Black Gate

The November issue of the online magazine Nightmare contains original short stories from Matthew Kressel and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and reprints from Gemma Files (“The Emperor’s Old Bones,” which won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Short Story of 1999) and F. Paul Wilson (another reprint from the 1984 anthology Masques).

Original Stories

“Lacrimosa” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The woman is a mound of dirt and rags pushing a squeaky shopping cart; a lump that moves steadily, slowly forward as if dragged by an invisible tide. Her long, greasy hair hides her face but Ramon feels her staring at him. He looks ahead. The best thing to do with the homeless mob littering Vancouver is to ignore it. Give them a buck and the beggars cling to you like barnacles. “Have you seen my children?” the woman asks.

“Demon in Aisle 6” by Matthew Kressel
I first saw the demon the Sunday after you died. It was 11:53 p.m. Just seven minutes until I would have grabbed my knapsack and biked home to Mom and bed and a life of sound sleep. That night the flurries were drifting down like nuclear ash.

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Editor John Joseph Adams shares some good news in his editorial this month.

Back in August, it was announced that both Lightspeed and our Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue specifically had been nominated for the British Fantasy Award. (Lightspeed was nominated in the Periodicals category, while WDSF was nominated in the Anthology category.) The awards were presented October 25 at FantasyCon 2015 in Nottingham, UK, and, alas, Lightspeed did not win in the Periodicals category. But WDSF did win for Best Anthology! Huge congrats to Christie Yant and the rest of the WDSF team, and thanks to everyone who voted for, supported, or helped create WDSF! You can find the full list of winners at britishfantasysociety.org. And, of course, if you somehow missed out on WDSF, you can learn more about that, including where to buy it, at destroysf.com.

This month Lightspeed has original fantasy from Helena Bell and Kenneth Schneyer, and fantasy reprints by Toh EnJoe and Karen Joy Fowler, and original SF by Rahul Kanakia and Caroline M. Yoachim, plus SF reprints by Brian Stableford and Kameron Hurley. All that plus their usual author spotlights, an interview with Ernest Cline, and book and movie reviews. eBook readers get a bonus reprint of Elizabeth Hand’s novella “The Least Trumps,” and an excerpt from Mira Grant’s novel Chimera.

Here’s the complete fiction contents for the November issue.

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According to several reliable sources (and even some photographs), BCS editor Scott H. Andrews was at the World Fantasy Convention two weeks ago. I know most of the editors in the field, but I’ve never met Scott, and that’s an oversight I’d like to correct some day. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make the con this year. Ah well! Next year for sure.

Issue #186 has short fiction from Bruce McAllister and Tamara Vardomskaya, and a podcast by Cory Skerry. It is cover-dated November 12.

“Holy Water, Holy Blood” by Bruce McAllister
He was comparing me, a peasant boy, to himself, a pope, but this did not feel strange. He wanted us to be friends — that I could tell — so why not make of us equals?

“The Guardian’s Head “by Tamara Vardomskaya
This bridge, I knew, was itself a sign of the empress’s faith in us. A permanent bridge expected the water to yield and hold back.

Audio Fiction Podcast:
“Bloodless” by Cory Skerry
But she wouldn’t let him make it through the gate; the inside guards were there to deal with travelers. Kamalija was here to deal with monsters.

Bruce McAllister has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Shirley Jackson Awards. Tamara Vardomskaya is a Canadian writer who has previously appeared at Tor.com. Cory Skerry’s last story for Beneath Ceaseless Skies was “Sinking Among Lilies” (Issue #92).

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Mark Cole’s nonfiction article “You Wouldn’t Be Reading This If It Weren’t For Buck Rogers,” in the latest issue of Clarkesworld, is a fond look back at one of the most important characters in the history of science fiction, and the famous comic strip he spawned.

Buck got his start in a singularly dull novelette by Philip Nowlan, “Armageddon—2419 AD,” in the August 1928 Amazing Stories (its cover looks so much like the classic images of Buck that no one notices it illustrates E.E. “Doc” Smith’s story, Skylark of Space).

By now everyone knows the story: Rogers gets trapped in a mine filled with a mysterious radioactive gas and wakes up almost five hundred years later. But then it bogs down in endless descriptions of future technology, future history, and future language. Even the “exciting” action is told in a detached tone, more suitable for a history text than a pulp adventure.

Yet, within a year, it became one of the most popular comic strips ever.

Issue #110 of Clarkesworld has seven stories — five new, and two reprints — from Naomi Kritzer, Nin Harris, Sara Saab, Krista Hoeppner Leahy, Xia Jia, Tim Sullivan, and Ellen Kushner & Ysabeau S. Wilce.

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The Dark is a quarterly magazine co-edited by Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace. The tenth issue features four all-original short stories:

“The Devil Under the Maison Blue” by Michael Wehunt
“The Canary” by Lisa L. Hannett
“Self, Contained” by Kirstyn McDermott
“What Hands Like Ours Can Do” by Megan Arkenberg

You can read issues free online, or help support the magazine by subscribing to the ebook editions, available for the Kindle and Nook in Mobi and ePub format. Issues are around 50 pages, and priced at $2.99 through Amazon, B&N.com, Apple, Kobo, and other fine outlets. A one-year sub (six issues) is just $15 – subscribe today.

If you enjoy the magazine you can also support it by buying their books, reviewing stories, or even just leaving comments. Read issue 10 here, and see their complete back issue catalog here.

The cover for the November issue is by NKMandic.

The issue is cover dated November 2015. We last covered The Dark with Issue 9.

See our November Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent Magazine coverage here.

I’m getting behind on BCS again (already??), so it’s time to play catch-up.

Issue #185 is the special Halloween issue, and contains new fiction from Ian McHugh and Cory Skerry, a podcast by Rebecca Campbell, and a reprint by Christopher Green. It is cover-dated October 29.

“Demons Enough,” by Ian McHugh
The leech crouched in the broken hole where the window had been. Its glamour made it hard to discern details. Thorfinn had seen leeches in daylight, knew the ragged, filthy reality. His gaze flickered involuntarily up to the dark hollows of its eyes. It was an effort to tear away again from the hypnotic stare.

“Bloodless,” by Cory Skerry
The strange moment broke, and suddenly the stranger in her circle was an enemy again, and Kamalija struck out with her knife. He had already ducked back, and the blade dragged then stopped at the line where they’d poured her blood, as if the air was made of clay. She couldn’t force it any further, and she watched his back as he bounded into the forest.

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The sixth issue of online-only Interfictions magazine, cover dated November 2015, is now available.

Interfictions began as an anthology series launched by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss, with Christopher Barzak as co-editor of the second volume. In 2013 the magazine moved to the internet, becoming Interfictions Online. It publishes poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and hybrids forms.

The fiction this issue is guest-edited by Carmen Maria Machado and Sam J. Miller. In their Editorial, they describe the issue thusly:

Several of the issue’s pieces deal with family: in “A Primer on Separation,” Debbie Urbanski provides a heartbreaking how-to manual for navigating the gulf that opens up between parent and child, while Lisa Bradley’s “glass womb” reaches into the obscure and frightening territory between siblings. Shveta Thakrar tells a slipstream story of how our mothers’ gifts help us, and sometimes fail us, in “Shimmering, Warm and Bright.” In “Answering Crow’s Call” by Alina Rios, family history falls like a thunderclap.

Moving from personal history to spiritual heritage, “Psychopomp” by Indrapramit Das looks at life and death through the lens of Hindu philosophy in the shadow of a cosmic tsunami. In “Assemble”, theatre dybbuk, in collaboration with the Center for Jewish Culture, Leichtag Foundation, and the New School of Architecture and Design, create a unique theatre/dance/architecture piece inspired by the ancient ritual surrounding the harvest festival of Sukkot.

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