Black Gate

September/October 2021 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and The Magazine
of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Eldar Zakirov, Kurt Huggins, and David A. Hardy

The September/October print magazines are still on sale for a few more days, which means there’s still time to grab them before the November/December issues push them off shelves. Here’s a few reasons to do that. We’ll start with Victoria Silverwolf’s Tangent Online review of the current Asimov’s.

“Sleep and the Soul” by Greg Egan takes place in the United States in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. In this version of the past, however, people do not sleep, and any form of unconsciousness is considered to be equivalent to death. The protagonist is knocked out in an accident and is buried. He manages to escape from his coffin, but finds out that his parents think of him as a demon wearing their dead son’s body. He leaves his home with the woman he loves, taking on a new identity in an attempt to avoid the mobs who would destroy him as a monster. He goes on to become involved with a showman and a dentist experimenting with anesthesia…

The narrator of “Shooting at Warner’s Bay” by Michèle Laframboise is an actress, with a role in a monster movie being filmed on a remote, uninhabited island. The place turns out to have its own weird dangers. This story about making a cheap horror film is, itself, similar to a B movie…

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Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #49 was released to the world in August. 

Fiction

“A Song of Pictish Kings,” by Adrian Cole, artwork by Andrea Alemanno and Gary McClusky. Elak of Atlantis returns to our electronic pages! Generations of Pictish raiding along the Atlantean coast comes to a sudden halt and a bold Chieftain of the Picts requests the aid of the Atlanteans against a mutual supernatural enemy. Or is it a trap? Or is it both? Thrill to the adventure of young King Elak as he unthreads the mystery!

“Old Ghosts,” by Greg Mele, artwork by Justin Pfiel. Mele returns with another tale set in his alternate history Meso-American Azatlán world. Few living men would dare to cross seasoned warrior Nopaltzin Seven-Reed, but the dead play by different rules and have different goals. Even the greatest warrior cannot live without sleep and Nopaltzin must take the fight into the world of the dead. A phenomenal tale!

“The Pass,” by Nick Mazolillo, artwork by Andrea Alemanno. Young Strand has nearly finished his training guarding the world from Otherworld. But the Otherworld has its own rules and logic and young Strand’s difficult apprenticeship is coming to a difficult end. A great, dreamy work that drifts into nightmare.

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Interzone 290-291. Wraparound cover by Vincent Sammy

There was some uncertainty about the fate of British SF magazine Interzone at the beginning of the year. Well, I was uncertain, anyway. Long-time publisher and editor Andy Cox announced the magazine was being sold, then quietly announced it wasn’t. The January-February 2021 issue never appeared. But then, out of the blue, this beautiful and massive double issue appeared in June to lay all doubts to rest. Here’s the description from the website.

192 gorgeous full color pages packed full of modern science fiction and fantasy: New long and short stories by Alexander Glass, Tim Major, Lyle Hopwood, Daniel Bennett, Cécile Cristofari, Matt Thompson, John Possidente, Lavie Tidhar, and Shauna O’Meara; Climbing Stories by Aliya Whiteley (x2); Ansible Link by David Langford; lots of book reviews; six and a half thousand words of Nick Lowe’s Mutant Popcorn; wraparound cover art by Vincent Sammy and story illustrations by Jim Burns, Vince Haig, Richard Wagner, Dave Senecal, Ev Shipard and others.

Interzone is one of the most beautiful SF magazines on the market. Here’s a sample of some of the gorgeous interior art.

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July/August 2021 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and The Magazine
of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Shutterstock.com, Tomislav Tikulin, and Alan M. Clark

Short story reviews have been part of the genre since the first SF pulps started publishing letters from young fans in the back pages in the 1920s. What’s different these days is that you can read reviews online, get excited about the current issues, and leisurely make your way to your local bookstore in plenty of time to grab the magazines you want.

That’s a consequence of multiple factors — including the move to bi-monthly publication for most major print zines, and the endurance of review sites like Tangent Online, Locus Online, and Quick Sip Reviews, among others — but it’s largely due to a small group of short fiction reviewers, almost all volunteers, who move quickly to read the latest zines and get thoughtful and well-written coverage posted with all dispatch. Here’s what a few of those folks thought of the July/August genre print magazines.

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