Black Gate

This month we started our coverage of Mike Resnick’s bi-monthly magazine Galaxy’s Edge with the March/April 2016 issue, packed with intriguing stories by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, Larry Hodges, and many others… including Kary English and Robert B. Finegold’s tale of an assassin dispatched to kill the latest incarnation of the Goddess of Kindness. Michelle Ristuccia reviews the story at Tangent Online.

In “Shattered Vessels” by Kary English and Robert B. Finegold, M. D., Shevirah’s purpose as an assassin falters when he falls in love with an incarnation of Chesed (Kindness). English and Finegold’s deftly woven kabbalist tale pits destiny against love through multiple reincarnations of the characters, spanning thousands of years. The narration brings these large themes down to a personal level so that readers will identify with the protagonist’s plight despite the large time-span. Readers do not need to be familiar with the Kabbalah to enjoy this story.

In his March Short Story Roundup, Fletcher Vredenburgh reviews the latest issues of Swords and Sorcery and GrimDark magazines — including a Dinosaur Lords story by Victor Milán, “Red Seas, Red Sails,” which “gives readers savage pirates, brave knights, and of course, a dinosaur. Specifically, a Pliosaurus funkei, a huge aquatic beast that GMD‘s editors knew would make a great cover.” For our vintage magazine readers, Rich Horton reviewed the February 1972 Analog and an anthology of tales from Science Fiction Adventures, Matthew Wuertz continues his issue-by-issue re-read of perhaps the greatest SF magazine of the 50s with the April 1953 issue of Galaxy, and Doug Ellis shared a remembrance of a 1936 party attended by H.P. Lovecraft.

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

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The April/May issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, a big double issue, contains a brand new novelette from Black Gate blogger Derek Künsken, “Flight from the Ages.” It also offers a novella from Suzanne Palmer, novelettes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Alexander Jablokov, and others, and short stories by James Van Pelt, Robert Reed, Esther M. Friesner, and others. Here’s the full description from the website:

Suzanne Palmer delivers April/May 2016’s thrilling novella, “Lazy Dog Out.” In a race against time and an unknown enemy, a tugboat captain must depend on her crew and her ingenuity to defend her space station. Betrayal and intrigue abound in this life and death struggle to protect humans and aliens from a sinister organization.

C.W. Johnson spins an exciting tale about people ensnared inside an alien creature whose size defies speculation. It’s not long before you realize that characters should be as fearful “Of the Beast in the Belly” as they are of the leviathan. Derek Künsken  escorts us into the deep future for an all out “Flight from the Ages”; “Matilda” and her pilot face enigmatic aliens in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s terrifying new novelette; and brave souls must take on the “Starless Night” of a distant planet in a new story by Robert R. Chase. The violence and endless repercussions of war rage back on Earth in new to Asimov’s author T.R. Napper’s “Flame Trees”; Alexander Jablokov invites us to the eerie reunion of three men who revisit their past to uncover multiple truths about “The Return of Black Murray”; Esther M. Friesner turns to a far more distant past to examine the suffering of “The Woman in the Reeds”; James Van Pelt reveals that some people will have art at any cost in “Three Paintings”; Robert Reed brings us a chilling tale about “The Days of Hamelin”; and Dominica Phetteplace presents us with a new perspective as her unusual experiment continues in “Project Synergy.”

April/May’s Reflections finds Robert Silverberg “Thinking About Homer”; Peter Heck’s On Books examines works by Charles Stross, C.A. Higgins, Seth Dickinson, Stephen Baxter, and Peter Cline; plus we’ll have an array of poetry and other features you’re sure to enjoy.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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