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Apex Magazine #36

Apex Magazine #36

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apexmag05-12May’s Apex Magazine features  ”Decomposition” by Rachel Swirsky  (who is interviewed by Maggie Slater),  ”Tomorrow’s Dictator” by Rahul Kanakia and “The Chaos Magician’s Mega Chemistry Set”  by Nnedi Okorafor.

Naoto Hattori provides the cover art. Nonfiction by Tim Akers  and editor Lynne M. Thomas round out the issue.

Apex is published on the first Tuesday of every month.  While each issue is available free on-line from the magazine’s website, it can also be downloaded to your e-reader from there for $2.99.  Individual issues are also available at  Amazon and Weightless. A version for the Nook will also be available in the near future.  Twelve issue (one year) subscription can be ordered at Apex and Weightless for $19.95; Kindle subscriptions are available for $1.99 a month.

April-May Black Static Magazine Arrives

April-May Black Static Magazine Arrives

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455_largeThe April-May Black Static features new horror fiction from Carole Johnstone (”The Pest House”), Jon Ingold (”Cracks”), Priya Sharma (”The Ballad of Boomtown”), Joel Lane (”The Messenger”) and Daniel Kaysen (”Pale Limbs”).

Nonfiction by the usual suspects, Peter Tennant, Christopher Fowler, Tony Lee, and Mike Driscoll. The editor is Andy Cox.

Black Static alternates monthly publication with sister SF and fantasy focused Interzone.

In other news, check out this NPR feature about Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Come, which should resonate with anyone who, as I did,  read the book9780380977277_custom as a young boy.

Strange Horizons April 16, 2012

Strange Horizons April 16, 2012

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This past week’s issue of Strange Horizons features a story by Andrea Kneeland. “Beneath Impossible Circumstances”:

Analise wants to have a baby. A real baby. I tell her that if we had a baby together, it would be a real baby. It would be a real baby and it would have parts from both of us, and it would be a real person made from both of our genes, and that I want parts of myself in a child just as much as she wants parts of herself in a child. When I tell her these things, she turns on the faucet or runs the vacuum or opens the refrigerator door wide and sticks her head in like she’s looking for something so she can pretend not to hear me and I can pretend not to see how damp and salted her reddening cheeks are, and on days like these, when I tell her things like these, the bed sheets between us stay cool and dry and I remind myself of the virtue of silence and I bite my lip to draw blood so that in the morning, when I move my mouth, the pain will remind me not to say a thing.

Other features include poetry by Virginia M, Mohlere, commentary by Adam Roberts on the 2012 Arthur C. Clarke shortlist and a review of Lev Grossman’s The Magician King by Bill Mingin.

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Clarkesworld #67

Clarkesworld #67

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cw_67_300The April  issue of Clarkesworld is currently online. Featured fiction: “Fragmentation, or Ten Thousand Goodbyes” by Tom Crosshill, “Draftyhouse” by Erik Amundsen and “The Womb Factory” by Gary Kloster.  Non fiction by Brian Francis Slattery, Jeremy L.C. Jones and Danile Baker.  The cover art is by Steve Goad.

All of this is available online for free; there’s even an audio podcast version of the Crosshill story read by Kate Baker. However, nothing is really free. The magazine is supported by “Clarkesworld Citizens” who donate $10 or more. There’s also a Kindle edition.

We last covered Clarkesworld with issue #66.

Apex Magazine #35

Apex Magazine #35

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apexmag0412_mediumThis month’s Apex Magazine is a special international themed issue, featuring ”Love is a Parasite Meme” by Lavie Tidhar  (who is interviewed by Stephanie Jacob) and  ”The Second Card of the Major Arcana” by Thoraiya Dyer; the classic reprint is “Alternate Girl’s Expatriate Life”  by Rochita Loenen-Ruuize.

Raul Cruz provides the cover art. Nonfiction by Charles Tan and editor Lynne M. Thomas round out the issue.

While each issue is available free on-line from the magazine’s website, it can also be downloaded to your e-reader from there for $2.99.  Individual issues are also available at  Amazon and Weightless. A version for the Nook will also be available in the near future.  Twelve issue (one year) subscription can be ordered at Apex and Weightless for $19.95; Kindle subscriptions are available for $1.99 a month.


Interzone #239

Interzone #239

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443_largeThe March-April issue of Interzone features new stories by Chris Beckett (”The Gates of Eden”), Steve rasnic Tem (”Twember”), Jon Wallace (”Lips and Teeth”), Suzanne Palmer (Tangerine, Nectarine, Clementine, Apocolypse”), Matthew Cook (“Railriders”) and Nigel Brown (“One-Way Ticket”); cover artwork by Ben BaldwinJacob Boyd (“Bound in Place”); “Ansible Link” genre news and miscellanea by David Langford; “Mutant Popcorn” film reviews by Nick Lowe; “Laser Fodder” DVD/Blu-Ray reviews by Tony Lee; book reviews by Jim Steel and other contributors.

Interzone alternates monthly publication with sister dark horror focused Black Static, published by the fine folks at TTA Press.

Clarkesworld Issue #66

Clarkesworld Issue #66

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cw_66_300The March  issue of Clarkesworld is currently online. Featured fiction: “Sunlight Society” by Margaret Ronald, “The Bells of Subsidence” by Michale John Grist and “From Their Paws, We Shall Inherit” by Gary Kloster.  Non fiction by E.C. Ambrose, Jeremy L.C. Jones and Neil Clarke.  The cover art is by Sergio Diaz.

All of this is available online for free; there’s even an audio podcast version of all three stories read by Kate Baker. However, nothing is really free. The magazine is supported by “Clarkesworld Citizens” who donate $10 or more.

We last covered Clarkesworld with issue #64.

David Soyka Reviews The Translated Man and Other Stores and Mr. Stitch

David Soyka Reviews The Translated Man and Other Stores and Mr. Stitch

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The Translated Man and Other Stories Threat Quality Press (224; 11.99 USD; softcover 2007)

Mr. Stitch Threat Quality Press (248; 11.99 USD; softcover 2010)

Chris Braak

Chris Braaks’s duology featuring Detective-Inpector Elijah Beckett demonstrates that you can tell a book by its cover.  These book jackets are dark, primitive and ugly; the novels are set in a steampunk Victorian metropolis called Trowth that is equally dark, primitive and ugly.

It was early morning and the strained watery light that flickered off the mountain of stormy architecture of Trowth did little to alleviate the cold, though it was actually one of the

warmest periods of the day — when warm air swept briefly in from the sea — and the late afternoon were the only times during Second Winter that pedestrians were common; a small, muted collection of passers-by and vendors had tentatively come out into the cold streets above St. Dunsany’s. The air was just barely

tolerable, and tasted faintly of salt and fish. Even the normally antisocial and solitary citizens of the city would take the time to wander about for a few hours, trying to catch a fleeting glimpse of the sun.

ps.52-53 (Mr. Stitch)

What we have here is a police procedural that mixes Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft. I’m not much a fan of either (I know, how could I possibly be allowed on the BG staff, but mistakes happen). Nor do I much care for plotting littered with flaws in logic (a character can pick the lock of  a room to steal papers without ever thinking they  might be noticed missing, but apparently doesn’t think for a second to pick the lock of a suitcase she is forced to deliver to a train station to see if it contains anything potentially explosive, which, of course, it does) that hinges on fantastical mysteries with improbable coincidences (even if they take place in the context of an improbable reality) that seemingly have little point beyond giving the intrepid characters something to do so they can preserve civilization as they know it (though in this case, “civilization” is a questionable term).

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed this short series, mainly because of  the characters. Beckett is dedicated to his career as a Coroner, an elite force with a license to kill at will heretics and the consequences of their heretical metaphysical experiments.  He also suffers from the “fades,” a disease contracted by factory work as a child that results in deteriorating flesh (he wears a scarf to hide the missing half of his face) and drug addiction to control the pain.  Of course, every detective needs a fearless sidekick to fight the forces of evil.  Beckett has two.  Valentine Vie-Gorgon, an absent-minded aristocrat dabbling as a police functionary, and Elizabeth Skinner, a blind “knocker” aetherically equipped with telekinetic abilities that serve as a sort of radar to detect unchartered passageways and conspirators in hiding.

But the most interesting character of all is the city of Trowth, a mess of overbuilt, over thought architecture that results in dangerous labyrinths that connect ghettos of unusual creatures pressed into subservience to the human overlords.

It was almost evening when Beckett emerged from the depths of the Arcadium. The sky has turned from a dull, dark, sooty gray to a duller, darker sootier gray, redeemed only by the fact that looking at it no longer caused migraines. The perpetual cloud of thick, puissant smoke, spewed out by factories that burned phlogiston and flux and coal, hung low over the stony war of parapets, crenulations, buttresses, towers and arches that composed Trowth’s skyline.

p. 7 (The Translated Man)

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Apex #34 and Black Static #27

Apex #34 and Black Static #27

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apexmag03_12

This month’s Apex Magazine features ”A Member of the Wedding of Heaven and Hell” by Richard Bowes  and ”Copper, Iron, Blood” by Mari Ness; the classic reprint is “Lehr, Rex”  by Jay Lake, who is interviewed by Maggie Slater.

Julie Dillon provides the cover art: Julia Rios and editor Lynne M. Thomas penned nonfiction columns round out the issue.

429_large1Further details about this on-line publication can be found here.

The February-March Black Static features new horror fiction from Simon Bestwick (”The Churn”), Gord Sellar (”Empty of Words, thePage”), Jacob Ruby (”The Little Things”), V.H. Leslie (”Family Tree”) and Stephen Bacon (”Cuckoo Spit”).

Nonfiction by the usual suspects, Peter Tennant, Christopher Fowler, Tony Lee, and Mike Driscoll.
The editor is Andy Cox.

Black Static alternates monthly publication with sister SF and fantasy focused Interzone.

David Soyka Reviews Journal of a UFO Investigator

David Soyka Reviews Journal of a UFO Investigator

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76377593Journal of a UFO Investigator
David Halperin
Viking (304 pp, $25.95, Hardcover February 2012)
Reviewed by David Soyka

The premise here is we’re reading a diary account of the titular UFO investigator who also happens to be a troubled teenager (though, arguably, “troubled teenager” is redundant).  What starts out as a geeky outlet for outcast middle schoolers to pretend to be something other than outcast middle schoolers metastasizes into a fantastic escapade involving a self-selective group of super smart teenagers seemingly without parental supervision, one of whom is particularly sexy with amorous leanings towards our narrator, a concoction of conspiracy theories, a grueling ordeal in outer space and a love child between our hero and insect-like aliens aliens that has something to do with peace in the Middle East.  In other words, just the kind of grandiose cracked thought process that leads a kid either to a life of lonely megalomaniacal rantings on Facebook or to develop the next on-line role playing game that makes him a fortune so he’s finally interesting enough to get laid.

Amidst all the Ufology is some contrasting harsh reality:

It was Tuesday, but I wasn’t in school. A freak snowstorm the day before had forced the schools to close and put my father into an even nastier mood than usual.

He’s come into my room about eleven the night before, complaining about the racket I was making, typing up UFO sightings on file cards. I promised I’d do something else that didn’t make noise. But he sat down on my bed to talk, starting out calm, reasonable. The way his inquisitions usually do.

He just wanted to understand, he said. How was it a bright kid like me could piss  away my life on this UFO garbage?

You should be able to figure out where this is all heading even without reading the book blurb that gives it away.  While this shall be a spoiler-free review, suffice it to say the fun here isn’t the outcome, but the ride chock-full of allusions to just about every B-movie SF  trope and mystical imaginings about visitors from other worlds that take you there.

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