Beneath Ceaseless Skies 10/5/23, 10/19/23 Escape Pod 10/12/23, 10/19/23, 10/26/23 Worlds of Possibility 10/23 Cast of Wonders 10/14/23, 10/25/23, 10/27/23

Beneath Ceaseless Skies celebrated their 15th anniversary in October with a special double issue including Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko’s novella, “Between Blades”, which unfolds in a world where some people can adopt “sword­form,” wherein one in a pair of people becomes a living weapon – a sword ...Read More

Fantasy 10/23 Flash Fiction Online 10/23 GigaNotoSaurus 10/23 Baffling 10/23

Unfortunately, October brought the final issue of Fantasy, which closed in impressive fashion. First, in fiction, Ruoxi Chen’s “Fandom for Witches“, finds Lara, a Chinese-American girl lightly obsessed with the (definitely not Supernatural) fictional television show Sanctu­ary Road. The story deals with yearning, with fitting in, with all the messy bits of growing up and feeling alone and ...Read More

Strange Horizons 9/18/23, 9/25/23, 10/2/23,  10/9/23, 10/16/23 Lightspeed 10/23 Fiyah 10/23 Kaleidotrope 10/23

Strange Horizons closed out September with some memorable poetry, including Bob Hicok’s “No stones”, which lingers on the image of “dirt birds” – the marks left behind when birds impact glass. As the title might im­ply, the poem places the narrator (and readers) inside glass houses, fragile but solid enough to withstand these small ...Read More

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 9/7/23, 9/21/23 Fusion Fragment 9/23 Fantasy 9/23

September’s Beneath Ceaseless Skies covered a lot of ground, with its first issue focusing on young people fleeing violent and murderous men. In “Little Red Hands” by Jonathan Louis Duck­worth, that comes in the form of Loaf, a young man running from a dark and bloody past, hoping to escape what’s behind him. It’s not easy, though, ...Read More

Zooscape 8/23 Cast of Wonders 8/29/23, 9/3/23 Worlds of Possibility 8/23

I’ll kick things off with the August issue of Zooscape, which focuses on furry specula­tive fiction. So it makes sense that the issue lingers on the deep wounds that exist within and between animals, including humans. From extinctions and apocalypses to quieter hurts and the kindnesses that heal them, Zooscape once more shows the versatility of furry speculative fiction, ...Read More

Strange Horizons 8/21/23, 8/28/23, 9/4/23, 9/11/23 Hexagon Fall ’23 GigaNotoSaurus 7/23

Some wonderful poetry bridges Strange Horizons’ August and September content, starting with “Stoic” by Mukut Borpujari, which confronts simplicity and the philosophical stoicism that focuses on knowledge over possessions – over the physical. The poem follows a divesting of things, the narrator part of a couple who are cleaning house and getting rid of a lot ...Read More

castofwonders.org/ Fantasy 8/23 The Book of Beijing, Bingbing Shi, ed. (Comma) July 2023. F&SF 9-10/23

Cast of Wonders ranged from poignant to bitingly sarcastic in its July originals, but I was most taken with its first August story, Dani Atkinson’s “The Raven Princess”, which quickly introduces read­ers to a classic fairytale setup – a princess trapped in the body of a raven, trying to help a ...Read More

Flash Fiction Online 8/23 GigaNotoSaurus 8/23 Diabolical Plots 8/23

The August Flash Fiction Online features stories about families, longing, and cycles. Not always in a positive way, as Phoenix Alexander shows in ‘‘Nancy Shreds the Clouds’’, which explores the complexities of agency, rage, and corruption. Nancy is a girl with a lot of anger, punished for her mistakes while others are not – unrewarded for her virtues while ...Read More