Last month Charlotte Ashley reviewed the Hugo Award short stories nominees in her short fiction column; this month she tackles the novelettes. Long before the awards were announced, she had no trouble picking the winner — the only one not nominated by the Rabid Puppies: “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt.

“The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra

The plot holes in this piece are gaping. The story is ushered along by bad decisions made by people who should know better, all culminating in an excuse to showcase Cadet Asgari’s mediocre problem-solving skills using standard military scifi technology. Big-thinking, innovative science fiction this was not.

“Championship B’tok” by Edward M. Lerner

“Championship B’tok” by Edward M. Lerner (Analog, Sept/Oct. 2014) suffers from many of the same weaknesses of the Vajra piece… the result is a jumbled assortment of vaguely related incidents. Characters are introduced and disposed of once they have fed Carl information (Grace, Corrine, Robyn, Danica,) but the clues they supply don’t add up to much more than an introduction. There’s a conspiracy. So what? The story fails to demonstrate the consequences of any of its events.

“The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Heuvelt’s story is the only one on this list that is Hugo-caliber. While I’m disappointed that it hasn’t any real competition in this slate, I could vote for it without reservations.

Read the compete article online here.

As usual, editor-in-Chief Jason Sizemore nicely summarizes the delights and surprises in store this issue in his editorial:

The quartet of original fiction Apex brings to you, dear reader, will help give you mental grist for your intellectual posturing. There’s an overarching theme that loosely ties the stories together: our need to find and be the person we see ourselves as being. In Mehitobel Wilson’s “Brisé,” the protagonist toys with the notion of “many worlds” and what happens when we glimpse at the possibilities that exist in them. “Coming Undone” by Alexis A. Hunter is a sharp flash fiction piece about a person born with a congenital defect and the lengths he/she will go to in order to feel whole. Sunny Moraine returns to our pages with “It is Healing, It is Never Whole,” a dreamlike exploration into suicide and seeking for what makes you happy. Rounding out our original fiction is the always amazing Damien Angelica Walter with “Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys: The Elephant’s Tale.”

Poetry editor Bianca Spriggs has one again loaded up the poetry offerings with some great works by A. Merc Rustad, Levi Sable, Jennifer Ruth Jackson, and Mary Soon Lee. Reprints editor Charlotte Ashley gives us “New Feet Within My Garden Go” by one of my favorite writers, E. Catherine Tobler. Our nonfiction is “The Fuzzy Bunny Squad is Standy By….” from Gary A. Braunbeck.

Also on tap are Clavis Aurea (a review of this year’s Hugo Novelette nominees), interviews with our cover artist Billy Norrby and author Mehitobel Wilson, and excerpts from King of the Bastards by Brian Keene and Steven Shrewsbury and If Then by Matthew De Abaitua.

Here’s the complete TOC.

Fiction

“Brisé” by Mehitobel Wilson
“Coming Undone” by Alexis A. Hunter
“It is Healing, It is Never Whole” by Sunny Moraine
“Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys: The Elephant’s Tale” by Damien Angelica Walters
“New Feet Within My Garden Go” by E. Catherine Tobler (eBook/subscriber exclusive)

Poetry

“Monsters We Create, Woozles We Become” by Levi Sable
“In the Day After the World Stopped Being” by A. Merc Rustad
“The Owl Child” by Jennifer Ruth Jackson
“Training: Endurance” by Mary Soon Lee

Excerpts

If Then by Matthew De Abaitua (eBook/subscriber exclusive)
King of the Bastards by Brian Keene and Steven L. Shrewsbury

Nonfiction

“Words from the Editor-in-Chief” by Jason Sizemore
“The Fuzzy Bunny Squad is Standing By…” by Gary A. Braunbeck
“Apex Author Interview with Mehitobel Wilson” by Andrea Johnson
“Apex Cover Artist Interview with Billy Norby” by Russell Dickerson
“Clavis Aurea: A Review of Short Fiction” by Charlotte Ashley

Podcast #25

“Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys: The Elephant’s Tale” by Damien Angelica Walters (23:07 minutes)

Apex Magazine is a monthly science fiction, fantasy, and horror publication featuring original short stories, poetry and non-fiction. It is edited by Jason Sizemore and Sigrid Ellis, and released the first Tuesday of every month. In 2012, 2013 and 2014, it was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.

We previously covered Apex Magazine with issue 74.

Apex Magazine is published by Apex Publications. Issues are available free online, and sold for $2.99 in a variety of digital formats. Subscriptions are just $19.95 for one year (12 issues) in EPUB, Mobi, and PDF formats.

This issue’s cover is by Billy Norrby. The complete issue is here, and you can buy back issues or subscribe at their website.

Our mid-August Fantasy Magazine Rack is here. See all of our recent fantasy magazine coverage here.