Black Gate

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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There aren’t a lot of print horror magazines left, so I’m grateful we still have Cemetery Dance. It was founded by Richard Chizmar in 1988, while he was still in college, and it is still edited by him today. Cemetery Dance Publications began to publish books in 1992, and quickly outgrew the magazine, but CD Publications has continued to publish approximately two issues a year of the magazine for the past 27 years.

Issue #73 is cover-dated December 2015, and is currently for sale on the CD website (although the issue is listed as forthcoming.) It has new fiction from Gerard Houarner, Keith Minnion, Michael Wehunt, Nik Houser, and Amanda C. Davis. Here’s the complete contents.

Fiction

“A Devil Inside” by Gerard Houarner
“Down There” by Keith Minnion
“The Inconsolable” by Michael Wehunt
“Citizen Flame” by Nik Houser
“Voices Without Voices, Words With No Words” by Amanda C. Davis

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