Science fiction and fantasy both are methods of storytelling where the world reflects our own through a distorted lens. They also are different sides of the same coin, where fantasy explains science through magic, and science fiction explains magic through science. Or they are oil and water, where they push back against each other, unable to combine evenly. In Rabbit Test, a new story collection, Samantha Mills attempts to force them together.
The spectrum of Mills’s stories tend toward the fantastical more so than the sci-fi, but the science fiction heavy stories are stronger, largely because, despite the speculative elements, they feel more connected to our reality. They are familiar, and we can see through the future technology a world that more closely resembles ours.
There are some standout stories in the collection, like the title story “Rabbit Test.” Mills tells us this was written in anticipation of the Supreme Court striking down the existing case law of Roe v. Wade, and filling her browser with many tabs of research on the topic. The main plotline of the narrative begins in the near future with Grace, an almost-adult who tests positive for pregnancy. The narrative follows her on her journey of hopeful termination and sad motherhood.
Interspersed throughout the story are reflections on past ways pregnancy was tested, including by injecting rabbits with urine. The rabbits always die, Mills reminds us. Later, urine was used in frogs, though the frogs can be recycled. Mills covers numerous attempts at predicting pregnancy, set against the dystopian future Grace and her child live in.
“Rabbit Test” succeeds because it connects directly to our contemporary crisis of women’s healthcare. We can believe this dark future is not far off because in some places, we’re essentially already living in it. And Mills connects that struggle to the hundreds of years of history where pregnancy and abortion were mysterious and out of reach.
If there is any through-line in the collection, it is in the analysis of motherhood, fertility, and reproduction. The role of women, and the societal perception of them, is being critiqued. In the story, “The Limits of Magic,” the story is structured around, as the title predicts, specific limitations of magic like the inability to soothe crying babies, stop wars, or change the circumstances of your birth. Nor can magic “make you a good woman in Polenka.” The women here are told that “a quiet life is a happy life. Speak little, smile often,” and that “bearing children is an act of worship and act of patriotism.” We’re teetering on a world that wants to be Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, but Mills is short on plot. It’s more abstract, and less than fully developed. Mills later explains in the notes that the opening of the story came to her during the foggy months after birthing her second child, and with this in mind, we can see how a mother may find motherhood limiting. Children want for so much, and they restructure a parents’ life around satisfying their needs.
What is missing in the collection is the cohesion of a collection. They are not linked by genre, nor do they share characters nor geography. Even the thematic exploration of motherhood and reproduction is a tenuous link. There’s no hard rule on how a short story collection is selected, assembled, or curated into a single work, but also, we want a collection to be more than just random stories. Why then, are these bound together as a collection?
Mills offers an explanation in the “Afterword,” stating that these “stories represent Phase One of Sam Getting Serious.” After years of experimenting, she finally has taken herself seriously, and this collection is the result. But also this qualification comes across like excuse-making. She elaborates in the final section, “Story Notes,” in which she provides a brief explanation about how each of the stories came about.
“Story Notes” is not an original idea. Other authors have included similar narratives in collections, and it’s not uncommon for literary magazines to interview authors about the origins of short stories, or for authors to discuss how stories come about in author conversations. But in the case of Rabbit Test, the notes are working overtime to tie the collection together. Within that framework, the collection comes across as more coherently as a larger thing than simply the sum of parts. Mills is justifying the imperfections, the stories that are not fully developed, by qualifying them with these notations. Though they still seem disjointed in theme and style, it becomes easier to understand how the collection was built through the lens of the author as an evolution.
Ultimately the stories in the collection that are most successful are the ones that feel fuller and more wholly formed, and the less satisfying stories leave the reader grasping. For instance, in “On Part Per Billion,” the story opens with the promising, enticing line, “There were two Irene Boswells on board and a third in the making.” But unlike Chekov’s gun and more like the Lost statue with four toes, we aren’t really offered much explanation by the end.
The stories in the collection are layering fantasy and science fiction elements together at times. Mills is pushing back on genre, with technology confronting fantastical beasts, like in “Laugh Lines,” where babies are born in vats but the mothering figure is a spider creature. It’s not always a clean process to fuse together different things, but by pressing against boundaries, eventually Mills may change expectations. Recognizing the messy process of birth, perhaps as readers we can overlook some of these faults.
Rabbit Test defies traditional categorizations because Mills is trying to create something new. She’s revealing the process by including details about the creation of the stories, and while it might be a shortcut to infusing meaning and cohesion to the collection, it works to build a bigger picture.
FICTION
Rabbit Test and Other Stories
By Samantha Mills
Tachyon Publications
Published April 21, 2026
