Black Gate

It’s a pretty star-studded line up this issue of Apex, with fiction from Lavie Tidhar, Elizabeth Bear, Jason Sanford, and Travis Heermann. Jason Sizemore gives us the complete scoop in his editorial.

Our three original works this month are all over the place thematically. In Lavie Tidhar’s novelette “Agent of V.A.L.I.S.”, the protagonist is a forgotten science fiction writer who gets involved in an adventure containing Philip K. Dick, Jesus Christ, and an all-powerful sentient AI. Jason Sanford’s story “Death Flowers of Never Forgotten Love” posits what if we had the technology to alter our memories of the recently deceased. “Screaming Without a Mouth” by Travis Heerman mines the unsettling fog of J-horror with modern technology in a memorable and depressing manner — a story that our readers will recognize as belonging in no other publication than Apex Magazine.

We welcome Elizabeth Bear back to our pages with “Dolly.” Her reprint about emerging sentience and a murder is a recent classic of the genre.

Russell Dickerson interviews cover artist Vincent Sammy about how to create horror within art without resorting to over-the-top gore. Andrea Johnson questions author Travis Heerman about the use of an epistolary format and productivity. Rounding out the issue are five great poems from five great poets: Rodney Gomez, Caleb J. Oakes, Matthew Chamberlin, Annie Neugebauer, and David Barber.

Our podcast this month is “Death Flowers of Never Forgotten Love” by Jason Sanford.

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

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The cover story for the March 2016 Lightspeed is Caroline M. Yoachim’s “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station, Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0.” You have to admit, as title’s go, that one’s pretty darn good. The cover artist is Reiko Murakami.

The ebook-exclusive reprint this month is Mark W. Tiedemann’s novella “Miller’s Wife,” which originally appeared in Black Gate 4. Here’s what Rich Horton said about it when he reviewed it in the January 2004 issue of Locus.

The centerpiece of the Fall issue of Black Gate is Mark Tiedemann’s impressive novella “Miller’s Wife.” Egan Ginter is fleeing another failed relationship in the big city; he hopes a couple weeks at a friend’s house in the Ozark town of Saletcroix will heal him. But something odd is going on — Saletcroix’s valley is dying, and a bad run of luck is plaguing the townspeople… Tiedemann maintains the suspense very well, and resolves the story just that little bit unexpectedly to make it memorable.

Rich made “Miller’s Wife” his Recommended Story of the Month.

In his editorial, John Joseph Adams talks about the impressive success Lightpseed and its sister magazine Nightmare have had in the 2016 Awards season.

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We don’t cover every issue of Analog. To be honest, I have my hands full keeping up with 40-odd fantasy magazines, without trying to cover science fiction as well.

But I’ve been trying to work out a system that allows me to showcase the occasional issue, and I think I’ve finally stumbled on it. We’ll cover every issue that has a dinosaur on the cover. Genius!

Here’s editor Trevor Quachri’s description from the website.

This year’s April issue has a bit more gravitas than we typically expect this time of year, with mysteries galore. Our lead story is one such: a corpse and an unusual religious practice might be the keys to a larger mystery than anyone is expecting in “Seven Ways of Looking at the Sun-Worshippers of Yul-Katan” by Maggie Clark. Then dubious deeds are afoot at a radio show, in Edward M. Lerner’s “Soap Opera,” and we have Steven L. Burns’ story of one cop’s fight against his own limitations — and a society rotten beneath the surface — in “Playthings.”

Our fact article is a bit outside the norm as well, with Mark C. Childs’ look at “Composing Speculative Cities.” Then we have our shorter pieces, such as “Alloprene” by Stephen R. Wilk; “Early Warning” by Martin L. Shoemaker; “Sleep Factory” by Rich Larson; “Most Valuable Player” by Eric Choi; and “Diamond Jim and the Dinosaurs” by Rosemary Claire Smith.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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This month GigaNotoSaurus features Tamara Vardomskaya’s long story “Polyglossia,” which Charles Payseur at Quick Sip Reviews described as follows:

This month’s story at GigaNotoSaurus is the longest of the year to date (though it being March that’s not saying too much) and tackles the complex nature of language. It is nice to read more longer stories, especially ones that really delve into the world building as this one does, providing a vivid picture of a breathing world. It’s one of the reasons that GigaNotoSaurus is such a treat to check out…

This is a story about language… It looks at people from very different situations, all brought together by language. A man who has lost the language of his mother. A woman who studies languages but cares little for the heritage of them… A boy who absorbs languages like a sponge, who sees each new language like a new city, full of adventures and secrets. There’s so much going on with this story and so much to see and enjoy, a world with layers of history and conflict that all come to a head here, in this story about a song…

And in the end I think that the story just works because it does such an elegant and nuanced job building its world… the cast is meticulously balanced and great… It’s an affirming, kinetic experience, about reaching out across the barriers that language can create to find common meaning. An excellent story!

Read the story free here, and read Charles’ complete review here.

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The eleventh issue of the online-only Fantasy Scroll Magazine, cover dated February 2016, is now available. In his editorial editor Frederick Doot gives us a sneak peek of the contents. Here’s a snippet:

We start 2016 with the heartfelt and enchanting “Sundark and Winterling” by Suzanne J. Willis featuring one of the most extraordinary homes you could imagine. The story hits all the right notes. We then move on to Paul Magnan’s “Red Cup,” a unique story that takes an inside look of trials and tribulations of a flower; no, it’s not all roses for our hero Red Cup. Next we are swept into a chaotic world with Stephen Walter Simpson’s “The Water Moon” following the fascinating life, and secret to some, of the lead character, Ivan.

We welcome another contribution by J.W. Alden, this time a flash fiction gem, “Battle Lines” which hits us early and hard, as the best science fiction flash stories can do. How can you settle the hostilities and egos and a decision between rival guildsman? “Talking with Honored Guests” by Alexander Monteagudo may provide one fiery way how.

Fantasy Scroll Magazine was long overdue for a pet alien love story, and we found a beaut with Ian Creasey’s “How I Lost Eleven Stone And Found Love,” a much more endearing story than the title suggests. We are happy that “The Great Excuse” by Jacob Michael King has found a home here at FSM; I won’t give much away, but I will say that Lovecraft would be proud. “The Velna Valsis” by Henry Szabranski is short, but sometimes a short jab to the gut is all you need to make your point, and this one hits the reader hard.

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Clarkesworld is one of the most-reviewed genre magazines out there. So if you’re too busy to read every issue, there are plenty of places that will point you towards the stories that might appeal to you most.

Take issue #114 for example. Just about everything in the TOC looks interesting, but I only have time for one story tonight. Enter Charles Payseur at Quick Sip Reviews, who’s done an admirable job of profiling the entire issue. Sixty seconds is all it takes to determine that the story for me is Leena Likitalo’s “The Governess with a Mechanical Womb.”

This is a rather bleak story about humans on the edge of extinction and a young woman and her sister facing it under the care of a governess, under the care of something that used to be human but… isn’t quite any longer. The story excels at building an isolated and strange atmosphere, which seems to be a theme in this month’s issue, here rendered in a post-apocalypse where aliens have come to Earth and destroyed everything for reasons unknown, then started guarding [people] from themselves. It’s an unsettling story, and one with a heavy sense of mystery… It’s tense and it’s effectively done, a story about sisters and about guardians and about control and love. It is incredibly dark, as well, and I will admit that the ending was rather difficult, a mix of love and change that left me a bit unsure what to think. But it’s a neat piece with a great weirdness to it, and it’s worth checking out.

Of course, your mileage will vary. Check out the complete review at Quick Sip Reviews here.

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I’ve been catching up on some of the online fiction at Tor.com recently. They’ve published some new great fantasy by Joe Abercrombie, Matt Wallace, David Nickle, Jennifer Fallon, Melissa Marr, Delia Sherman, and many others.

Child of a Hidden Sea, the first novel in A. M. Dellamonica’s trilogy The Hidden Sea Tales, was published in hardcover last June, and we covered it and its sequel, A Daughter of No Nation, in November. But that doesn’t mean I’ve had time to read it… and I probably won’t for many months. So I was delighted to see her 6,900-word story “The Glass Galago” available free at Tor.com. See? There are ways to keep tabs on all the hot new fantasy authors, if you look hard enough.

A.M. Dellamonica is at it again! The thrilling adventures of Gale Feliachild and Captain Parrish continue in a series of prequel stories that offers to take us deeper into the fascinating world of Stormwrack.

When Gale and the crew of the Nightjar are called back to the fleet to handle an issue involving a law regulating new patents and a missing magical inscription, they soon find themselves embroiled in a plot that is could potentially pit island against island. Now, they must discover the mystery of the glass galago before time runs out for both it and the fleet.

“The Glass Galago” was posted at Tor.com on Jan 26, and tagged as “Epic Fantasy.” It was edited by Stacy Hill, and illustrated by Richard Anderson. It’s available here.

We last covered Tor.com with Jennifer Fallon’s “First Kill.” For more free fiction, see all of our online magazine coverage here.

I think you could read a healthy diet of exclusively short fiction every day, and not come even close to staying on top of all the great new fantasy stories published every month.

But don’t panic — Black Gate is here to help. And we’re happy to report that March has been shaping up terrifically for short fiction fans. Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace — editors of Clarkesworld — have packaged up all of the fiction from last year in Clarkesworld: Year Eight, now available in trade paperback. In his February Short Story Roundup, Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed the latest sword & sorcery tales from F&SF and Swords and Sorcery Magazine. For our vintage magazine readers, Rich Horton took a look at two issues of Analog from either side of the Campbell divide, and Matthew Wuertz reviewed the April 1941 of Unknown, with stories by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, Theodore Sturgeon, P. Schuyler Miller, and Robert Heinlein. And we reported on the news that the entire run of IF Magazine, one of the great 20th Century science fiction magazines, is now freely available online at the Internet Archive.

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

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