Black Gate

The July – August issue of Britain’s longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine is now on sale. The cover, by Martin Hanford, is titled “Green Tea.” (Click the image at right for a bigger version.)

This issue has an intriguing installment in an ongoing series by Chris Butler. Here’s Lois Tilton at Locus Online on “The Deep of Winter”:

A prequel to this author’s series in which people emit spores that signal their emotions to others. Because some persons’ spores are more powerful, a coercive aristocracy has been built on them. Here, our protagonist is Sebastián, trusted servant of the Winter Duke, a member of his Guard. People have been reported missing, and the Duke has ordered the Guard to search the buried old city, where trespass has long been forbidden. Sebastián’s narrative alternates with that of Aluna, a mad scientist from an alternate world, ambitious to experiment with other realities, regardless of the consequences to the inhabitants of those worlds. When they meet in the buried city, questions are answered at last.

Read Lois’ complete comments on the issue here.

…

Read More Read More

The July issue of the online magazine Nightmare is now available.

Fiction this month includes original short stories from Alison Littlewood and Nate Southard, and reprints from Lisa Tuttle and Christopher Golden:

Original Stories

“Wolves and Witches and Bears” by Alison Littlewood
“The Cork Won’t Stay” by Nate Southard

Reprints

“Replacements” by Lisa Tuttle (originally published in Metahorror, 1992)
“Under Cover Of Night” by Christopher Golden  (Originally published in Five Strokes to Midnight, 2007)

The non-fiction this issue includes the latest installment in their long-running horror column, “The H Word” (“The Politics of Horror”), plus author spotlights, a showcase on cover artist Dennis Carlsson, an editorial, and a feature interview with Kc Wayland & David Cummings.

…

Read More Read More

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 177 has two new short stories by Caroline M. Yoachim and Kate Marshall, and a podcast by Karalynn Lee:

Seasons Set in Skin by Caroline M. Yoachim
Horimachi’s own tattoos were from before the war, when black ink was made of soot instead of faery blood.

Stone Prayers by Kate Marshall
Mattar comes to the house of Anaharesh in search of a single word; a word to end a war.

Audio Fiction Podcast: Court Bindings by Karalynn Lee
The sparrow had too diminutive a mind to realize it could serve you longer by taking time to eat and sleep.

Caroline M. Yoachim has been published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and Lightspeed. Her previous story for Beneath Ceaseless Skies was “The Land of Empty Shells.” Kate Marshall’s work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Pseudopod, and Crossed Genres.

Issue 177 was published on July 9. Read it online completely free here.

…

Read More Read More

In his editorial this issue, Editor-in-Chief Neil Clarke recalls the birth of the magazine at Readercon:

Our ninth anniversary will occur in October, but the magazine was born at Readercon. At the Friday night Meet the Pros(e) party, Sean Wallace and I got into a long discussion about online magazines spurred on by SciFiction’s recent closure. [SciFiction was the Sci Fi channel’s online magazine and its demise was a huge blow to the perceived credibility of the medium.] That night, we spent hours trying to figure out why so many online magazines had failed and what it would take to make one succeed. Sleep-deprived and a bit too overconfident, we came up with a business model we thought would work. By the end of the weekend, it was a done deal: I was launching a magazine. Nine years later, that wild little experiment is turning into what I hope will become my career. Not bad for something I stumbled into with no prior experience.

Over the past nine years, Clarkesworld has become one of the most important magazines in the field, a three-time winner of the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. In 2013 it received more Hugo nominations for short fiction than all the leading print magazines (Asimov’s, Analog, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) combined, and last November the magazine was awarded a World Fantasy Award.

Issue #106 of Clarkesworld has seven stories — five new, and two reprints — from Sam J. Miller, Kay Chronister, Natalia Theodoridou, Pan Haitian, Yoon Ha Lee, Keith Brooke, and Adam Roberts.

…

Read More Read More

Congratulations to Ursula Vernon, whose story “Jackalope Wives” (Apex 56) won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story! Charlie Jane Anders at io9 called it “the most beautiful story I’ve read in ages.” Check it out here.

Columnist Charlotte Ashley reviews the Hugo Award short fiction nominees this month in her short fiction column in Apex #74, and she address the controversy head on:

I will not be coy and pretend I do not know that the contenders for this year’s Hugo Awards are controversial. The nominees in, especially, the short fiction categories have mostly been drawn from the “Rabid Puppies” slate: stories chosen to reflect the values of a vocal ideological minority in fandom, often published by them directly. These are stories that were largely unfamiliar to most readers of speculative fiction until very recently.

I intend to vote in the Hugo Awards, and while I am well aware that voting “No Award” in the face of a slate offered in bad faith is an option preferred by many of my peers, I prefer to make my decisions armed with well-informed reasons for my choices. I have opted to read the slates with a generous attitude, to determine for myself if there are any hidden gems in the corners of SFF that I have unfairly overlooked.

“On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2) is definitely not that gem. This is a straight-forward piece about a Methodist minister posted to a remote outpost on the planet Ymilas. The local aliens are a “low-tech highly-ritualized” people who live alongside the ghosts of their dead, called “Helpful Ancestors.”…

Read the compete article online here.

…

Read More Read More

I buy Asimov’s for the fiction, but I always read Sheila Williams’ editorial first. This issue, she write some wise words on what appreciation means to authors — even authors who’ve made it to the pinnacle of their field.

Isaac Asimov… told me that he hadn’t felt himself a complete success until his peers, the Science Fiction Writers of America, named him a Grand Master… On our way to the Readers’ Award celebration that year, I mentioned Isaac’s wistful comments about the Grand Master Award to Stan [Schmidt, editor of Analog]. Stan was stunned. Despite all his accomplishments, even Isaac Asimov needed reassurance? Did this mean the situation was hopeless for the rest of us?…

I’ve always thought that Isaac’s desire for SFWA’s Grand Master Award had more to do with the human need to set goals and strive forward than it did with any further wish for career validation. After all, by 1987 Isaac had already won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, and five Locus Poll awards. In 1982 he’d finally made the New York Times best sellers’ list as well. Yet if even Isaac was not quite satisfied, then what about all the unsung scriveners — those that only win one or two awards, those that only end up with one or two nominations, and those that are never even nominated?…

I recently came across an amusing Facebook comment by Daniel Hatch. “I’ve been publishing stories for twenty-five years now, and every time someone says they’ve read one of them, I feel like I’ve won a Hugo. I think I have seven of them.”… So readers… let those writers know when you read and enjoy their tales. An appreciative comment may not be a Hugo or a Nebula, but it can be exactly what an author needs to keep producing their very best stories.

There’s lot of great fiction this month, with stories from Will McIntosh, Paul McAuley, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and many others.

…

Read More Read More

New editor C. C. Finlay seems to be settling in nicely. His first effort as editor, the July-August 2014 issue of F&SF, produced a Nebula Award, for Alaya Dawn Johnson’s “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i.” It’s too early to see if his second, the May-June issue, will fare as well, but it did includes good stories from David Gerrold, Albert E. Cowdrey, Sarah Pinsker, Amy Sterling Casil, and others, so things look promising.

And so on to the third issue, with stories by Rachel Pollack, Richard Chwedyk, James Patrick Kelly, Naomi Kritzer, an Archonate story featuring Cascor the discriminator by Matthew Hughes, and others. Martha Burns reviews the fiction at Tangent Online, saying “The Deepwater Bride” by Tamsyn Muir “gives us some of what P.G. Wodehouse gave us with Bertie Wooster’s zippy argot… brilliant.”

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

NOVELLAS

• “Johnny Rev” – Rachel Pollack

…

Read More Read More