Black Gate

The January 21st issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, issue #191, has original short fiction from Chaz Brenchley and D.K. Thompson, a podcast, and a reprint by Dean Wells.

“In Skander, for a Boy” by Chaz Brenchley
I was sure this boy did know a back way to the kitchens. That was his Skander, and his experience: covert, insinuating, conditional. Not mine. “This is my way, my king’s way,” in through the front door to ask straightforwardly for what I wanted. They would see Rulf at my back, and all his ships behind him; they would not refuse me. In and out.

“Blessed are Those Who Have Seen and Do Not Believe” by D.K. Thompson
I chuckled, cracked open my pistol’s cylinder, and loaded it with the wooden ammunition. “Don’t worry, my dear,” I said, and tucked the gun in my waistband. “There’s plenty of time before sunrise.”

Audio Fiction Podcast:
“Blessed are Those Who Have Seen and Do Not Believe” by D.K. Thompson

From the Archives:
“To the Gods of Time and Engines, a Gift” by Dean Wells (from BCS #80, October 20, 2011)
The silent commands were with her all the time now, haunting and familiar.

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The latest issue of Grimdark, the quarterly magazine of dark fantasy, has brand new fiction from a quartet of hot new fantasy writers — including a Manifest Delusions tale by Michael R. Fletcher (set in the world of his novel Beyond Redemption), and a Vault of Heaven story by Peter Orullian (set in the world of Trial of Intentions). The issue also has fiction by T. R. Napper, and an excerpt from Mitchell Hogan’s novel Blood of Innocents.

The latest issue went on sale January 13. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

Short Stories

“At the Walls of Sinnlos” by Michael R. Fletcher
“A Fair Man” by Peter Orullian
“Twelve Minutes to Vinh Quang” by T. R. Napper

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Over at GigaNotoSaurus, editor Rashida J. Smith surveys every single story they published last year, which is awfully handy for latecomers like me who’ve just started following this fabulous magazine.

2015 concluded my second year as editor (officially my first full year of choosing stories) and looking at the stories that did make the cut it’s easier to see themes emerge.

In “Serving Girl,” “The Business of Buying and Selling,” “Blow the Moon Out,” and “Quarter Days,” relationships play an important role in navigating the strange new worlds the protagonists find themselves in.

“The Stars, Their Faces Uplifted in Song” and “And the Ends of the Earth for Thy Possession,” tackle the complexity of faith in distant futures and alternate worlds.

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The January/February issue of F&SF is all about the planet Mars — starting with a great cover, titled “Martian Vortex,” by Bob Eggleton. Here’s editor C.C. Finley:

Usually we start with a story and commission a cover for it but when Bob Eggleton sent us the Martian landscape that adorns this issue, we snatched up the illustration and went looking for stories to match. In the end, we found you not one, but three, all of them very different in tone and focus.

The Three Tales of Mars promised on the cover are by Gregory Benford, Alex Irvine, and Mary Robinette Kowal. The issue also includes stores by Alex Irvine, David Gerrold, Matthew Hughes, Terry Bisson, Albert E. Cowdrey and others.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

NOVELETS

• “Number Nine Moon” – Alex Irvine
• “The White Piano” – David Gerrold
• “Telltale” – Matthew Hughes

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The tenth issue of the online-only Fantasy Scroll Magazine, cover dated December 2015, is now available. In his editorial Iulian Ionescu’s celebrates the release of their Year One anthology, Dragons, Droids and Doom, and points out that in Year Two Fantasy Scroll published 55 short stories from 53 authors, totaling 181,000 words of fiction.

Iulian also provides his usual sneak peek of the contents of the issue. Here’s a snippet:

We start with “The Genie and the Inquisitor,” a new and fresh take on the genie myth by Johnny Compton, partly funny and partly horrific, but definitely bone-chilling. “The Hummingbird Air” by Paul Roberge is next, a fantasy story that follows the path of a boy and his growth into a man, ready to deliver a life-long awaited revenge.

Next is “The Empty Faux-Historical Residential Unit” by Rachel Hochberg, a science fiction story that takes place in a future dominated by robots, but brings us back into an old-fashion London scene. Jeremy Szal delights us in his epic fantasy story “Last Age of Kings”; there’s a lot of bloody action in this story, but also depth of character, all happening in an interesting setting.

“Kara’s Ares” is another science fiction story, by Clint Spivey, who follows the struggle of a mission to Mars and its aftermath. For some comic relief, we follow with “Protecting Nessie” by Hank Quense, who tells the story of three sisters with magical powers, fighting hard to defend the pet of their queen. “Dancing an Elegy, His Own” by Julie Novakova is next — a science fiction story that focuses more on the relationship between characters than on the setting, creating an emotionally loaded atmosphere, and closing with an unexpected twist.

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The January 7th issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, issue #190, has original short fiction from Mike Allen and Walter Dinjos, a podcast, and a reprint by Ann Chatham.

“Longsleeves” by Mike Allen
Never before had she run with such speed or such fear, caroming off trees, tearing through brush, ripping loose the roots that hooked her feet, until she caught up to Hundeil. Both were wheezing with exhaustion when they reached the gnarled behemoth of a tree that proved to be Olderra’s dwelling. Its bark parted like curtains to admit them.

“The Mama Mmiri” by Walter Dinjos
It had been a fortnight since Ugo’s burial, and the vacuum I felt within me grew ever larger. I jumped out of bed most nights with screams that made mama down two cupfuls of Mazi Ike’s supposedly heart-mellowing concoction every day, and I couldn’t continue huddling under the avocado tree beside Ugo’s grave every other night weeping.

Audio Fiction Podcast:
The Mama Mmiri by Walter Dinjos
I longed for someone with whom I could engage in our papaya-pipe-gun battles in the surrounding forests.

From the Archives:
“A Marble for the Drowning River” by Ann Chatham (from BCS #94, May 3, 2012)
I was afraid to say anything, but my mouth said, “please don’t kill her” without making any sound.

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In his December Short Story Roundup, Fletcher Vredenburgh gives as eloquent a summary as I’ve seen for the vital importance of short fiction to fantasy, and in particular to sword & sorcery:

Before I get into the reviews, I thought I’d say a little about why I’ve made it a major part of my writing to review and publicize S&S short stories. While there have been good S&S novels… the beating heart of the genre has always been short stories. From that opening blast of thunder in REH’s “The Shadow Kingdom” — and through the decades in the works of authors as diverse as C.L. Moore, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, and Charles Saunders — it’s been in short stories that the genre’s been best displayed.

The hallmarks of swords & sorcery are adventure, dark fantasy, horror, and a narrow focus on only a few characters, bound together in a narrative that reads like a shot of mainlined adrenaline. In the very best stories — KEW’s “Reflections for the Winter of My Soul,” for example — they’re all present. Not that there can’t be structural complexity, finely detailed characters, or exquisitely tooled prose, but it must be exciting. Detours into side-plots, passages meticulously describing feasts, too many secondary and tertiary characters all put brakes on the action. Limited to fifteen or thirty pages, the focus is on the protagonist and his or her immediate situation…

The very best stories I have read in my years of reviewing S&S are the ones that come closest to meeting the demands I’ve put out above. There are dozens of authors working like mad to create stories that will thrill and chill you, and grab you out of the safety of your comfy chair for a little while. It’s those tellers of tales I’m on constant watch for and hoping to hip readers to. I want S&S to continue as a living, breathing genre, not one content to exist as a museum for forty- or seventy-year-old stories.

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Neil Clarke uses his editorial this issue to announce the 2015 Reader’s Poll and Contest. Vote for your favorite Clarkesworld story and cover art, and you could win one of three copies of Clarkesworld: Year Eight (publishing this month). Voting is open now through February 23rd, and the results will be announced in the March issue. Cast your votes here!

Issue #112 of Clarkesworld has four new stories by Robert Reed, E. Catherine Tobler, Rich Larson, and Bao Shu, and two reprints by Robert Silverberg and Megan Lindholm.

Short stories featured this issue are:

“The Algorithms of Value” by Robert Reed
“The Abduction of Europa” by E. Catherine Tobler
“Extraction Request” by Rich Larson
“Everybody Loves Charles” by Bao Shu
“The True Vintage of Erzuine Thale” by Robert Silverberg (from Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance, 2009.)
“Old Paint” by Megan Lindholm (from Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 2012)

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