Kaleidotrope 4/22 Zooscape 4/22 Escape Pod 4/22 Drabblecast 4/22

I’ll start off with the Spring Kaleidotrope, which does a good job keeping to a few the­matic threads throughout the issue. Though the publication often leans into horror, there’s more of a focus on grief and loss with this group of stories and poems, with recurring ideas of alternate dimensions/universes and sacrifices of various kinds. Aimee Ogden opens the issue with ...Read More

Baffling Spring ’22 Fireside Spring ’22 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 4/7/22, 4/21/22

Baffling released a new issue in April, with seven flash-length works of queer speculative fiction. Ruth Joffre’s “A Girl Predicts the Future” kicked things off by offering Xochitl a choice, a menu of sorts for seeing into the future. The mercenary nature of the offerings is an interest­ing complication, something that prevents the aid offered from ...Read More

Shoreline of Infinity 3/22 Strange Horizons 3/21/22, 3/28/22, 4/4/22, 4/11/22 Escape Pod 3-4/22

Starting out with March’s Shoreline of Infin­ity, the publication has launched a new serial by Eric Brown, ‘‘Approaching Human’’. The first two chapters of the project introduce Xorn, an AI PI (artificial intelligence who is a private investigator) who uses his skills in and out of a vast virtual reality network to satisfy the ...Read More

Fusion Fragment 3/22 Lightspeed 4/22 Fantasy 4/22

March also sees the first 2022 content from Fusion Fragment, with their tenth issue. Jennifer Hudak kicks things off with the bittersweet “The Topogra­phy of Memory”, which finds a narrator returning home for the first anniversary of her brother’s death, only to find she can’t quite find her way. The story is weighted with guilt as the narrator navigates their own ...Read More

Hexagon 3/22 Fireside 3/22 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/10/22, 3/24/22

Hexagon Magazine opens its 2022 releases with its eighth issue, featuring five original stories. While the publication does publish stories in English and French (a trend I’ve been happy to note here and in publications like Omenana as well), all the works in this issue are English originals. All the works are also what I’d classify as fantasy, with some interesting ...Read More

GigaNotoSaurus 3/22 Cast of Wonders 2-3/22 Escape Pod 3/22

The March story from GigaNotoSaurus is a wonderful take on space opera in “The Law of Take” by Isabel Cañas. Vis has risen from a childhood of poverty all the way to empress, all on the idea that she needs to take what she wants. Money, power, influence – and yet when it comes to love, taking what ...Read More

Reckoning 1/22 Drabblecast 1-2/22 Strange Horizons 2/21/22, 2/28/22, 3/7/22, 3/14/22

Let’s start with the latest release from Reckoning, an annual journal dedicated to environmental justice. Their sixth issue is edited by poetry editor Aïcha Martine Thiam and prose editor Gabriela Santiago. The content is released online throughout the first half of the year, but the journal itself is as large as many an­thologies, and peppered with commentary on the state ...Read More

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/10/22, 2/24/22 Diabolical Plots 2-3/22 F&SF 3-4/22

Beneath Ceaseless Skies also celebrated an an­niversary in February, putting out its 350th issue. To mark the occasion, two issues are stuffed with extra stories, all of them centered on a crossing of genres, on science fantasy, rather than on a theme. Yoon Ha Lee opens the festivities with “Bonsai Starships”, which weaves a narrative around a young ...Read More

Flash Fiction Online 2/22 Fireside 2/22 Strange Horizons 2/7/22, 2/14/22

At Flash Fiction Online, February is often dedicated to stories about love, and new editor Emma Munro keeps that tradition going. A small note for full disclosure that this issue contains a reprint of my own story, “A Lumberjack’s Guide to Dryad Spotting” (the story also appears as a reprint in Xenocultivars, which I’m also review­ing in this column). Some ...Read More

Escape Pod 1/22, 2/22 Cast of Wonders 2/22 GigaNotoSaurus 2/22

Escape Pod saw its first release of the year in late January with “Payday Weather” by Matthew Claxton, which unfolds in a California ravaged by wildfire. Little speculative in that, but the story takes it further, imagines the shape technology might take to fill in the holes left in the social safety net. Mercenary fire sup­pression workers ...Read More

Strange Horizons 1/03/22, 1/10/22, 1/17/22 GigaNotoSaurus 1/22 Lightspeed 2/22 Fantasy 2/22

The big news out of Strange Horizons as the year opens is the increase in poetry they’re publishing, doubling their poetic offerings every issue. For fiction, the year opens with “Broken Blue” by E.M. Faulds, a story about a recently divorced woman, Katie, her adorable Labrador, and the stranger who enters her life, filling up an ...Read More