Uncertain Sons and Other Stories. by Thomas Ha. 2025
UNCERTAIN SONS AND OTHER STORIES
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:
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.
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.
