I’m long overdue to check in on Apex. It releases its content in stages, one week at a time, which leaves me a narrow window at the end of the month to report on the magazine if I want all the content links to work. Since Lightspeed, Nightmare, and a few others do the same thing, it’s inevitable that a few magazines get dropped every month.

Well, enough of my troubles. You want to hear about all the great things in the latest issue, and rightly so. Here’s editor Jason Sizemore with his summation of the December Apex, from his editorial.

Issue 91 closes the year with some compelling and powerful original fiction by Lavie Tidhar (“Red Christmas”), K.T. Bryski (The Love It Bears Fair Maidens”), and Helen Stubbs (“Uncontainable”). These stories are different from one another in terms of subject, tone, and pacing, but they are all stories I feel will inspire some interesting conversations.

Our nonfiction offerings this month is loaded with interviews of author Helen Stubbs and cover artist Billy Nuñez, a reprint of Keffy R.M. Kehrli’s Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling essay “Tropes as Erasers,” managing editor Lesley Conner’s behind the curtains reveal of how she selects cover art, and a feature on the short film I Remember the Future based on Michael A. Burstein’s story of the same name.

Finally, our reprint this month is Burstein’s hopeful Nebula Award-nominated “I Remember the Future.” Not only does it compliment the feature on the short film in this issue, but 2016 has been a tough year for many, so I feel it is appropriate that we close it out with a little light.

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

Fiction

“Uncontainable” by Helen Stubbs
“The Love It Bears Fair Maidens” by K.T. Bryski
“Red Christmas” by Lavie Tidhar
From the Vaults: “Christmas is Coming” by Gina L. Grandi (Flash Fiction)
“I Remember the Future” by Michael A. Burstein (from I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein, 2008)

Poetry

How to Know If Your House is Haunted and What to Do by M. Brett Gaffney
The Familiar by Donna Ison

Nonfiction

Words from the Editor-in-Chief by Jason Sizemore
Interview with Author Helen Stubbs by Andrea Johnson
Tropes as Eraser: A Transgender Perspective by Keffy R.M. Kehrli
Interview with Cover Artist Billy Nuñez by Russell Dickerson
By the Cover by Lesley Conner
Remember the Future Past: An Interview with Author Michael A. Burstein and Filmmaker Klayton Stainer by Eileen Maksym
Words for Thought: Short Fiction Review by A.C. Wise

Podcast #35

Uncontainable by Helen Stubbs

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 last covered Apex Magazine with the August 2016 issue.

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 Nuñez. The complete issue is here, and you can buy back issues or subscribe at their website.

Our December Fantasy Magazine Rack is here. See all of our recent fantasy magazine coverage here.