Mills, Samantha
Entry updated 14 April 2025. Tagged: Author.
(?- ) US author of speculative fiction who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Gestational Cycle of Flies in a Cupboard" in LampLight for March 2018. Her work has since appeared in several publications, including Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Uncanny. "Rabbit Test" (November/December 2022 Uncanny) won a Hugo, Locus Award, Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short story. It takes place under a regime which detects pregnancy to prevent abortion and is an unsettling but emotional tale. Mills does not fully consider herself to be a Hugo winner owing to the evident tampering with Hugo votes in 2023 (see again Hugo).
Her debut novel, The Wings Upon Her Back (2024), follows a teenager who earns a pair of mechanical wings in service to the "Mecha God" at the centre of an increasingly fascist state (see Flying; Mecha). Described as Science Fantasy by the author, it features body modification, skyscraping towers, and in addition to the protagonist's unreliable mentor, a pantheon of morally questionable gods (see Gods and Demons). It won the Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial Award for best genre debut.
Mills should not be confused with the Australian diver Samantha Mills (1992- ) or the author Sam Mills. [JM]
Samantha Mills
born California
works
- The Wings Upon Her Back (San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2024) [hb/Elizabeth Story]
links
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