Beneath Ceaseless Skies 4/6/23 Kaleidotrope 4/23 Fiyah Spring ’23

Beneath Ceaseless Skies keeps on the themes of family, crisis, and healing with its first issue of April, especially in Martin Cahill’s “An Inheritance of Scars”. The story unfolds in a world where trauma, from heartbreak to loss to family strife, are expressed as glowing scars. Temi is a young man raised by a single father who has ...Read More

Strange Horizons 3/20/23, 3/27/23, 4/3/23, 4/10/23 Cast of Wonders 3/24/23, 4/4/23, 4/13/23 Escape Pod 3/9/23, 3/16/23, 3/30/23, 4/6/23, 4/13/23

Strange Horizons closed out March strong with some excellent poetry and fiction, including Iona Datt Sharma’s aching and beautiful story ‘‘Always and Forever, Only You’’, which finds Edie living in an assisted liv­ing home, passing her days bored and lonely. Having survived her husband, Edie retains a kind ...Read More

Hexagon 3/23 Flash Fiction Online 3/23 Lightspeed 3/23, 4/23 Fantasy 3/23, 4/23

Hexagon’s latest issue presents a range of speculative fiction and poetry, including Lyndsey Croal’s postapocalyptic science fantasy, “The Loneliness of Water”. The piece introduces a woman living on her own on a partly ruined island, making a home for herself while search­ing for signs that she’s not the only survivor to the great calamity that ...Read More

Diabolical Plots 3/23 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/9/23, 3/23/23 GigaNotoSaurus 3/23

Diabolical Plots celebrated March with a special issue on telepathy dubbed Diabolical Thoughts, guest-edited by assistant editor Ziv Wities. All four works in the issue circle influence, mind control, and mental communication. As with The Desert’s Voice is Sweet to Hear” by Carolina Valentine, which finds Zazy moving through a desert that wants to embrace her like an ...Read More

Cast of Wonders 2/25/23, 2/28/23 Worlds of Possibility 2/23 Samovar 2/27/23 Strange Horizons 2/20/23, 3/6/23, 3/13/23

Cast of Wonders, which I mentioned last month, fit a few more stories into Feb­ruary, including a rather charming one about a ‘‘malfunctioning’’ AI in Marie Vibbert’s ‘‘Haunting the Docks’’. To the artificial dock­ing manager, though, it’s more accurate to say they’re just a bit enthusiastic about their work, and perhaps ...Read More

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/9/23, 2/23/23 Lightspeed 2/23 Fantasy 2/23 F&SF 3-4/23

Following an issue focused on people chal­lenging the status quo, the second February issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies is much more about colonization, language, and resistance. Both stories in the issue are quite good, full of difficult situations and people standing against the abuses of imperial power. In Kelsey Hut­ton’s “Your Great Mother Across the Salt Sea ...Read More

Diabolical Plots 2/23 GigaNotoSaurus 2/23 Escape Pod 2/5/23 Cast of Wonders 2/1/23

February’s Diabolical Plots features two stories where the lines between the human and super­natural worlds touch and ideals of perfection must give way to the beauty and magic of being able to make mistakes. It’s not an easy thing, though, especially for a goddess, as in Anja Hendrikse Liu’s “The Monologue of a Moon Goddess in ...Read More

Reckoning 1/23 Fusion Fragment 1/23 Drabblecast 1-2/23 Strange Horizons 1/16/23, 1/23/23, 1/30/23, 2/6/23, 2/13/23

Reckoning released a new issue in January, which means a whole new year’s worth of non-fiction, poetry, and stories. It starts strongly with Nadine Aurora Tabing’s “The Bright in the Gyre”, which features Cora as a scientist working on a project to create special mushrooms that can break down plastic pollu­tion and recycle ...Read More

Worlds of Possibility 12/22 Baffling 1/23 Strange Horizons 12/12/22, 12/19/22, 1/2/23, 1/9/23 Diabolical Plots 1/23

The December Worlds of Possibility featured a beautiful story about a djinn and human and the mysteries of the universe in Khushbu Khushi’s “Songs from Samarkand”. The bonds between the human Amir and the djinn Baji are deep and warm, bursting with love, and yet their story is also one of ...Read More

Fantasy 1/23 Lightspeed 1/23 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/1/23, 1/12/23, 1/26/23

January’s Fantasy includes Flossie Arend’s novelette, “Broodmare”, which introduces Marge and Trace, two people from a community that travels into Texas to perform clandestine abortions in a future where access and entry into the state are strictly controlled. Marge has been doing this for a long time, but for Trace, it’s a first, and as they see ...Read More

Zooscape 12/22 Anathema 12/22 Escape Pod 12/15/22, 12/22/22, 12/29/22

December is always a busy month for short fiction releases, and 2022 was no exception, with a number of publica­tions slipping in new gifts to readers during the bustle of end-of-year festivities. Among them was Zooscape, whose December issue includes the stunning “The Huli Jing of Chinatown” by Wen Wen Yang, which finds a fox spirit in America ...Read More

Fiyah Winter ’23 Kaleidotrope 1/23 GigaNotoSaurus 11/22

Opening its sixth year of publication, Fiyah’s January issue carries no official theme but does return again and again to ideas of cultural inertia, trauma, and the need to break toxic cycles to reach for healing. In “A Small Bloody Gift” by Naomi Day, Kehaka is next in line to be a Keeper, someone who makes the soil live again ...Read More