Black Gate

Lots of great reading in August’s fiction magazines. In addition to those we’ve covered here during the month — including Analog, Black Static, F&SF, Graphic Classics, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 33, and Interzone — there’s plenty more on the shelves to keep you busy in those idle hours, including all those above. Click on any of the thumbnail images to visit their respective websites.

Our additional magazine coverage in the past few weeks includes Steve Case’s interview with Scott H. Andrews, editor of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fletcher Vredenburgh’s August Short Story Roundup, and Apex Magazine‘s report on the Best Short Fiction Reviews. For our vintage magazine fans, we have Retro-Reviews of the November 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction (by Matthew Wuertz), the November 1969 Galaxy (by Adrian Simmons), and the July 1964 Amazing Stories (Rich Horton).

Our July Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

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British horror magazine Black Static #59, cover-dated July/August 2017, is now available. Over at Tangent Online, Jennifer Burroughs offers a detailed review of the entire issue, including “Ghost Town” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam.

“Ghost Town” is a story of dark magic and gruesome secrets that explores the difficult question of what the living owe the dead… A river full of a strange substance flows around a small town haunted by thousands of ghosts, the economy fueled by a black market for human bodies. Three years ago, the body of Rae’s dead wife, Emily, was stolen, which has prevented Emily’s spirit from fully passing on. She haunts Rae every night…

Stufflebeam has imagined a strange place full of horrors caused both by the power of the river and simple human ingenuity. She raises an interesting question about what people would do in a reality where the dead need a corpse, any corpse, in order to leave the physical world, and there are more ghosts than corpses. This is an eerie tale that leaves the reader with several layers of meaning to contemplate.

And “Endoskeletal” by Sara Read

A well-executed, nightmarish tale of body horror. Ashley, an ambitious archaeologist, ignores rules of policy and respect for a strange discovery found in a Swedish mountain cave, where a strange burial has been hidden away for tens of thousands of years. She finds several jars inexplicably sealed after all this time, and takes one back to the lab, setting off a horrifying chain of events…

Not a story for the squeamish, “Endoskeletal” reads like a fevered nightmare full of warnings about foolish mistakes.

Read the complete review here.

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While I was strolling through the streets of my hometown of St. Charles, a mysterious traveler in black slipped me a tightly bound scroll. “Keep if safe,” he whispered. “And honor the pact of knowledge.” When I got home, I found it contained a copy of the latest issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, plus a tasty-looking recipe for Canadian date squares. Looks like it’s my lucky week.

The latest issue of HFQ includes stories by Evan Dicken, Raphael Ordoñez, and Jason Carney, plus poetry from Andrew Crabtree, Kendall Evans, and Michael Tilbury. Here’s the complete TOC, with fiction links.

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I’ve been buying Analog Science Fiction and Fact for over 40 years. Remarkably little has changed in that time. It’s still a digest magazine. It still has interior art by Vincent Di Fate. And I still read “Probability Zero” first.

The July’August issue has a big novella by Martin L. Shoemaker, “Not Far Enough,” featuring the return of Captain Nick Aames, Carver, and Smith, who’ve previously appeared in the pages of Analog in “Murder on the Aldrin Express” (September 2013), “Brigas Nunca Mais” (March 2015), and “Racing to Mars,” (September 2015, winner of the Analog Award for Best Novella of the year). Here’s editor Trevor Qachari on the issue.

We kick off our July/August issue by checking in on Captain Nick Ames and his crew, last seen in “Racing to Mars,” September 2015, by Martin Shoemaker. When a routine mission goes off the rails, it’s more than just a matter of shipboard politics: lives are at stake, and people will die if they go too far, or “Not Far Enough.”

Then we have the kind of fact article that we only pull off all too rarely: H. G. Stratmann gives us a look at the science behind Stanley Schmidt’s story in this very issue, “The Final Nail.”

We also have fiction ranging from “Across the Streaming Sea,” an adventure that perfectly embodies Clarke’s Law, by Rob Chilson; to a story of the bond between a captain and his ship in Brian Trent’s “Galleon”; a follow-up to Maggie Clark’s “Seven Ways of Looking at the Sun-Worshippers of Yul-Katan,” in “Belly Up”; and an almost-could-have-happened-this-way tale of early space travel, “For All Mankind,” from C. Stuart Hardwick.

There’s also a slew of short pieces from such folks as Andrew Barton, Tom Easton, Tim McDaniel, Robert R. Chase, Ron Collins, Kyle Kirkland, Aubry Kae Andersen, Edward M. Lerner, Eve Warren, Holly Schofield, Uncle River, and Howard V. Hendrix, as well as an awesome array of compelling columns.

Although Trevor says “H. G. Stratmann gives us a look at the science behind Stanley Schmidt’s story in this very issue, ‘The Final Nail,'” don’t look too hard for Stan’s story. It actually appeared last issue.

The cover this issue is by Rado Javor. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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