The July 2017 issue of Nightmare is now available, with original fiction from Caspian Gray and Caroline Ratajski, and reprints by Stephen Graham Jones and Cynthia Ward. Here’s Valerie A. Lindsey from Tangent Online: “Promises of Spring” by Caspian Gray opens with Cody asking his high school friend, Tay, to help him stop some high school kids from summoning the witch that granted three of them their desires during a bloody ritual. Gray illustrates the high cost of making wishes…

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I think of Shimmer primarily as a magazine of contemporary fantasy. While they also publish science fiction (and “a dash of literary horror,” according to their guidelines), I generally consider them a home for fantasy with a decidedly modern spin. They’re certainly not my go-to publication for sword & sorcery or adventure fantasy, anyway. So I was surprised and pleased to find them stake out some more familiar terrain with their latest issue. Here’s the description for the July 2017 issue, now…

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As I mentioned in my last magazine review, I’m a guy who tends to skim magazines. I’m looking for something new, something different, something… yeah, I have no idea what I’m looking for these days. I’m just impatient and I skim. Don’t hate me. Tangent Online is my enabler. They publish up-to-date magazine reviews (that I skim), and these reviews tell me everything I need to know to form a plan of attack in, like, 45 seconds. For example, they tell…

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Over at SF Revu, Sam Tomaino sheds some light on the latest issue of The Dark. The first new story is “A Performance for Painted Bones” by Kelly Stewart… In a town where the populace is just skeletons, a dancer and a hunter have skin. They are kept alive as long as they do their jobs. But one could take the train east if there was a good reason to, like returning an object to its rightful owner. Written like…

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Locus is one of the few magazines I read cover to cover. It’s packed full of news, interviews, conventions reports, color pics, enticing ads, and especially reviews of interest to me. For over 40 years it’s provided the most reliable and comprehensive coverage of the SF field on the market. The June issue is crammed full of good stuff, including: A lengthy interview with John Kessel (The Moon and the Other) Winners of the Nebula and Bram Stoker Awards Complete US and…

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The May/June F&SF features the second appearance of Matthew Hughes’s new series character Baldemar, in the issue’s cover story “The Prognosticant.” Matt had an interview with Stephen Mazur on the Fantasy & Science Fiction blog in which he discusses the series. It’s a continuation of the career of young Baldemar, who was introduced in the last issue in “Ten Half-Pennies” as a budding wizard’s henchman working for a thaumaturge who calls himself Thelerion the Incomparable (though his fellow wizards would likely…

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Howard V. Hendrix is experiencing a bit of a comeback in the pages of Analog magazine. He launched his career with a well-respected SF trilogy in the late 90s [Locus Award nominee for Best First Novel Lightpaths (1997), Standing Wave (1998), and Better Angels (1999)], but he hasn’t published a novel since Spears of God in 2006. But since September 2007 he’s published no less than eight stories in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, including two novellas: “Palimpsest ” –…

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The May issue of The Dark has new fiction by A.M. Muffaz and Eliza Victoria, plus reprints by Samantha Henderson and Damien Angelica Walters. Charles Payseur at Quick Sip Reviews thinks highly of the Muffaz. This is a story of sinking horror, of death and the proximity of death, of abuse that everyone agrees to look away from. The piece focuses on Tentzin, a man who delivers supplies to a house where the dead are prepared to be fed to…

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Asimov’s Science Fiction is celebrating its 40th Anniversary Year in 2017, and in her editorial this issue Sheila Williams reflects on the many milestones and anniversaries she’s had during her 35 years with the magazine. Alas, the magazines’ fifteenth anniversary was not a happy occasion. Isaac died on April 6, 1992, leaving all of us heartbroken. He’d told me several times before he died that one major reason he’d founded the magazine was to give new writers a welcoming place…

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One thing I dislike about the current crop of digital magazines is their near-exclusive focus on shorter fiction. Are the print mags our only source of novellas these days? No wonder the Best Novella category for this year’s Hugo nominations is thoroughly dominated by Tor.com. So it was great to see a long novella by Sarah Pinsker in the current issue of Uncanny. Here’s what Charles Payseur had to say about “And Then There Were (N-One)” at Quick Sip Reviews. Okay…

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