Black Gate

Over at Quick Sip Reviews, Charles Payseur takes at detailed look at the latest issue of John Joseph Adams’ Lightspeed.

“Marcel Proust, Incorporated” by Scott Dalrymple (4,130 words)

This is a fascinating story about education and about capitalism and about people being treated like property. This is a rather deeply dystopic story that follows a journalist in education who is brought into a story that is…well, rather huge. The story slowly reveals the scope of a project to make memory, to make education, property. And not just property, but property that doesn’t really belong to the person in whose mind the knowledge of education resides. Instead, this future world imagines what it would be like if there was a drug that would allow corporations and institutions to keep people in debt indefinitely with the looming threat that if people fail to pay, their memories will literally disappear, essentially repossessing the education that they can’t afford to pay for…. It’s a deeply unsettling piece that shows just how far and how bad things could go, and how in need we are of protections now more than ever to value human beings above profits and banks…

“Crossing the Threshold” by Pat Murphy (4,180 words)

This story speaks to me of bargains and loss and chaos. It features a woman whose father has died and who has to sort through his strange and varied estate. At the same time, it’s a story about her maybe-sorta helping the devil do some mischief, and trying to help undo some of that. It’s a bit of a weird contemporary fantasy story where the speculative elements are ones that “could maybe” be explained away, but as that never bothers me I do appreciate the way it moves, the way that it sets up this picture of the world that is only slightly off, where chaos and order seem to be more palpable forces in the world… Luckily there’s a helpful witch willing to work in exchange for some fertility idols. I like the strangeness of the piece… it’s a great read!

This month’s Lightspeed offers original fantasy by Shweta Narayan and Pat Murphy, and fantasy reprints by Carlos Hernandez and Ben Hoffman, as well as original science fiction by Scott Dalrymple and Matthew Kressel, along with SF reprints by Vandana Singh and Elizabeth Bear. The non-fiction includes author spotlights, Book Reviews by Amal El-Mohtar, Movie Reviews by Carrie Vaughn, and an interview with Yoon Ha Lee by Christian A. Coleman.

The exclusive content in the ebook version of Lightspeed this month includes a reprint of Yoon Ha Lee’s “Iseul’s Lexicon” and an excerpt from Seanan McGuire new novel Down Among the Sticks and Bones, plus a bonus excerpt from Never Now Always by Desirina Boskovich.

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Over at Tangent Online, Rebecca DeVendra reviews the riches at hand in the latest Clarkesworld.

Andy Dudak writes the mind-bending tale “Fool’s Cap.” There [were] points when I felt like my brain had been melted and hung over a clothesline. It was great. Most stories that try to write about time-loops and parallel universes fall into many paradoxical traps: this is the nature of the thing. Dudak handles these ingredients like a master chef. The story follows Beadith, a Tribunal agent chasing a killer, and she gets stranded on an island with him. Weak and helpless, he has given himself over to a sentient moss that affixes itself to his head and shows him several versions of himself. Beadith communes with the moss as well, and starts to converse with other versions of herself…

“Neptune’s Trident” by Nina Allan is a dark post-apocalyptic tale shot through with tension that never really crescendos. Allan’s sybaritic prose beguiled me, so much so that when I got to the end of the story I felt as if I’d had an odd dream, filled with a dread I couldn’t define. The story tells of an invasion by nonhuman beings that work through infection, making people sick. They are called “flukes” in the story and all sorts of political misfortunes befall them, from internment camps to executions. Allan’s world is full of suspicion and dread, and I admit I felt a bit flensed after being immersed in it.

Read her complete review here.

The June Clarkesworld contains original fiction from Andy Dudak, Julia K. Patt, Nina Allan, Sam J. Miller, and A Que, plus reprints from Jay Lake and Aliette de Bodard.

The cover, “Sea Change,” is by Matt Dixon.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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