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Clarkesworld 97 now on Sale

Clarkesworld 97 now on Sale

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Clarkesworld 97-smallYou know, we don’t pay enough attention to Clarkesworld.

Clarkesworld, founded by Neil Clarke and edited by Sean Wallace, is one of the genre’s pioneering online magazines — and also one of its most successful. It has been published monthly for over eight years, since October 2006. Each issue is packed with fiction, interviews, and articles, and the cover art — like this month’s gorgeously gonzo piece from Sandeep Karunakaran — is consistently excellent. (Click the image at right for the full-size version.)

Clarkesworld is a three-time winner of the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine, and stories from the magazine have been nominated (and won) countless awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Locus, Shirley Jackson, and Stoker Awards. In 2013, for example, Clarkesworld received more Hugo nominations for short fiction than all the leading print magazines (Asimov’s, Analog, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) combined.

If you’re not fond of reading online magazines, Clarkesworld also makes its fiction available in ebook editions, audio podcasts, print issues, and in an annual print and ebook anthology. How convenient can you get?

Issue 97 contains four new stories from E. Catherine Tobler, Maria Dahvana Headley, Helena Bell, and Rahul Kanakia, as well as reprints from K. J. Parker and Alexander C. Irvine. Non-Fiction this issues comes from Brian Francis Slattery and Daniel Abraham, plus an editorial by Neil Clarke and an interview with Robert Reed by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro.

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Fantasy Scroll Magazine 3 Now Available

Fantasy Scroll Magazine 3 Now Available

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Fantasy Scroll Magazine 3-smallThe third issue of the new Fantasy Scroll Magazine is now available, and I’m very happy to see it.

Fantasy Scroll is edited by Iulian Ionescu, Frederick Doot, and Alexandra Zamorski. It’s a quality publication and issues appear online every three months. The contents include all kinds of fantastic literature — science fiction, fantasy, horror, and paranormal short-fiction — and run the gamut from short stories to flash fiction to micro-fiction.

This issue looks very solid, with original fiction from Piers Anthony, Alex Shvartsman, and many others. The cover art is by Suebsin Pulsiri.

Here’s the complete fiction Table of Contents:

“Descant” by Piers Anthony
“The Peacemaker” by Rachel A. Brune
“My Favorite Photos of Anne” by Aaron Polson
“Verisimilitude” by Alan Murdock
“Orc Legal” by James Beamon
“Kindle My Heart” by Rebecca Birch
“Burn in Me” by Carrie Martin

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Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1952: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1952: A Retro-Review

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March 1952 Galaxy magazine-smallThe March, 1952 issue of Galaxy opens with a word from the editor, H. L. Gold. Gold introduces Willy Ley, who’s beginning his monthly department, “For Your Information,” that will vary from complete articles to brief reports on “significant developments in science.”

Along with the introduction, Gold states that a number of readers have asked what he’s like, so shares some details. Of his name, he writes, “Named H(orace) L(eonard) after a prompt casualty in the Princess Pat Regiment. I can’t pretend to be fond of my name, but I don’t use initials to escape it; that was decided upon by an editor, though other editors have used the whole thing. Having had 32 pen names, I find the problem shrug-worthy.” 32 pen names? Was he going for a world record?

About Galaxy, Gold writes, “Galaxy, of course, is my own dream come true. I know I sometimes push too hard, but that’s because everyone wants his dream to be perfect.” I’m glad he did. It was a good dream.

“The Year of the Jackpot” by Robert A. Heinlein — Potiphar Breen is a numbers guy — statistician, analyst, or any role where he can use his skills in numbers and patterns. The latest pattern is an increasing number of odd behaviors, such as women publicly disrobing for no apparent reason. He interviews one of the women, Meade Barstow, and the two of them begin meeting routinely. When the statistics show the approach of an unknown climactic event, Potiphar and Meade flee the city, hoping to avoid becoming a statistic of their own.

I couldn’t quite buy in to the premise of the story, but I let that go. It does move along pretty quickly, and when things start to go bad, they go really bad. And by that point, the predictability of it all isn’t as important as pure survival.

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Twelve Tomorrows: MIT Technology Review SF Annual 2014 now on Sale

Twelve Tomorrows: MIT Technology Review SF Annual 2014 now on Sale

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Twelve Tomorrows MIT Technology Review SF Annual 2014-smallMIT Technology Review has published two highly regarded SF anthologies over the past few years: TRSF (2011) and Twelve Tomorrows (2013). Both included 12 short stories inspired by recent developments reported in the pages of MIT Technology Review and featured an impressive list of contributors, including Neal Stephenson, David Brin, Brian Aldiss, Nancy Kress, Cory Docotorow, Joe Haldeman, and many others.

The 2014 edition has arrived and it looks just as impressive. Edited by Bruce Sterling and featuring original short stories by William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Cory Doctorow, Warren Ellis, Bruce Sterling, Joel Garreau, Paul Graham Raven, Lauren Beukes, and Christopher Brown, this latest volume envisions the future of the Internet, biotechnology, computing, and much more.

It also includes a gallery of work by the great artist John Schoenherr and an interview with fantasy legend Gene Wolfe. See the complete details at the website.

The volume is currently available at better bookstores around the country. It’s also available for Kindle and the iPad, or in a three-volume bundle with TRSF and Twelve Tomorrows (2013) for just $29.95.

Twelve Tomorrows 2014 was edited by Bruce Sterling and published by MIT Technology Review on August 25, 2014. It is 234 pages in magazine format, priced at $12.95 for the print edition and $9.99 for the digital version.

The cover, by John Schoenherr, was also the cover of the original Ace paperback edition of Frank Herbert’s Dune from 1967 (click the image at left for a high-res version).

September Short Story Roundup

September Short Story Roundup

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Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Sept Oct 2014-smallSeptember was a good month for swords & sorcery stories. While the next issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is still several months away, Fantasy & Science Fiction (presently celebrating its sixty-fifth year of publication) has a trio of tales. Swords and Sorcery Magazine, as every month for the past two and a half years, presented two new stories.

I started subscribing to F&SF earlier this year, but until now there haven’t been any S&S stories. Now in the September/October 2014 Issue, they’ve presented three. The first is a novelette by Phyllis Eisenstein. “The Caravan to Nowhere” is a tale in her long-running saga of the minstrel Alaric. It’s actually a reprint, with the story first appearing in the recent anthology Rogues, edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin. The first story in the series, “Born to Exile,” appeared in the same magazine all the way back in 1971.

Alaric is a far-traveling minstrel with magical powers. He can shift his location from one spot to another instantaneously. In a world where such sorcery is usually feared, he is always on the move, seeking fresh opportunities and material for new songs. At the story’s start, he joins a caravan into the desert hunting not just inspiration, but also legendary hidden treasure and a lost city. While the caravan master, Piros, dismisses the tales as only drunken fancy, Alaric decides it’s still worth joining the party.

Alaric discovers that in addition to its purpose of buying salt, the caravan is journeying into the heart of the desert to acquire a supply of the Powder of Desire. It gives its users visions of great wonders, but it’s ultimately dangerous and debilitating. Piros’s dissolute son is himself addicted to the substance. When they arrive at the source of the powder, things take a dangerous turn.

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Tor.com Salutes Solaris Books

Tor.com Salutes Solaris Books

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Solaris Rising 3-smallA while back, I praised Solaris Books for their impressive line of top-notch original anthologies, including Ian Whates’s Solaris Rising, and Jonathan Strahan’s Reach for Infinity. And just a few hours ago (see below), I reported on their upcoming fantasy volume, Fearsome Magics.

Looks like I wasn’t the only one to notice. Last week at Tor.com, Niall Alexander called out the publisher for their splendid recent record on original anthologies:

In recent years, no one publisher has done as much for the short form of speculative fiction in Britain as Solaris. Since the summer, they’ve released Reach for Infinity… the latest volume of Jonathan Strahan’s continuing chronicle of the future history of humanity — reviewed right here by yours truly— alongside the eighth edition of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year and the third in the superb Solaris Rising series.

And there’s much more to come in the coming months. Fearsome Magics, the follow-up to The New Solaris Book of Fantasy, is out in early October — on the same day, indeed, as Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets from Solaris’ sister imprint Abaddon, which proposes to showcase the great detective through a decidedly unlikely lens.

Just this week, readers of When Gravity Falls were treated to an early look at another of the plentiful collections Solaris has on the cards. Dangerous Games is due in December, and it looks to meet, or even exceed, the high standards set by Jonathan Oliver’s previous projects.

Solaris 3 was edited by Ian Whates and released on August 26, 2014. I bought a copy last week and it looks like the same great bargain as the other volumes — a thick 448 pages for just $7.99 in paperback — with stories from  Aliette de Bodard, Ken Liu, Julie E. Czerneda, Tony Ballantyne, Sean Williams, Ian Watson, Adam Roberts, George Zebrowski, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Rachel Swirsky, and many others. The cover is by Pye Parr (click the image at right for a high res version of the front and back cover.)

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September/October Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

September/October Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

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Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Sept Oct 2014-smallI like this era of Internet magazine reviews. When I was growing up, back when computers communicated only through punched cards (or with the voice of Majel Barrett), I would read fabulous short story reviews in fanzines and such, and breathlessly race down to my local news stand to buy the magazine in question, only to have the bookseller look at me funny and say, “That issue sold out six months ago, son.”

Not today. Today, booksellers don’t even know what a magazine is. They still look at me funny though, but now it’s because I forgot to change out of pajama pants before leaving the house.

Also, the wonders of the Internet include short story reviews that appear before the magazine even goes on sale, which means me and my pajama pants can wander out to Barnes & Noble on a Saturday morning to pick up a copy of the September/October issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, after reading this terrific Tangent Online review of “The Caravan To Nowhere,” a new Alaric story in the issue by my friend Phyllis Eisenstein:

Her stories have been nominated for Hugos and Nebulas and this reprint from Rogues, a recent anthology edited by Gardner Dozios and George R. R. Martin, shows why… Alaric, a wandering minstrel and recurring character in Eisenstein’s larger universe, joins a merchant on his journey to harvest a mysterious drug, Powder. The drug has made the merchant’s son an addict and part of Alaric’s job is looking out for the young man, who tends to wander and rant.

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Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1966: A Retro Review

Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1966: A Retro Review

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Fantasy and Science Fiction April 1966-smallI called the last magazine I covered (Fantastic for April 1960) “determinedly minor.” This issue of F&SF seems much more significant to me.

The cover is by Jack Gaughan, illustrating Jack Vance’s Cugel the Clever novelet “The Sorcerer Pharesm.” The features include a Gahan Wilson cartoon, a poem by Doris Pitkin Buck, a very short science snippet by Theodore L. Thomas, Judith Merril’s Books column and Isaac Asimov’s Science column.

Asimov’s column is one of his lesser ones: little but a list of the Nobel Prize winners in the Science fields by nationality. That’s a long list, so it takes up most of his page count. He does a tiny amount of analysis of the numbers, but not much.

Merril begins by reviewing two very ’60s-ish popular science books: LSD: The Consciousness Inducing Drug (edited by David Solomon, with contributions from those you’d expect, like Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, and Timothy Leary), and Games People Play by Eric Berne. She recommends the LSD book, but is quite negative about Games People Play.

In the way of SF, she begins by looking at two John Brunner books, The Day of the Star Cities and The Squares of the City. She identifies the first as “up there with the best of his earlier work” and the second as a step beyond, building on his growth that started with The Whole Man. I think that jibes with the consensus view of Brunner’s career. She ends up saying, “[I]t leaves me very eager to see Brunner’s next.”

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Black Static #40 Now on Sale. Maybe, if You Move Quickly

Black Static #40 Now on Sale. Maybe, if You Move Quickly

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Black Static 40-smallOn my way home from work yesterday, I dropped by Barnes & Noble to pick up the latest issues of Asimov’s SF and Fantasy & Science Fiction. I couldn’t find them at my local B&N here in St. Charles, Illinois, so I made a special trip all the way to Schaumberg.

No dice. After poking behind all the knitting and puzzle magazines for nearly 10 minutes, all I managed to come up with was last month’s Asimov’s and Analog. Both clearly stated “On sale until 9/2” in the bottom left corner, which tells me the new issues are more than a week overdue.

Come on — what’s a guy gotta do to buy a science fiction magazine around here? It’s almost enough to make me give up and buy Health Magazine instead. Maybe I can get some suggestions on how to reduce all this stress in my life.

Now, it’s not strictly true that all I found was Asimov’s and Analog. Just a few inches over, hidden behind the latest issue of McSweeney’s, I discovered something unusual: issue #40 of British horror magazine Black Static.

Well, this is timely. Just last week, as I was formatting the article on the British Fantasy Awards and looking for pics to go with it, I stumbled on the cover of Black Static #33 (containing Best Short Story winner “Signs of the Times,” by Carole Johnstone), and I thought, “Damn, that’s a mighty fine cover, with that creepy subway, and floating vapor, or whatever the heck that is. I should really get a copy of this magazine. I bet I’d like it.”

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August Short Story Roundup

August Short Story Roundup

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oie_955935TUQkHqmzFive weeks off have done a lot to recharge my batteries. Among other things, I actually read several books that are not swords & sorcery in the slightest. Among them were Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy by John LeCarre (rereads both), The Children of Old Leech edited by Russ Lockhart and Justin Steele, Killer Move by Michael Marshall, and Miami Blues by Charles Willeford (also a reread). I recommend all of them highly.

I also read the first of Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood books, Brethren of the Main, and am in the midst of reading The Chronicles of Captain Blood. I can place the revival of my obsession with pirates at Howard Andrew Jones’s and my seven-year-old nephew’s feet. These are books you will definitely be hearing about in the near future.

But enough blather; I’m here to fill you in on the past month’s S&S shorts. Between Swords and Sorcery Magazine #31 and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #21, six new stories made their appearances this past August. You may not love every story or even the ones I do, but I can never stress strongly enough the need to check them out for yourself. The authors and editors need to know there’s an audience for the work they’re doing.

As he has every month for the past two and half years, Curtis Ellett presented two new stories in his most recent issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine. In the first, “Red Cat’s Marriage” by Melanie Henry, the skillfully manipulative daughter of a king brings dire consequences down on herself when she tricks a man into marriage. While well written, it’s not suspenseful nor really fantasy, let alone swords & sorcery.
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Paul Miller’s “A Promise Made” is nice meat-and-potatoes S&S. It’s right on target, giving the reader a heroic sword-wielding main character, a dangerous world filled with deadly denizens, and innocents in peril needing rescue. The Blademistress is a supernaturally gifted warrior working as a guard on a caravan in a world that has fallen to the forces of darkness. She’s determined and more than ready to do whatever is necessary to honor her promises — even to the point of death. Among the many evils haunting her world are the Fallen.

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