Ray Bradbury Americana piece, then quickly warps beyond recognition. Not my favorite, but a lot of fun. I usually have trouble with stories like "Sweetbaby", that are so centered around the technology and its monstrous outcome. But the narrator's voice is beautifully done; I love her plucky interventions, and the poignant and optimistic resolution.

"The Sort": a gentle, elegant father/son tale, with another poignant and hopeful resolution in spite of overwhelming odds. Then in case you're tired of reading my raves, but are still not convinced you should check out this collection, you can read "The Brotherhood of Montague St Video" here. A fairly straightforward thriller, but how can I not love this story: working with physical media in the digital age, eluding surveillance technologies, resisting shadowy oligarchies, extrapolations of food tech etc? All this would have been for nought if the writing wasn't so crisp, the world-building wasn't so economical, the characters so skillfully rendered. And I loved the ending.

More Bradbury-esque flavors in "The Fairgrounds", with updated technology and charming subversions of growing-up tropes. Finally, the title story is (mostly) a straightforward creature feature, but with the ironic father/son interactions that Ha writes so well. The creature is pretty impressive, and I enjoyed this even though I tend not to be into this sort of story.

Overall, I enjoyed most of the stories, though the earlier ones were probably more impressive. Highly recommended.

[John Wiswell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is all the evidence you need that Ha is one of the powerful emerging voices in short fiction. Opening with his smash hit "Window Boy," the collection is a dark curio.

[Beige · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

After reading a couple of Ha's award nominated short stories, I jumped at the chance to slowly read his collection with buddies at the WBTM group. Ha writes imagined futures (near and far), many of which feature a deep sense of dread and the bonds between family. I haven't read all that much horror, but I think horror fans will also find a lot to appreciate here. I thought it was a great collection overall, some of my favs were:

Window Boy
Where the Old Neighbors Go
Sweetbaby
The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video
Uncertain Sons

[W.T.H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just an absolutely beautifully written book full of jaw dropping lines and incredibly rendered worlds. I'm not sure how anything else this year beats this collection, I know there's a new Langan anthology but still. This is fresh, current, vital writing.

The first two stories blew me away, "The Window Boy" & "Cretins", and the next ten just cemented Ha as a writer to be reckoned with. I hope he continues pushing boundaries for decades to come...highly imaginative, genre bending storytelling without boundary or limitations of any kind. Fully developed worlds and visions within the confines of a ten to twenty page story that can leave you breathless and lead you anywhere. Kelly Link calls him, "...as inventive as Bradbury, as unsettling as Thomas Ligotti...."

The Bradbury comparison I'm completely behind...the Ligotti, I'm not sold on. A line here or there. Nobody's ever accused me of being soft hearted or glimmering with positivity but most of these stories, open ended they might be, seem to shine a light forward towards a hope most of us might not believe in these days.

The last, titular story feels like prepper/mountain men/revenge/hunting party through the monster infested cosmic wastelands of Stephen King's The Mist. Spectacular.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tons of imagination in this collection, which at times reminded me of George Saunders and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. ‘Window Boy’ got me hooked instantly (had one of the later stories come first, I might not have continued). I admire how Ha doesn’t overexplain things but I found some stories a little too obscure, impenetrable even, and more so as I went along. I guess I’m probably not the right reader for this particular type of weird fiction, although I enjoyed some of this, with ‘The Mub’ and ‘Where the Old Neighbors Go’ my other highlights.

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

The titular novelette is currently free to read on the site of publisher Undertow.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Uncertain Sons and Other Stories* by Thomas Ha is a truly excellent collection of short stories. Creepy and weird in the best kinds of ways, while also having a lot of interesting things to say.

It's a hard book to classify - I'd say it kind of straddles the line between New Weird and Horror. Definitely reminds me of VanderMeer in places, but also veering into darker and bloodier directions in others. It's a short book, only 12 stories, most of which can be started and finished in the time it takes to enjoy a cup of coffee. Not a one of them was less than good.

But what really struck me was just how topical they all were - not to sound pretentious, but I've seldom read a book that so effectively captured the zeitgeist of the times while being explicitly *about* none of it. Climate change. AI. Disconnect from the real world/being too plugged in. Less specific stuff, like how easy it is to convince yourself that someone else will fix it (whatever "it" is), or it'll fix itself - you just need to keep your head down and take care of you and yours. How tempting it is to just say "fuck it" and look at memes while everything falls apart, because who fucking cares any more.

And yet, bleak as I just made it sound, this book was also somehow heartening. If I had to put my finger on why/how, I’d say it’s because this book emphasizes that no matter how terrible things go, people will still be people for worse *and* for better - we’ll still care about each other and try to help each other.

All in all this was a weird one, and one I think I’ll be pondering for a good while. I don’t feel like I really even began to address this book, but I also don’t feel like I have anything more to say. Strongly recommended.

My blog.

[Dave Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

The world we live in, when looked at through a certain lens, makes very little sense. Once you see the injustice, cruelty, and absurdity, it’s impossible to ignore it. In fact, it’s frustrating when others don’t see it. That’s what made the emergence of Thomas Ha’s work so exciting. There are common veins that run through these stories. Themes that emerge that are hard to ignore, and even among the ugliness featured within some of these pages, there is an inner beauty; a defiant last gasp that yes, the world is ugly and filled with terror, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something tender hidden within. Something worth uncovering and fighting for.

If you were to ask me which Thomas Ha story was the first one I’d read, last week I’d have answered Window Boy. That was the story that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. I shared it with everyone I possibly could, saying, “look at this fucking story. LOOK AT IT.” As I wound my way through this collection, it dawned on me that Window Boy was not my first, not by a long shot. I have personal favorites, such as The Sort, which is a story I understand entirely too well. What struck me the most was how the titular story, Uncertain Sons, bound this collection together.

Standing on its own, it’s an achievement of a story. Gross, strange, unnerving and somehow able to make a protagonist of a stoic guy on a motorcycle who breaks all the rules and carries his father’s skull in his backpack and focuses less on the fact it’s a two-wheeling Max Rockatansky and more on the horrors of the unknown, especially when that unknown comes from a place deeper within. While the bikeman, as he’s called, pushes deeper to familiar hillsides in an attempt to confront the creeping organism terrorizing the nearby city, it’s clear this isn’t some hero’s journey. This is about a son, described by an infected, potentially unreal old man in the hillside, as the uncertain son of an uncertain father, overcoming that uncertainty and moving on with his life. The only way he can move on is to take his father’s remains to where he lost him, overcome that thing that had scared him as a child, and destroy something he’d attributed as still somewhat his father, to move on with his life.

There were men with him who couldn’t do that. A grieving father who succumbed to the madness of the organism, someone who’s brother was consumed by it, then his hand partially consumed. All of these men, uncertain sons themselves, were looking for something more to their lives. The story serves as a through line for the broader themes of the collection, and Ha’s body of work. It’s a deep reflection on relationships: internally with one's self; externally with a parent or child; and ultimately how our relationship with the greater world around us helps to shape these more intimate relationships. Everything is connected, and no matter how hard we try to separate or run from these connections, if we aren’t able to confront them, we’re stuck in a world of monsters and darkness.

Ha is able to weave these concepts through rich, horrific tapestries that reflect our own reality while outright rejecting the notion that we're stuck in it.

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally finished this book! There was a delay because it died in the middle, but I bought some book-plasma, injected it into the spine, and the book came shrieking back to life. Although sometimes it bites now, I was able to finish mostly fine. I recommend this book to people who like their horror peppered with Gene Wolfe style scifi mysteries, or anyone with type A book-plasma.

[Jay Brantner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been reading Thomas Ha’s work for about four years now, and even though his most natural genre (weird horror) is one I typically don’t care for at all, he’s become one of my very favorite voices in short fiction. I’d already read nine of the twelve stories collected in Uncertain Sons and Other Stories, but when I had an opportunity to read all twelve as a collection, I wasn’t going to miss it.

Ordinarily, I view short story collections as a bag of stories. Yes, I read them in the intended order, but if I were to shake them up and read them in another order, I’m not convinced a lot would change. But it quickly became clear that Uncertain Sons and Other Stories was curated in such a way as to create something beyond a mere set of stories. It’s obvious right from the jump, with the juxtaposition of Window Boy and Cretins. These were two of my very favorite stories of 2023, and they’re probably my two favorite in this collection. But because one was published in a magazine I follow regularly and the other wasn’t, I read them a year apart and didn’t notice how well they mirror each other thematically. One takes place in a stratified, dystopian society, where the rich view the world from bunkers through screens, while the have-nots are left struggling for survival in a hostile outside world with environmental hazards and literal monsters. The other takes place in a more familiar setting, but one where a mysterious disease has saddled a non-negligible minority of the population with an extreme narcolepsy. Both stories are exceptional for the way they slowly build the atmosphere before leaving the reader with a true gut-punch of an ending. But placing them side-by-side highlights the ways in which they both deal with the tendency to look past the dangers right outside one’s window. In “Window Boy,” that’s a literal window, with the lead gazing upon a hostile landscape while secure in the knowledge that he doesn’t have to do anything about it. “Cretins” is told the other way around, from the perspective of a chronically ill character who builds entire routines around keeping himself from being assaulted in public while bystanders go about their day. Both stories are powerfully tense, and the themes reinforce each other to create an even more eye-catching experience when reading them back-to-back.

The curation of the collection also highlights little worldbuilding flourishes that create subtle connections between various tales. Ten of the twelve take place in a world that feels very much like a version of ours—the exceptions being the space setting of Sweetbaby and the ambiguous, possibly secondary world of The Mub—but House Traveler presents a series of parallel universes that connect directly to the not-quite-like-ours worlds of The Sort and Uncertain Sons. All three are readable on their own, and “The Sort” in particular was one of my favorite stories of 2024 for the way it presents the everyday struggles of parenting neurodivergent children in a world that’s just a little bit uncanny and perhaps more than a little bit hostile. But “Uncertain Sons” calls back details from the other two in such a way as to make it feel like a true culmination of what came before. For fans of weird action-horror—which I am not—I’m sure it may be an exceptional read all on its own. Ha certainly develops a harrowing atmosphere of danger and uncertainty. But the ways in which it builds on the prior stories raises its level in context, giving it a power as the collection’s capstone beyond what it would have as a standalone.

In discussing how the stories come together to make a collection, I’ve indirectly talked quite a bit about the stories themselves. But let me do so more directly. For those who have not read Thomas Ha before, you’ll quickly see a consistent style develop. He tends to locate his stories on the ambiguous spaces between sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, with a groundedness that suggest his settings could be any ordinary suburb, his protagonists ordinary fathers or sons (or occasionally daughters), but with a writing style that creates just a hint of the uncanny, building tension as the reader tries to piece together precisely just what is strange about the tale. The oldest Ha story I’ve read, Where the Old Neighbors Go, has a style I would’ve once described as stilted, but oddly compelling. But as it’s presented here in the context of his other work, it’s easy to see it as an example of a developing style that keeps the reader just a half-beat distant from their expectations. “Where the Old Neighbors Go” is itself a solid story about dealing with magical creatures with lots of power but also pretty distinct rules they must follow, but it’s a good example of how that uncanny wrongness develops even in more straightforward stories. It only intensifies in Ha’s more recent work.

His more recent work also has a bit less tendency to have clear-cut plot resolutions. He largely bucks this trend in the title story “Uncertain Sons,” but by and large, the sort of ending you’ll see here is not an enemy being defeated but instead a decision being made or an outlook changing. Sometimes those decisions are encouraging, sometimes they’re disheartening, and sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly what to think about them. But even when they’re ambiguous, they always seem to be saying something about the themes under examination.

I’ve already mentioned that one of the most common themes is that of how people respond to danger or harm that may not directly affect them. This comes out powerfully clear in “Window Boy” and “Cretins,” but it’s a major piece of Balloon Season and at least a minor theme in several other tales. Another theme running strongly through the entire connection is that of relationships between parents and children. There are no straightforwardly evil parents here—even the ones performing horrifying actions (like those in “Sweetbaby”) have a clear sense in which they’re trying their best. But neither are there any straightforward parenting decisions. Perhaps the most unambiguously good parents are the main character of “The Sort” and the deceased father of “Uncertain Sons,” but both live in worlds full of dangers, where they’re forced to make difficult decisions without any clear knowledge of whether the ultimate results will be good or bad. On the other hand, The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video tells a wonderfully heartfelt tale of preserving the memory of a departed mother as she really was, not simplifying her life into that of saint or villain. Alabama Circus Punk and “House Traveler” take the ambiguity in a different direction, with the leads feeling a sort of parental affection or responsibility in the absence of a recognizably parental preexisting relationship.

At the risk of spending far too much time talking about The Themes, I also want to highlight a thread of loss and preservation that runs through so much of the collection. That can be as simple as “people want to take things from me” (as in “Where the Old Neighbors Go”) or “circumstances have robbed us of our old life” (as in “Cretins” and “Balloon Season”), or even a loss of childlike innocence (in The Fairgrounds). But there’s an undercurrent of disorientation threading through much of the work that dovetails wonderfully with that slightly uncanny narrative style to really help the reader feel the loss. The nature of the lead’s condition in “Cretins” inevitably makes for perceptual gaps that create a real sense of foreboding—gaps which the lead spends much of the tale trying to recover via other means. It’s even stranger in “The Mub,” “Alabama Circus Punk,” and to some extent “House Traveler,” where the leads often cannot rely on their own minds to supply a reliable accounting of the past in order to determine what’s missing in the present. And I admit that sometimes the disorientation is so great that I’m not quite sure what to take away at the end of those stories—it’s perhaps no coincidence that none of those three would rate among my top four in the collection, even as I felt the confusion delivered true narrative weight in all three cases. Finally, this unreliability of recollection is made explicit and taken outside the mind in the absolutely tremendous “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video,” which deals with holding onto imperfect memory in a society hellbent on touching up and improving everything they can, from books to recordings to real-time perception.

In case you can’t tell from all the time I spent going on about the themes or the quality of the curation, I think this is a fantastic collection. The stories range from good to tremendous, and they’re only improved by reading together. For my money, the best of the best are Cretins, Window Boy, and The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video. But I also was really impressed by The Sort, The Mub, and Uncertain Sons. That’s already half the collection and we haven’t even gotten to stories that may be a pinch too weird for me but that I find myself appreciating more and more on reread, like Alabama Circus Punk.

If you like weird horror at all, don’t wait, preorder this collection immediately (or ask your library to do it for you, I don’t judge). If you’re not usually a horror fan (as I am not) but appreciate theme-heavy sci-fi with person-level stakes, find something Ha has written that’s available online and see how the narrative voice works for you. I’d probably recommend “Cretins” or “Window Boy” as an approachable introduction to his style, but if you’re looking for more vibes and less plot, “The Sort” would also make a good test case. It’s probably not a style that will hit for everyone, but if it works for you, you may have just found a new favorite author.

Recommended if you like: weird horror, meditative sci-fi with personal stakes, subtle hints of the uncanny.

First impression: 19/20

[Galen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I normally don’t care very much for short stories, I feel uninvested in the world since it’s such a short format, but this book… I was *unsettled*. Is the only way I can describe it. Kelly Link described Thomas Ha’s writing being “…As unsettling as Thomas Ligotti and inventive as Ray Bradbury”, and that description lands with me like an anchor. Ha’s stories, every time I feel like I’ve settled into the flow of the story, I’m abducted into another reality, into a world of monsters underneath a story already about monsters. I slowed down to absorb the language, the dialogue, the nuanced use of science fiction on horror on magical realism. There is a palette here that is unique and beautiful and terrifying. I need more.

[Lewis Housley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant...absolutely brilliant.

[Kaia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the rare story collection where I really liked all of the stories. Favorites are:

“Window Boy” (this was one of the most unsettling for me, too)
“Where the Old Neighbors Go” (I loved this one - great ending)
“Sweetbaby”
“Uncertain Sons” (this was amazing with so much to think about - I’m not surprised it won awards this year)

[Darnell · Rating 2 out of 5]

In some ways, infatuation feels better than real relationships. Infatuation is a rush of emotion, in which the object of affection is an idealized being that exists only in the imagination, more wonderful than any actual person could be. A relationship is longer and messier, filled with details that aren't so tantalizing, in their existence and specificity if nothing else.

This short story collection, and this style of short fiction more generally, strikes me as basically a string of infatuations. It gestures at strangeness and horrors in the edge of your vision, but there's no substance to it, just flirting with the idea of actually telling a story. It's the epitome of style over substance, mimicry of science fiction's tone and tropes without the ideas of the thing itself.

This feels like putting superficiality on a pedestal, believing that ephemeral emotions are elevated because they aren't clearly defined, shunning the details that (to me) give the vibes and emotions of science fiction their value. I have no doubt that the people who love this would hate what I like, because it seems they feel that the eerie sensation is the point, so the best stories just create it, without the dross of actually fleshing out an idea. To return to my metaphor, people are less exciting when you get to know them, so it's better to avoid real relationships and just jump between infatuations.

This is all very abstract, so to pin down a more specific reaction: I actually liked the unnerving implications of "The Mub" but my feeling at the end was "Nice idea, I just wish someone had written a story about it." I assume the target audience thinks it's better this way, but to me this rings hollow. Some of the stories don't stay entirely in the vibes realm, which is why I'm rating this two stars despite (apparently) hating what it fundamentally is.

This sort of vibe-based fiction is popular, and I associate it (rightly or wrongly) with Clarkesworld and recent award winners. Clearly a lot of people enjoy it, and who am I to say they shouldn't? I don't expect my reviews to be read, much less change anything. All I can say is that I'm disappointed every time I'm sold what's allegedly a collection of thoughtful short stories and get something like this instead.

[Megan]

The first Thomas Ha story I read was Window Boy, and I remember what struck me most was the interesting rhythm at which I had to adjust my assumptions: my understanding of a term was refined in the next line but then new jagged questions pierced through my comprehension; a presumption that'd carried me through paragraphs was suddenly undermined; big-picture clarity came in fits, starts, then eroded again, its blurriness its own kind of experiential pleasure. A lot of Ha's work is like that. And yet the stories feel so solid, because what's the most ungraspable of all is what's ungraspable in the real world.

So, yes, the science fiction and horror blend works so well for me, but I didn't really see the throughline of parenthood/childhood/the lifelong-and-beyond radiating relationship there in Ha's work until I read all these stories (and then it took me to the final story here, the titular story, to go "OH, SONS!", because I still need to be hit over the head sometimes, I guess). I think going into this collection, Sweetbaby was my very favorite of Ha's stories and it still might be, but new-to-me stories Cretins and Where the Old Neighbors Go joined my list of favorite stories, too.

Very, very good collection!

[L (Nineteen Adze) · Rating 5 out of 5]

First impressions: I had previously read several stories in the collection, but about half (including the title novelette) were new to me. It's a beautifully organized set of stories with a lot of themes and small details in common, often leaving me wondering whether two stories took place in the same universe. Thomas Ha excels at creating a sense of unease, particularly in his use of language. The narrators use words that are familiar to us, but then they suddenly mean something else, creating a slippery uncertainty about what else might not be as we assumed. In this set, the endings feel primarily open or melancholy to me. There are no easy answers or tidy resolutions here, only quiet moments to pause (fitting, given the talk about what makes a memorable story in "The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video," which is just as good on rereading). More later, but I think this is an impressive and well-chosen collection from an author who should be showered with lucrative book contracts. RTC.

[Daniel Friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven’t written reviews on here before, but I feel compelled to for this book. What an incredible collection of stories, collection of worlds. Each story is so sure of itself and its history, only revealing the context necessary to make things work. There is so much more to be known about the worlds of these stories, so much more I wanted to know, without the omission ever being a frustration. So many images that will stay with me for a long time. I will be revisiting this book and reading everything I can get my hands on from Thomas Ha. A wonderful, wonderful collection.

[Micah Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some winners in here for sure, just not complete.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ordered directly from the publisher.

An unusual and challenging aesthetic in which you're dropped into what are generally some post-apocalypse settings (culprits are evil balloons with, essentially, tentacles, or grackles, though way bigger, or a complex biological entity, or...we don't know, or bioengineering, though there's also a short jokey story in a fantasy setting that reads as an anti-AI parable) and not told the rules or background. Instead, Ha elaborates the whole culture that people enduring such a world would create, down to the institutions and jobs, the children's books and cartoons, they would produce and the gestures and assumptions they would police. There's almost no exposition, as if it's been extracted through the exact kind of procedure many of these stories locate somewhere in the background.

This works more often than not, and it requires some effort on the reader's part, which I appreciate. The larger frame is family dynamics, often but not always dysfunctional, so frequently the stories make you focus on what kinds of loyalty you can and would sustain under duress, especially the looming threat of, say, getting drained by an evil balloon's appendages. (Seriously, those balloons are quite menacing, and I have to admire the gumption of building a story around a family barricading itself in from them.) At times, there's too much mysterioso gesticulating for my taste, but for the most part there's something refreshing in a style that dumps you into these worlds and demands you work out the rules.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a strong first collection by a new voice in science fiction, fantasy and horror.

I included all three fields in that description because Thomas Ha ranges among them freely, using whichever tropes seem to fit the story he wants to tell. A story that seems like science fiction can turn horrific (“Window Boy”), or it can stay in the futuristic SF realm (“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video”).

He tends to love creepy creatures. Some are huge (the grackles and tentillas) and some are small (“The Mub”). All are a little obscure in what they are and how they look, and that's the way Thomas Ha likes it.

He specializes in unsettling stories. I hate comparisons of “this author meets that author”, but it seemed to me that he enjoys creating monsters and creatures as much as China Mieville does, but he likes the ambiguity of Kelly Link. He is not going to spoon-feed the reader as to what is going on, especially with a first person narrator who is fully aware of what's going on and doesn't have to explain it to anyone, much less the reader.

For some people this ambiguity would be frustrating. For real genre fans it is catnip, as the reader has to pay attention to every line to determine what is happening and what it means. And every line tells – there are no wasted words.

I became aware of this author because the Montague St. Video story was nominated for a Hugo award this year. It didn't win, but I voted for it just behind to author faves, Naomi Kritzer (who won) and Nghi Vo. That meant when I saw that his first collection was available, I decided to check it out.

I'm glad I did. Thomas Ha is writing some engaging, occasionally very frightening stories where the stakes can be quite high, and often the characters struggle just to survive another day in their world. If this sounds intriguing to you, check it out.

[Austin Beeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

RATED 96% POSITIVE. STORY SCORE 4.25 OF 5
12 STORIES : 4 GREAT / 7 GOOD / 1 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF

Thomas Ha’s stories have been compared Gene Wolfe. That is a comparison that immediately makes me excited and then fearful that my expectations are set too high. Thankfully, Ha delivers a great collection of stories that channel Wolfe is their weirdness and humanity. They don’t share Wolfe’s love of the ‘puzzle,’ but do share his predilection for holding focus on the interiority of the characters. The reader doesn’t know what the narrator doesn’t know.

Many of these stories have a timeless quality to them. They could have been published - with other minor alterations - in the great anthologies of the 1960s and 70s. And that is a very good thing in my opinion.

There are images here that still haunt me months after reading them. Eldritch balloon monsters ravaging the countryside. The horror of the have-nots in the person of the Window Boy. The prophetic suffering caused by consumer genetic editing without safeguards. And the advice given by a father’s head in a son’s backpack.

Thomas Ha is a major new talent in science fiction and I look forward to a future full of his short fiction.

Four Stories Make the All-Time Great List: https://www.shortsf.com/beststories

Window Boy • (2023) • by Thomas Ha. A young boy lives safely in a fortified house. The outer darkness is patrolled by monstrous “Mailmen” - part human and part machine. Despite being told not to do so, the young boy feeds and befriends the desperate malnourished “Window Boy.” But the Window Boy has something far more sinister planned.

Balloon Season• (2020) • by Thomas Ha. As giant eldritch balloon monsters rampage across the country and man must come to grips with his own cowardice and his brother’s courage.

The Sort • (2024) • by Thomas Ha. In a future where genetic modification of humans was legal and then banned later, a father and his son travel to a small town and have various interactions with residents. They are at turns heartbreaking, kindly, and terrifying. Thoughtful about the painful cost of humanities first steps into self-modification.

Uncertain Sons • (2025) • by Thomas Ha. A Gene Wolfean sci-fi quest story, revenge story. A young man carries the remnants of his father’s head in a backpack. The young man intends to destroy Behenna - the being, mountain, entity, creator - that killed his father. Also his father’s head is giving him advice. Shades of Vandermeer’s Annihilation or The Red Badge of Courage. Weird, strange, violent, and enthralling.

91 Anthologies + 26 Author Collections + 18 Slates of Award Finalists + 3 Magazine Issues + 2 Novel(la)s
https://www.shortsf.com

***

UNCERTAIN SONS AND OTHER STORIES: Complete Story Reviews
12 STORIES : 4 GREAT / 7 GOOD / 1 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF

Window Boy • (2023) • by Thomas Ha

Great. A young boy lives safely in a fortified house. The outer darkness is patrolled by monstrous “Mailmen” - part human and part machine. Despite being told not to do so, the young boy feeds and befriends the desperate malnourished “Window Boy.” But the Window Boy has something far more sinister planned.

Cretins • (2023) • by Thomas Ha

Good. A new disease has people falling uncontrollably asleep. “Cretins” are people who sneak up to the sleeping and do things to them. Our protagonist thinks through his strange symbiosis with the person who keep pricking him with a needle.

The Mub • (2023) • by Thomas Ha

Good. An annoyingly helpful being - the mub - follows a traveler everywhere he goes.

House Traveler • (2024) • by Thomas Ha

Good. In a ruined cul-de-sac, five survivors send a memory-scrubbed emissary to bargain with an otherworldly “Liar,” whose drunken communion briefly opens doorways into intact parallel houses.

Where the Old Neighbors Go • (2020) • by Thomas Ha

Good. Gentrification as the demonic. An old lady would won’t move out of the neighborhood faces off against a demon eating the old neighbors.

Balloon Season• (2020) • by Thomas Ha

Great. As giant eldritch balloon monsters rampage across the country and man must come to grips with his own cowardice and his brother’s courage.

Sweetbaby • (2022) • by Thomas Ha

Good. On a remote colony homestead, teenage Franny helps her parents stage elaborate “Christmas” dinners to pacify her mutated brother Sweetbaby, who is chained beneath a massive oak. After yet another violent incident shatters the family’s fragile routine, Fran begins digging for the truth behind her brother’s illness—and the secrets her parents keep in the fog-shrouded lowlands beyond their farm.

The Sort • (2024) • by Thomas Ha

Great. In a future where genetic modification of humans was legal and then banned later, a father and his son travel to a small town and have various interactions with residents. They are at turns heartbreaking, kindly, and terrifying. Thoughtful about the painful cost of humanities first steps into self-modification.

The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video • (2024) • by Thomas Ha

Average. The discover of a “dead Book” leads to obsession and danger in a world where society is obsessed with altering and revising texts to make them “Perfect.” * Everyone loves this more that I. It is a Nebual and Hugo Finalist. I really enjoy the first half, but don’t quite understand where in goes in the second half.

Alabama Circus Punk • (2024) • by Thomas Ha

Good. In a world where intelligences can print whatever flesh body they need, a simple late night repair job becomes something more sinister.

The Fairgrounds • (2024) • by Thomas Ha

Good. Henry is just old enough to get into the fairgrounds and just in love enough to risk everything with the mysterious professor.

Uncertain Sons • (2025) • by Thomas Ha

Great. A Gene Wolfean sci-fi quest story, revenge story. A young man carries the remnants of his father’s head in a backpack. The young man intends to destroy Behenna - the being, mountain, entity, creator - that killed his father. Also his father’s head is giving him advice. Shades of Vandermeer’s Annihilation or The Red Badge of Courage. Weird, strange, violent, and enthralling.

[Krista B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this all at once in a fever dream at the office during a particularly slow work day. Wow, this book was SO GOOD. I absolutely love when collections of short stories all seem to exist in vaguely the same world or at the very least, alternate universes, and have crossover characters that immediately turn you into the Leo DiCaprio pointing meme.

I have read a LOT of horror, and so I wasn't expecting much here. These days horror seems to be either really heavy-handed splattercore, beats you over the head with a political bat of some kind, or has to do, vaguely, with the ennui of modern life.

This collection of stories is truly UNSETTLING. I loved reading eagerly through each story to peel back the layers of normalcy to unmask what's really going on. Near the end, things truly get bonkers, and I feel that that final story does tie together everything with the underlying stubborn resilience and hope that permeates many of these stories, despite the ever-present dread.

I got some extremely Ray Bradbury vibes from a few of these stories. The scariness doesn't come from big chases, or random dismemberment for no reason, or blood gushing everywhere. It comes in the small details and the wrongness that infests each story, the feeling that even your neighbor might turn on you and pull off their mask and reveal that they were always a little less than human.

The entire collection is just plain CREATIVE. I don't write horror but many of the stories STILL made me gasp and say, why didn't I think of that!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mike Guajardo-Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots to really love here. "Window Boy" will be remembered as one of the great sf short stories of the decade. "Cretins," "Where the Old Neighbors Go," "The Fairgrounds," and "Balloon Season" feature thrilling and bizarre mythologies, and Ha's style & structural preferences lend them an air of compelling impenetrability. Great thematic through-lines: lots on parenting, childhood, and navigating existence and inner life in inhospitable worlds.

[Pagefingers · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best story collection I’ve read in a long time. Renewed my love for writing and reading short fiction at a time when I felt like giving up, and you just don’t get a more valuable gift from art than that, you just don’t. It’s a rare kind of magic, inspiring others, and Thomas Ha’s got the juice.

[Runalong · Rating 5 out of 5]

New Review - an absolute treat of a short story collection to dive into and find the waters are deeper and stranger than you expect. Run and get hold of Uncertain Sons and Other Stories it’s a brilliant collection often surprising and always impressing

Full review - https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...

[Jeremy Less · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal collection. Don’t think I’ve read anything that combines horror, scifi and just plain weird so well. Loved every story.

[Nathan Horrigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Not for me I guess

[Strange · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uncertain Sons is a lonely book.

That’s the easiest way to describe the feeling of odd melancholy and isolation I had when reading the much-anticipated debut collection by Thomas Ha— loneliness. While there’s a quiet beauty to Ha’s various worlds and those who inhabit them even at their most horrifying, and a deep understanding of internal logic that allows Uncertain Sons to navigate even the most bizarre premise (probably “Alabama Circus Punk,” about a consciousness controlling a family of robots getting hacked via linguistic terrorism) with deft ease, there’s a sense that Ha’s protagonists are, more than anything else, apart. Not completely connected to the madness and weirdness going on around them, no matter how commonplace it might seem.

It’s this underlying thread that Uncertain Sons uses to broach larger topics and push the boundaries of its strangeness, covering everything from familial stress under apocalyptic threat to modern fairytales of demonic gentrification (it is rare to find an author that actually gets the idea of suburban gothic in the modern age) and generational trauma in an age of bioengineered xenofauna. Throughout it all, it maintains a deeply human melancholy, elevating it above the surrealist portraits and darker fiction of its peers into something strange, affecting, and beautiful.

The “apartness” of Ha’s protagonists is essential to the work. While the foreword (an in-depth look at Ha’s work by critic (full disclosure: and colleague and occasional rival and friend) Zach Gillan) claims that Ha’s protagonists must continue their lives even in the face of catastrophe, the catastrophes Ha explores all have a singular focus, one that wraps around a central thread and forms the true connective tissue of the collection: isolation. It would be cheap to map Uncertain Sons directly to the 2020s and claim that easiest of layups for critics, “relevance,” (especially with stories like “Balloon Season” directly addressing quarantine dynamics and the shrinking of empathy down to a family unit and to some extent a single person), but loneliness and isolation are deeply intertwined with this decade.

To his credit, Ha’s exploration of isolation and apartness is all-encompassing— his protagonists are “apart” because they refuse to take part in frankly upsetting traditions like “Sweetbaby”’s macabre “Christmas dinner,” because they’re not being slowly taken over by AI-spawned imbecilic creatures like “The Mub”’s title monster, or simply because they were here longer and have their own concerns like in the collection’s strongest story, “Where The Old Neighbors Go.” Isolation and apartness are in no way a bad or othering thing in Ha’s work. Nor is “being different” or “apart from the crowd” automatically a good thing. The sense of paranoia in stories like “Cretins,” where the narrator is forced into a routine due to a chronic illness that makes them fall unconscious at random times, “The Sort” where a father and son on the run have to avoid being found out as genetically engineered humans, or “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video,” where the main character must avoid a conspiracy after a “dead book” he found that has its original ending all show just how unnerving things are when you can’t go along with the crowd. The difference between a statement and an exploration is that an exploration shows all of it— good and ill, and uses that to advance its points from that perspective. There’s a clear empathy for Ha’s subjects that exists even when they might be unpleasant, a sense of humanity even to those who are a little inhuman.

This sense of apartness is underpinned by Ha depicting these worlds mainly through context. There is no sense of ambiguity to Ha’s stories, only one of inhabiting. The way media in “Window Boy” depicts postal workers and grackles immediately sets up both in the story, grackles being something unnerving and birdlike, the postal-worker cyborg foreshadowed by the cartoons Jakey’s abusive father watches in his den. The horror in “Sweetbaby” doesn’t just come from the monstrous gatorlike creature (think a flesh version of SCP-682) or the perversely cheerful decorations, but from the sense of wrongness that immediately turns ritualistic. There’s detail to the places Ha chooses to explore— any good writer knows how to detail— but even before Ha “unveils” more details or fleshes things out, there’s a sense of knowing what this world is and what inhabits it. This also lends itself to the possibility that these stories are more connected in some way, some grander picture of an unnerving future of interdimensional travel and bioengineered monstrosities (Ha in his afterword claims only three of these stories are directly connected— “The Sort,” “House Traveler,” and “Uncertain Sons,” but allows the reader room to interpret as they please), a fully-realized world that really only the author needs to know all the details of.

It’s a world connected by humanity, family, and isolation most of all. Generational trauma and the things passed down from family member to family member, social connection to social connection, form that central support of Uncertain Sons. The refrain of the title novella— “Uncertain fathers make for uncertain sons"— is a chilling coda on a collection that sees each story built on a foundation of technology, advancement, strangeness, and toxic social politics. "Sweetbaby” takes the “golden child/scapegoat” dynamic found in abusive families to a horrid degree where the former eats the latter repeatedly, “Window Boy” has two detached parents (the father being blatantly abusive) ready to send their kid out of their sheltered existence and into an even more sheltered existence, and “Uncertain Sons” itself involves a son carrying around (and somewhat dependent on) the voice of his dead father even as he grows into a loner determined only to destroy Behema and leave his father at the remains.

Despite this trauma and alienation handed down from generation to generation, Ha’s empathy comes through here, too. While there are obvious exceptions, most of the characters in Uncertain Sons have if not logical at least understandable courses of action. It’s another sign of how broken these worlds are, that wisdom and knowledge are handed from people who have no idea what they’re doing to people who also have no idea what they’re doing. There’s a tragedy and melancholy to the stories in Uncertain Sons, even the ones that end in a relatively upbeat fashion. The uncertainty (if you’ll pardon the word choice) is part of the point— nothing really ends definitively, it just continues on to the next point.

Through all of this, Uncertain Sons doesn’t offer an argument on isolation and alienation, but instead explores it in all its various forms, and how it can be both a boon to some and a detriment to others, each one passing their uncertainty, trauma, and experience to their descendants and those that come after. It’s an experience that’s unnerving and melancholic, but full of empathy and life (both malevolent and otherwise). Most of all, it’s a brilliant debut collection, an exploration of who we are when all we have is ourselves and our own received wisdom, and one of the best collections of the year.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few years ago, I came across a stunning story, “Sweetbaby,” in Clarkesworld.. It opens with a scene of shocking violence. And yet despite the violence and weirdness in this tale, there’s also a tone of quiet introspection. It’s a story about a girl struggling to unravel the truth of her circumstances, the truth about her world. And it’s about others who are doing everything they can to deny reality. It’s about parents and children; it’s a wild mashup of genres; it extends compassion even toward what seems unforgivable, and it left me with a quiet ache in my heart. I knew then that Thomas Ha was a writer to watch.

And how. In the last few years, Ha has released one brilliant tale after another--weird, unsettling tales that mix horror, science fiction, and fantasy. His work has garnered major award nominations, and placed as a finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, and Shirley Jackson awards. It all culminates (for now) in this first collection of his work, Uncertain Sons. This book gathers together eleven of his best stories, along with a never-before-published novelette that gives the book its name.

Uncertain Sons is an apt title, for the theme of uncertainty runs through these stories. Protagonists are caught in strange, difficult situations, unsure of which path to take. Moreover, reality itself is uncertain, unstable in these tales. In “House Traveler,” the stars overhead change from red to green. People disappear without warning. Houses—and the world itself—changes. The protagonist is sent on a mission he doesn’t fully understand, in a world he can’t comprehend, with a mind that he knows has been selectively wiped of memories. In “Alabama Circus Punk,” the main character isn’t even human, and the slippage in his perception of reality extends to language itself as his “core information-set” is altered and basic definitions of words are replaced. In other stories, reality seems perhaps a bit more stable—there’s a suggestion that perhaps there really is an objective, stable reality out there—but fellow humans seem to be conspiring to hide and distort that reality. In the quietly devastating “Window Boy,” the sheltered upper-class use visual filters to screen out unpleasant realities. Their nice, seemingly normal suburban homes are a façade. Their attempts at normality are a façade in a weird, apocalyptic world. The young boy who serves as the main character slowly begins to see through these pretenses; he attempts to apprehend the reality out there. I admire the way in which Ha deals honestly with the dangers this entails; compassion is an admirable instinct, but in this case the boy’s compassion may invite real danger and disaster onto his family. In this story, as in others, difficult and uncertain choices abound.

“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” takes up some of the themes of “Window Boy” at extended length. As in “Window Boy,” modern technology is used to hide, distort, and rewrite reality. Lovers meet wearing augmented reality glasses, so that they never know what the other actually looks like. Physical media is all but gone. Everything has gone digital, and digital books can be rewritten without even notifying readers of the change. When one man discovers a “dead” book—a paper book which can’t be easily rewritten at the touch of a button—he steps into vast, unexpected danger. It’s a story that reflects on the ephemerality and artificiality of much of modern life and media, that asks: What are we willing to stand by? What do we want to remember, what do we want to hold onto and keep unchanging—even if happier updates or edits are possible? What do we want to preserve—to know—of reality?

One of the choices the narrator of “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” makes is to truthfully remember the relationship with his dead mother—both the good and the bad of it. Sons and mothers, sons and fathers, parents and children—these relationships are at the heart of many of Ha’s stories. A father’s deep protectiveness toward his children is evoked in the wonderfully creepy “Balloon Season,” in which a town and family are threatened by the seasonal appearance of horrific, balloon-like monsters. And that sense of deep and tender parental protectiveness shines in the moving “The Sort,” a story of quiet yet nerve-wracking unease, in which a father-and-son road trip takes on elements (or does it?) of steadily building danger.

This all culminates in the title story of the collection, “Uncertain Sons.” In some ways, this novelette is a departure from many of the other stories in the collection; in most of the other stories, the horror is unnerving yet quiet; the violence is hidden or implied. In “Uncertain Sons,” the violence is gruesome and graphic and shocking, even more so than in “Sweetbaby.” The world is shockingly weird, a kind of future/alternate California invaded by monstrous (extraterrestrial? supernatural?) “exofauna,” which includes monsters with hundreds of little hands, headless galloping creatures, and tentacle-like nightmares with such wonderful names as “polypods,” “gastropates,” and “fingerwhorls.” In this horrific landscape, a young man referred to only as “the young bikeman” is on a mission to destroy all the exofauna once and for all. He is guided in his quest by the memories of his dead father, and it is, in fact, his dead father who narrates the tale (to give you an idea of how wonderfully weird Thomas Ha can be. I love what he does with voice in this story). It’s a tale that is gripping, tense, kinetic—a gory, cinematic action-quest. And then in its final pages it veers into sudden tenderness. It’s a story, like many in this collection, about a father and son. But this is about a son moving past uncertainty, doing what his father could not, going beyond what his father ever imagined. It’s about the older generation giving way to the younger. It’s about a younger man letting go of (some) of the past so he can move on. It’s about love. And like the collection as a whole, it’s about horror coexisting with tenderness; about human relationships in a world that can be frightening and unstable and unreal; about difficult decisions and the courage to see the world as it is. It’s about fear and empathy. And love.

[Grant Dowell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Ha's short fiction is of the best. His characters inhabit fascinating, terrifying, and weird settings, and, despite the downright bizarrerie, it is chilling that Ha's worlds look familiar, like a peek into a believable future.