Black Gate

So much news from Clarkesworld this month. The big news is that it is now accepting fiction up to 16,000 words — great news for those of us who enjoy longer stories. Its rates have increased as well: it’s now paying 10¢ per word for the first 5,000 words, and 8¢ for each word over 5,000. And at the Nebulas last weekend, I met editor Neil Clarke and learned he had no less than three stories he’d edited up last for awards — more than any other editor in the field.

Issue #105 is now on sale, and it’s a great time to try Clarkesworld if you haven’t before. It contains four new short stories, plus reprints from Terry Bisson (the first Wilson Wu and Irving story) and Caitlin R. Kiernan.

Short stories featured this issue are:

“Somewhere I Have Never Traveled (Third Sound Remix)” by E. Catherine Tobler
“Asymptotic” by Andy Dudak
“This Wanderer, in the Dark of the Year” by Kris Millering
“Forestspirit, Forestspirit” by Bogi Takács
“The Hole in the Hole” by Terry Bisson (from Asimov’s Science Fiction, February 1994)
“Riding the White Bull” by Caitlin R. Kiernan (from Argosy Magazine, January-February 2004)

Non-fiction includes “The Day-Glo Dystopia of Poly Styrene: Punk Prophet and Science Fiction Priestess” by Jason Heller, “The Paradox of the Telescope: A Conversation with Robert Charles Wilson” by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, “Another Word: The Vaguely Picaresque Adventures of a New Writer” by John Chu; and an editorial, “Once Again Down the Rabbit Hole” by Neil Clarke, in which he analyzes the results of his reader survey. This issue also includes two podcasts.

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You know what happens if you neglect Scott H. Andrews for 15 days? He publishes two issues of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, making you look out of touch and behind the times.

So here we are playing catch-up, because Scott publishes magazines faster than I can write about them. Why doesn’t he publish one issue a year, like a normal person?

Let’s start with issue #175, ’cause it has monsters on the cover, and we know what that means (it means it’s awesome). The issue is cover-dated June 11, and contains two short stories, a podcast, and a reprint.

“On Freedom of Agency and the Finding of Lost Hearts” by Ken Scholes
“I’ll kill you in the morning,” I mumbled into the drool I’d made on his pillow.

“Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” by Rose Lemberg
Behind us, a great hole in the ground gaped, but I wouldn’t have dared look into it even if grandmother hadn’t pulled me inside the tent.

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Shimmer #25, cover-dated May 2015, offers four new stories. Three are currently available on the website; the fourth will be available on June 16.

“The Proper Motion of Extraordinary Stars,” by Kali Wallace
Smoke rose from the center of Asunder Island, marring a sky so blue and so clear it made Aurelia’s eyes ache. The sailors had been insisting for days she would see the Atrox swooping and turning overhead, if only she watched long enough, but there was no sign of the great birds.

“The Mothgate,” by J.R. Troughton
We knelt behind the crumbling wall, rifles balanced over its brow, peeking over the moss-stained stone and into the dense trees that lay beyond. I tried as best I could to stop my teeth from chattering, but the winter night was bitterly cold. Mama Rattakin didn’t seem to notice. She was staring toward the tree line, pointing with her black and withered hand.

“Good Girls,” by Isabel Yap
You’ve denied the hunger for so long that when you transform tonight, it hurts more than usual. You twist all the way round, feel your insides slosh and snap as you detach. Your wings pierce your skin as you leave your lower half completely. A sharp pain rips through your guts, compounding the hunger. Drifting toward the open window, you carefully unfurl your wings. It’s an effort not to make a sound.

“In the Rustle of Pages,” by Cassandra Khaw (available 6/16)
Li Jing looks up from the knot of lavender yarn in her hands, knitting needles ceasing their silvery chatter. The old woman smiles, head cocked. There is something subtly cat-like about the motion, a smoothness that belies the lines time has combed into her round face, a light that burns where life has waned.

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The May–June issue of Britain’s longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine is now on sale.

The cover, by Martin Hanford, is titled “Dorian Gray,” and is a fine (and terrifically creepy) re-interpretation of the 1891 novel by Oscar Wildle… with space suits. I like it. Click the image at right for a bigger version.

Interzone #258 contains five stories:

“a shout is a prayer / for the waiting centuries” by T.R. Napper
“The Re’em Song” by Julie C. Day
“Doors” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
“Angel Fire” by Christien Gholson
“Her First Harvest” by Malcolm Devlin

Non-fiction this issue includes “Freak Zone” by Christopher Fowler. Here’s the first paragraph:

My former agent once told me, “I accept any kind of fiction except science fiction.” When I asked her why, she explained, “I just don’t think I could do it justice,” which was a polite way of saying that she didn’t understand it. But to me, not understanding everything was the point and purpose of reading.

There’s also “Future Interrupted,” by Jonathan McCalmont, and Nina Allan’s “Time Pieces” column, this month titled: “Election Special: the Hugos, the Puppies, and the Big Pile of Poo.”

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Yesterday, during the Nebula Awards banquet here in Chicago, I had the opportunity to talk with Gordon van Gelder, long-time publisher and editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and get his take on how well the transition to new editor C. C. Finlay has been proceeding. It was great to hear that he sees the same things I do — that F&SF has a new level of energy, and that the transition has generated some long overdue attention and interest for the magazine.

Jerard Bretts’s review at Tangent Online is fairly typical of the comments I’m seeing.

Charles Finlay’s second issue as editor is a strong one. The powerful stories by Grossbach, Gerrold and Sarafin are alone worth the price of entry.

Robert Grossbach’s “Entrepreneurs” is the longest and best story in this issue. Stretching from 1952 into the near future, it tells of the efforts of enterprising engineer Morty Rushman to make it big in business ─ with the help of some equally enterprising aliens from the Eep planet, Narusto. Grossbach uses the theme of alien contact to make some very amusing points about modern American capitalism in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. The humour reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Sheckley, and there can’t be much higher praise than that.

This issue also features a Lovecraftian horror story by Albert E. Cowdrey, James Sarafin’s tale of hunting the wild creatures of the Pleistocene, a semi-autobiographical story by David Gerrold, and fiction from Lisa Mason, Sarah Pinsker, Caroline M. Yoachim, Amy Sterling Casil, and Rob Chilson.

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We cover exclusively fantasy magazines here at Black Gate… although our definition of “fantasy” can be pretty liberal. From time to time we’ve included science fiction magazines, horror zines, art and game publications, and others. If we think BG readers could conceivably be interested, we’ll give it a look.

Last week, more or less on a whim, I laid down $12.95 for the big Summer Reading issue of Tin House. Tin House is an American literary magazine, showcasing fiction and poetry from new and established writers. The magazine was founded in 1999, and has published fiction by Stephen King, Kelly Link, Jonathan Lethem, David Foster Wallace, Aimee Bender, Richard Ford, Donna Tartt, and many others. The Summer Reading issue is huge — 224 pages — and filled with fiction. In his Editor’s Note, Rob Spillman gives us a sneak peek at the contents.

For this issue, five New Voices caught our eye… We admired the confidence and precision of the prose in the short stories of Sarah Elaine Smith and Matthew Socia — Smith’s “Pink Lotion” following a problematic addiction recovery, Socia’s “American Tramplings” being the tale of a stampede epidemic. While discovering emerging writers is always a thrill, it is a different excitement reading the work of masters who are in full command of their powers. For readers unfamiliar with the latest Nobel Laureate, Patrick Modiano, his “Page-a-Day” (beautifully translated from the French by Edward Gauvin) is an ideal introduction, wherein the author explores his favorite subject — Paris — and obsesses on time, memory, and the legacy of World War II. In “Forgetting Mississippi,” Lewis Hyde revisits the brutal 1964 murder of two young black men. Hyde, who was a civil rights activist at the time, not only puts the crime in context but also does the seemingly impossible — searches for forgiveness.

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