Fantasy Scroll Magazine 8 Now Available
The eighth issue of the online-only Fantasy Scroll Magazine, cover dated August 2015, is now available.
There’s lots of news from Fantasy Scroll this month — starting with their big Year One anthology, Dragons, Droids and Doom, which contains every story from their first year, including tales by Ken Liu, Piers Anthony, Rachel Pollack, Hank Quense, William Meikle, Cat Rambo, and Mike Resnick. It is edited by Iulian Ionescu and Frederick Doot, and will be available in trade paperback and digital format in November.
In his editorial, Iulian Ionescu provides his usual sneak peek of the contents of issue #8. Here’s a snippet:
Here we come to the rescue with another packed issue, filled with monsters, aliens, knights, spaceships, and dragons. We start strong with Tony Peak’s “The Light Comes,” a story of struggle in a world where a strange disease takes lives regardless of age. This is Tony’s second appearance in FSM and we’re really glad to see him back.
“Minor Disasters” by Elise R. Hopkins reminds us of the fragile world we live in and how everything can turn to dust in the blink of an eye. Kate O’Connor’s “White Horse” is next, following the life of a soldier and his encounters with a magical white steed.
Next is “ReMemories” by Nancy Waldman, a moving story about a future where humankind can record, store, and manipulate the mind’s memories. Alexander Volkmar’s story, “Gunman on the Wall” reminds us of the constant need to believe that things are better on the other side.
Here’s the complete table of contents.
Thursday, July 30, looked like one of the odder days I had lined up at the Fantasia Festival. I’d head down to the De Sève Theatre early on to catch a new American science-fiction film called Synchronicity, then go to the screening room to watch a dialogue-free horror film called The Dark Below. After that, I’d go back to the De Sève to catch the Irish black comedy Traders, and finally wrap up with an event called Méliès et magie, an event presenting some of the classic short films by the first master of fantasy cinema. It looked like a varied day, though in the end it was less so than I’d expected.
I took a day off from Fantasia on Tuesday, July 28, to run some errands and buy some groceries, then returned on Wednesday to begin a kind of mini-marathon that would carry me through to the end of the festival. I saw four movies Thursday, starting at the De Sève with a wordless 3D animated French film called Minuscule, about a ladybug who falls in with a group of ants who’ve liberated a box of sugar from an abandoned picnic. After that I went to the screening room to see an Australian horror-suspense movie called Observance. Then I went back to the De Sève for the semi-science-fictional German action movie Boy 7. After getting out of that one, I made a snap decision to run across the street to the Hall Theatre to watch the Korean action-comedy Big Match. Which turned out to be one of the better calls I made all festival. 
