Black Gate

The November–December issue of Britain’s longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine has reached bookstores here in Illinois, which means it’s probably available everywhere. This month has a terrific cover by 2016 cover artist Vincent Sammy (with an evocative title, “The Orion Crusades: Infection” — click the image at right for a bigger version) and new fiction by Harmony Neal, Ryan Row, Sarah Brooks, Rich Larson, Samantha Henderson, and David Cleden. There’s also a feature by Martin McGrath on the James White Award; David Langford’s Ansible Link, film reviews by Nick Lowe; DVD/Blu-ray reviews by Tony Lee; book reviews, an interview with Chris Becket, and columns by Jonathan McCalmont and Nina Allan.

Kevin P Hallett, writing at Tangent Online, particularly liked “My Generations Shall Praise” by Samantha Henderson.

A death-row inmate gets an offer from a rich, but dying, cousin. The cousin wants to have her own mind, her memories and behaviors, mapped onto the inmate’s mind – effectively replacing the death-row inmate’s mind. In return, the rich cousin will set up a trust for the inmate’s daughter and future grandchild.

At first, the inmate sees no reason to ‘die’ any sooner. But after a few days to think it over, she decides that maybe she can hold onto a part of her mind. So she agrees and signs the contract.

With just days to live, the inmate has second thoughts. She puts herself in her cousin’s place and realizes she will use her daughter and future generations to live forever. She can keep breeding new vessels to transfer her mind into. As a death-row inmate she cannot escape the mind swap. Can she find another way to stop her cousin using her future generations?

And “You Make Pattaya” by Rich Larson.

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I’m long overdue to check in on Apex. It releases its content in stages, one week at a time, which leaves me a narrow window at the end of the month to report on the magazine if I want all the content links to work. Since Lightspeed, Nightmare, and a few others do the same thing, it’s inevitable that a few magazines get dropped every month.

Well, enough of my troubles. You want to hear about all the great things in the latest issue, and rightly so. Here’s editor Jason Sizemore with his summation of the December Apex, from his editorial.

Issue 91 closes the year with some compelling and powerful original fiction by Lavie Tidhar (“Red Christmas”), K.T. Bryski (The Love It Bears Fair Maidens”), and Helen Stubbs (“Uncontainable”). These stories are different from one another in terms of subject, tone, and pacing, but they are all stories I feel will inspire some interesting conversations.

Our nonfiction offerings this month is loaded with interviews of author Helen Stubbs and cover artist Billy Nuñez, a reprint of Keffy R.M. Kehrli’s Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling essay “Tropes as Erasers,” managing editor Lesley Conner’s behind the curtains reveal of how she selects cover art, and a feature on the short film I Remember the Future based on Michael A. Burstein’s story of the same name.

Finally, our reprint this month is Burstein’s hopeful Nebula Award-nominated “I Remember the Future.” Not only does it compliment the feature on the short film in this issue, but 2016 has been a tough year for many, so I feel it is appropriate that we close it out with a little light.

Here’s the complete TOC, with links to all the free content.

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Mark Watson’s Best SF blog has been reviewing SF short stories since April 2000. The reviews are sometimes short, but that doesn’t mean they’re not on point. Here’s Mark on Rich Larson’s story “The Cyborg, the Tinman, the Merchant of Death” in the December 2016 issue of Lightspeed.

Military SF although with a more human bent. The titular character is a cyborgised marine, also known as ‘The Petty Officer’, very much in the Halo Master Chief mould. The protagonist is a private who is transferred to the Petty Officer’s squad, who is very much aware that whilst it is a recognition of his own skills, it is essentially a short term posting in his military career, and indeed, it will be his final posting – life expectancy of squad members is little more than a couple of missions.

And this is where the story gets interesting, as the private finds out more about The Petty Officer over a number of missions, and then it gets very queer….

This month’s Lightspeed offers up original science fiction by Rich Larson and Joseph Allen Hill, and SF reprints by Margo Lanagan and Christie Yant, plus original fantasy by Carlie St. George and fantasy reprints by William Alexander and Shweta Narayan.

I was also very pleased to see an original fantasy from Quick Sips reviewer Charles Payseur “The Death of Paul Bunyan.” Charles works tirelessly every month to promote dozens of stories from other writers on his blog; I’ll be curious to see how many return the favor.

This month’s Lightspeed includes an editorial from JJA, author spotlights, a review of Arrival by Carrie Vaughn, Book Reviews by Amal El-Mohtar, and an interview with Nancy Kress. The exclusive content in the ebook version this month is Michael Bishop’s novella “Twenty Lights to ‘The Land of Snow,’” and an excerpt from Seth Dickinson’s novel The Traitor Baru Cormorant.

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The last 2016 issue of Nightmare is now available. And it looks like a good one, with original fiction from Dale Bailey and Livia Llewellyn, and reprints by Brian Evenson and Priya Sridhar. Here’s Charles Payseur’s assessment at Quick Sip Reviews:

The two stories in the December Nightmare magazine certainly show what makes speculative horror so captivating — revealing the uncomfortable truths and darkness that exists all around us, giving it physical form, and then making us face it. These are both stories that lean more fantasy than science fiction, pulling on some older traditions, of werewolves and Lovecraftian horror. While both are in some ways monster stories, though, they are also both stories that deal with youth, that feature main characters on the verge of adulthood, and reveal how quickly roles can be reversed when adults try to control the next generation. These are viscerally dark and violent stories but also deep insights into people and fears.

Read his complete review here. The complete contests of the issue are listed below.

Original Stories

“I Was a Teenage Werewolf” by Dale Bailey
Before Miss Ferguson found Maude Lewis’ body in the school gym, none of us believed in the teenage werewolf. There had been rumors, of course. There always are. But many of us viewed Miss Ferguson’s discovery as confirmation of our worst fears. Not everyone shared our certainty. There had been only a fingernail paring of moon that late February night, and a small but vocal minority of us argued that this precluded the possibility that Maude’s killer had been a lycanthrope.

“The Low, Dark Edge of Life” by Livia Llewellyn
Translator’s note: these are the only extant, unburned, and legible (for the most part) pages retrieved from what was apparently the diary of one Lilianett van Hamal, an American girl who apparently lodged at the Grand Béguinage shortly before the Great Summoning of 1878 that left much of the city of Leuven in ruins. No other items from before that event have been recovered from what is now the Leuven Exclusion Zone, which as of this date remains permanently off-limits to the outside world.

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It’s a nice mix of winter reading this month (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere anyway…. for everyone else, it’s summer reading!) There’s a big double issue of Cemetery Dance, the annual (and always big) Weird Fiction Review, a new issue of GrimDark, and regular issues of Asimov’s SF, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, The Dark, and Uncanny.

That’s not all we have for you, of course. For vintage fiction fans we have a Retro-Review of the November 1961 Amazing Stories, and a report from Howard Andrew Jones on the new line of premium Weird Tales reprints from Goodman Games.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our Late November Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

As we’ve mentioned before, all of these magazines are completely dependent on fans and readers to keep them alive. Many are marginal operations for whom a handful of subscriptions may mean the difference between life and death. Why not check one or two out, and try a sample issue? There are magazines here for every budget, from completely free to $35/issue. If you find something intriguing, I hope you’ll consider taking a chance on a subscription. I think you’ll find it’s money very well spent.

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The December 2016 Asimov’s Science Fiction is something of a landmark, in that it’s the last monthly issue of Asimov’s — a magazine that has been publishing continually for 39 years. It’s as close as we come to an institution in this field, and while change is sometimes scary, in this case I think it’s a good thing. Like its sister publication Analog, the magazine is moving to a bimonthly schedule. I always enjoy the big double issues, and getting six of them a year for each magazine is something to look forward to.

The last monthly issue has stories by Karl Bunker, Gay Partington Terry, Gregory Norman Bossert, James Sallis, Kali Wallace, and David Erik Nelson. Here’s Sheila’s full description:

Our blockbuster December 2016 novella, “Where There Is Nothing, There Is God” by David Erik Nelson, is a rollicking Time Portal tale. It’s filled with a cast of unsavory characters who operate as though Cotton Mather’s favorite TV show was Breaking Bad. In this vastly entertaining story, it’s hard to know whom to root for so just make sure your inertia dampening system is on and enjoy the ride!

Once you decompress from Colonial Massachusetts, be prepared for a sharp shift to Gregory Norman Bossert’s wild depiction of “HigherWorks” in a future London; an eerie discovery “On the Cold Side of the Island” has long-term effects on the lives of three teens in a new tale by Kali Wallace; James Sallis escorts us to another island where we learn “How the Damned Live On”; new to Asimov’s author Gay Partington Terry’s magical tale explains the significance of “Empty Shoes by the Lake”; and in Karl Bunker’s “They All Have One Breath” artists who want to create interesting work must strive against the banality of a “perfect” society controlled by artificial intelligence.

Robert Silverberg’s Reflections column examines what it means to be as “Dead as a Dodo” in this modern age; Peter Heck’s On Books reviews new works by Lois McMaster Bujold, Charles Stross, Tim Powers, Indra Das, Lavie Tidhar, and others; plus we’ll have an array of poetry and other features you’re sure to enjoy.

The cover art is by NASA. The guest editorial is by Sarah Pinsker.

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