Black Gate

Beneath Ceaseless Skies was nominated for a World Fantasy Award earlier this month (alongside Black Gate, we humbly point out), and I must say, they make for some very stiff competition. BCS is one of the top markets for adventure fantasy, and it just started buying longer stories. At only $15.99 for a full year, it’s a terrific bargain. I finally bought a subscription back in May, and I’ve been heartily enjoying it.

Issue #203 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies is dated July 7 and features fiction by Mishell Baker and Rachael K. Jones, a podcast by Rachael K. Jones, and a reprint by Aliette de Bodard. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

“Fire in the Haze” by Mishell Baker
And yet everywhere I looked, my periphery supplied ghosts of him: lounging indolently on a couch, reaching up to add a final stroke to a poem, bowing over my hand. And there, of course, pausing at the foot of the narrow stairs to the grand bedchamber. Looking over his shoulder, a half smile adorning the human face he wore even when we were alone.

“The Night Bazaar for Women Becoming Reptiles” by Rachael K. Jones
Hester’s skin itched all over, and she longed for cool sand sliding against her bare belly. One, two, three eggs into her mouth, one sharp bite, and the clear, viscous glair ran down her throat. The shells were tougher than she expected. They tasted tart, like spoiled goat’s milk. She waited for the change, but the sun crawled higher and nothing happened.

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We had several significant firsts in the front half of July. We celebrated the launch of a brand new magazine, Blind Spot, edited by Julien Wacquez and René-Marc Dolhen and dedicated to bringing the best of French SF to English audiences. And just as monumental for me personally, Sean McLachlan covered issue #280 of Strategy and Tactics, perhaps the greatest wargaming magazine of all time. And Matthew David Surridge took a fond look back at Xignals, Waldenbooks’ in-house SF magazine in the late 80s and 90s.

We had plenty for vintage magazine fans this month, too — including a look at The Strange and Happy Life of The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology, and Rich Horton’s Retro Review of the April 1951 Thrilling Wonder Stories.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our Late June Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

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There’s plenty to like in the latest issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction — including a new Alaric story by Phyllis Eisenstein, and short stories by Dominica Phetteplace, Bruce McAllister, and others. Tangent Online‘s Nicky Magas has particular praise for two of its longest tales, including a new novella by Lavie Tidhar, in his online review.

Gunther Sloam is a romantic in a world with no more heart for romance in Lavie Tidhar’s alternate history, “The Vanishing Kind.” When he receives a desperate message from Ulla, an old fling, that reminds him of the old sort of films that he himself used to write, Gunther travels to a post World War II ravaged London in which the Nazi’s have won, thinking of nothing more than rekindling an old flame. But when he arrives he finds Ulla conspicuously vanished, the Gestapo nipping at his heels, and a mysterious dwarf pulling an unknown number of strings from the sidelines. Gunther is far from the lead in a romantic motion picture and reality is a lot colder and meaner than he is prepared to accept.

“The Vanishing Kind” is an interesting mix of noir and alternate history. True to the noir genre, none of the characters are who they appear to be, and the mystery keeps spiraling deeper into the hole and all the while the reader is begging Gunther to just get on the transport and go home. But of course he must uncover each intricately connected layer of his missing paramour and the readers follow his every footstep with nail-biting anticipation.

Here he is on David Gerrold’s novelette “The Thing on the Shelf,” which features a horror writer who’s been nominated for the coveted Stoker Award.

Some things are better left alone. In “The Thing on the Shelf” by David Gerrold, that thing is a Stoker Award. To anyone outside of the horror community, the award is an honor, a mark of prestige. But for those who live and breathe horror, the Stoker — the creepy little stylized haunted mansion with its open and closed door — represents something else. It’s a heavy cross to bear, but someone must do it to keep that distinctly horrific, ominous presence from accumulating in too great an amount in one place.

“The Thing on the Shelf” is a long piece, filed with tangents, and tangents within tangents, and a Lovecraftian antagonist that is never fully explained or revealed. The protagonist is the author himself relaying the events of the horror convention, his subsequent win of the award, and the strange events that occur afterward. The story thus has one foot in reality and one foot outside of it. It is difficult to wade through all the ramblings that seem to have no connection to the heart of the story, but in the end the author assures readers that they all share a connection — if readers are able to find it.

The cover is by Mondolithic Studios (who also did the cover for Black Gate 8) for “Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful.”

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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