Black Gate

In January the latest issues of Analog and Asimov’s SF hit the shelves in their new bimonthly, double-issue format. But the big new this month was the announcement that one of the most promising of the new crop of genre publications, Fantasy Scroll Magazine, has gone on hiatus after only 13 issues. I guess 13 really is unlucky, at least for magazines.

Nonetheless, there’s still plenty of great reading for fantasy fans every month. Have a look at Fletcher Vredenburgh’s December Short Story Roundup and Brandon Crilly’s Short Fiction Spotlight for some of the very best recent short fiction. And even if none of the current releases grab you, Matthew Wuertz has a Retro-Review of the August 1963 Galaxy, with fiction by Robert Sheckley, Raymond Z. Gallun, Theodore R. Cogswell, Mel Hunter, and lots more.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our December 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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As 2017 dawns, we enter a new era for the oldest continuously published science fiction magazine, Analog Science Fiction and Fact (which has been around since January 1930, when it was called Astounding Stories). With this issue it switches to a bimonthly publication schedule, following The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and its own sister magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction.

The cover story is “The Proving Ground,” a novella by Alec Nevala-Lee, whom I first met when he was moderating a panel on John W. Campbell at the 2016 Nebula Awards. The issue also contains “Whending My Way Back Home,” a novelette by Black Gate writer Bill Johnson (“Mama Told Me Not to Come,” BG4), plus short stories and novelettes by Scott Edelman, Edward M. Lerner, Marie DesJardin, Christopher L. Bennett, and many others. Here’s editor Trevor Qachari’s summary from the website.

Birds are mysteriously dying out near a distant wind farm, and something much worse may be in the offing. Can the researchers on this cold, lonely hunk of rock survive “The Proving Ground”? Find out in our cover story, from Alec Nevala-Lee.

Then Richard A. Lovett brings us our fact article, “Rendezvous with a Comet: How ESA’s Rosetta Mission is Decoding Ancient Planetary Mysteries,” and the title says it all.

Then we have people born to die struggling to live in Scott Edelman’s “After the Harvest, Before the Fall”; kidnapping and cultural conflict in Christopher L. Bennett’s “Twilight’s Captives”; a race to find bizarre signals in Canada in Tom Jolly’s “Catching Zeus”; some very alien aliens in both “Dall’s Last Message,” by Antha Ann Adkins, and “Briz,” by Jay Werkheiser; a look at the things we do for companionship, in Marie DesJardin’s “Long Haul”; a slight slice of semi-silliness in Stanley Schmidt’s Probability Zero, “Throw Me a Bone,” and more, from Thoraiya Dyer and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Bill Johnson, Andrew Barton, Marissa Lingen, Tom Greene, Joel Richards, Edward M. Lerner, and Guy Stewart, as well as all our regular columns and features, plus our annual index and Analytical Laboratory ballot.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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