Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: GigaNotoSaurus, Flash Fiction Online, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and F&SF

GigaNotoSaurus 12/22 Flash Fiction Online 12/22 Three-Lobed Burning Eye 12/22 F&SF 1-2/23

December’s GigaNotoSaurus story has some strong Star Trek vibes with “Patterns in Stone and Stars” by MV Melcer, where a Federation in conflict with different galactic powers needs to determine if the inhabitants of a certain strategically important planet are sentient and therefore would prevent the world from being colonized. Szkazy is from the outer ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Fusion Fragment, Diabolical Plots, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Fusion Fragment 12/22 Diabolical Plots 12/22 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 12/1/22, 12/15/22

Fusion Fragment’s last issue of 2022 brings a mix of genres and styles, with a decidedly grim and slightly dystopian feel to it. That re­ally coalesces in Owen Leddy’s ‘‘Lifeblood’’, in which a blood heist goes rather wrong for Joel, who is desperate to find a way to save his partner. Aching and not afraid to ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Fantasy, Lightspeed, and Hexagon

Fantasy 12/22 Lightspeed 12/22 Hexagon 12/2

Fantasy closed out 2022 with a bang with an issue full of hauntings, magic, and people desperate for a safe place to be. In ‘‘The End of a Painted World’’ by Sam Kyung Yoo, a painter named Woojin must flee an assault by the emperor’s soldiers. The reason for the attack is never confirmed, but it likely has to do with ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Cast of Wonders, Escape Pod, and Strange Horizons

Cast of Wonders 11/15/22, 12/11/22 Escape Pod 11/17/22, 12/8/22 Strange Horizons 11/14/22, 11/21/22, 11/28/22, 12/5/22

Cast of Wonders rounded out November with the feline-centric “The Cat of Lin Villa” by Megan Chee. The story features a cat who enjoys the company of a woman trapped in an unhappy and abusive marriage. Because she gives treats and com­pany, this cannot stand, and it’s up to the cat to ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2022 by Charles Payseur

It’s difficult to capture a year spent reading most­ly short fiction and poet­ry, especially one where I’ve been trying to learn new reading patterns and settling into a new role as short fiction reviewer here at Locus. Short fic­tion and poetry always seem like a ‘‘blink and you’ll miss it’’ field, where new works are constantly incoming, and taking the time to pause and reflect can bow beneath the weight

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Lightspeed, GigaNotoSaurus, and Reckoning: Our Beautiful Reward

Lightspeed 11/22 GigaNotoSaurus 11/22 Reckoning: Our Beautiful Reward 11/22

November’s Lightspeed features the wonderful novelette “The Noon Witch Goes to Sound Planet” by Kristina Ten, where Hailey is a young woman who doesn’t really want to be the Noon Witch, something she’s inherited from her mother, who used to give men heatstroke back in the old country. Hailey just wants friends and figures if she can spend ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Diabolical Plots, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Flash Fiction Online and Fantasy

Diabolical Plots 11/22 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 11/3/22, 11/17/22 Flash Fiction Online 11/22 Fantasy 11/22

November’s Diabolical Plots surprised me a bit with a foodie science fiction story I definitely hadn’t seen before. Phil Dyer bakes up a creepy exploration story in “Beneath the Crust”, where a team moves into the mysterious Bake, a whole dimension of dough that some people can shape with their minds into any kind ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Samovar, Strange Horizons, Drabblecast, and Amazon: Into Shadow

Samovar 10/24/22 Strange Horizons 10/17/22, 10/31/22, 11/7/22 Drabblecast 11/22 Amazon: Into Shadow 11/22

Samovar also came out with an issue in Octo­ber, featuring two stories and poem presented bilingually. Mónica Bustos’s “Warm Beds”, translated by Analía Villagra, weaves together the fates of three people who come to exist only at different times of the day, all while sharing the same room, and same bed. While they never ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Worlds of Possibility, Baffling, and Cast of Wonders

Worlds of Possibility 10/22 Baffling 10/22 Cast of Wonders 10/14/22, 10/23/22, 10/29/22, 10/31/22

I’m quite happy that Julia Rios is back in an editing chair, and Worlds of Possibility makes for an interesting next chapter for them. As sad as I was to see Mermaids Monthly come to a close at the end of 2021 (and as much as I’m hoping that project will still find a way to return ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Kaleidotrope, Diabolical Plots, and F&SF

Kaleidotrope 10/22 Diabolical Plots 10/22 F&SF 11-12/22

Kaleidotrope’s October issue is positively burst­ing with flash fiction – twenty stories in all. The focus on shorter works gives the issue a breadth of ideas while allowing readers to move quickly from piece to piece, from world to world. It’s a speculative smorgasbord mixing fantasy, sci­ence fiction, and horror of all stripes and flavors. Ziggy Schutz provides a story of fae and ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Cast of Wonders, Escape Pod, Strange Horizons, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Cast of Wonders 9/20/22, 9/22/22, 9/25/22, 9/27/22, 9/28/22, 9/29/22 Escape Pod 9/29/22, 10/6/22 Strange Horizons 9/19/22, 9/26/22, 10/3/22, 10/10/22 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 10/6/22, 10/20/22

Cast of Wonders had a busy Septem­ber, thanks largely to its celebration of Banned Books Week. Before that, though, Riley Neither took the stage with a short story of family and grief in “A Portal”. Set on a world far distant and now cut ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: GigaNotoSaurus, Fantasy, and Lightspeed

GigaNotoSaurus 9/22 Fantasy 10/22 Lightspeed 10/22

GigaNotoSaurus featured a story about magic maps and desperate opera composers in Sep­tember’s “A Conspiracy of Cartographers” by Barbara A. Barnett. Said desperate opera composer is Guillaume who, after his latest work was panned by critics, seeks a short cut to success with the help of a map that will bring him to his greatest work. It’s a hasty and foolish ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Hexagon, and Flash Fiction Online

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 9/8/22, 9/22/22 Hexagon 9/22 Flash Fiction Online 9/22 September brought two issues of Beneath Cease­less Skies, the first of which centers isolation and being trapped in bad situations and trying to navigate a way out, sometimes violently. In “Turn To Stone Ourselves” by Marie Croke, a stone Dreamer is living a second life long after their life in flesh ended. It’s as a statue ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Escape Pod, Strange Horizons, and Diabolical Plots

Escape Pod 8/18/22, 9/8/22 Strange Horizons 8/15/22, 8/22/22, 8/29/22, 9/5/22, 9/12/22 Diabolical Plots 9/22

The mixture of humor and horror continues in August’s Escape Pod with Douglas DiCicco’s “Laser Squid Goes House Hunting”. As the title implies, the infamous Laser Squid, terror from the deep, is looking for a place where she can raise a new generation, and it’s up to the story’s narrator as her realtor ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Zooscape, Anathema: Spec from the Margins, and Black Cat Weekly

Zooscape 8/22 Anathema: Spec from the Margins 8/22 Black Cat Weekly 8/13/22

Zooscape’s August issue continues the mission of showcasing furry speculative fiction, and pulls no emotional punches with its opening story, “The Best Way to Pro­cure Breakfast” by Dana Vickerson. In it, a cat named Pho is hard at work trying to get his human to stick to the script of feeding him. Something is wrong, ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Samovar, Strange Horizons, Drabblecast, and Diabolical Plots

Samovar 7/25/22 Strange Horizons 7/18/22, 8/1/22. 8/8/22 Drabblecast 7/22, 8/22 Diabolical Plots 8/22

The end of July also brought an issue of the specu­lative translation publication Samovar. In it, Chen Chuncheng (translated by Jack Hargreaves) presents a strange and almost bucolic story of a person who manicures clouds so that they always appear fluffy and appealing in “A Cloudcutter’s Diary”. The titular cloudcutter is in something of ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Fantasy, Lightspeed, and F&SF

Fantasy 8/22, 9/22 Lightspeed 8/22, 9/22 F&SF 9-10/22

August’s Fantasy brought a number of works dealing with the power of stories and narratives, including the complex “The Tails that Make You” by Eliza Chan. Written in second person, you are a woman with tails, a huli jing, and though for some it can be a mark of pride and power, for you it is clouded with shame, ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Flash Fiction Online, Worlds of Possibility, and GigaNotoSaurus

Flash Fiction Online 7/22 Worlds of Possibility 8/22 GigaNotoSaurus 7/22

August brings some editorial additions to Flash Fiction Online, where publisher Anna Yeatts joins Emma Munro as co-editor-in-chief. As for the fiction itself, it’s a strong issue, including Adam Piñon Kerkman’s ‘‘Moon Eater & Housekeep­ing’’, a deep and beautiful piece that looks at the hidden people of the world, those who don’t have power and are cut ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Baffling, Fusion Fragment, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Cast of Wonders

Baffling 7/22 Fusion Fragment 7/22 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 7/28/22, 8/11/22, 8/25/22 Cast of Wonders 7-8/22

I’m starting this month with July’s Baffling, which features seven stories with LGBTQIA+ elements. The issue opens with a mix of messy fun and danger with Fruzsina Pittner’s “The Serpent Crouches in the Heart of the Unravelling”. Written in second person, you are cast as a kind of dimensional fixer, a witch

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Fiyah, Fireside, and GigaNotoSaurus

Fiyah 7/22 Fireside 7/22 GigaNotoSaurus 7/22

Magazines this year must have gotten the memo that I really like food-centered speculative fiction, because Fiyah’s latest issue is food and cuisine themed. In Lina Munroe’s “The Usual Way”, Danae wants to recreate a recipe of her mother’s in order to capture some of the magic her mother wielded before she died. As she works with her aunt to perfect ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Diabolical Plots, Flash Fiction Online, and Kaleidotrope

Diabolical Plots 7/22 Flash Fiction Online 7/22 Kaleidotrope 7/22

July’s Diabolical Plots had a strong pair of sto­ries, including Andrew K Hoe’s “Heart of a Plesiosaur”, which finds two orphaned siblings practicing bringing inanimate representations of animals to life, if only for brief amounts of time, and competing against others to see whose animations are most impressive. The magic in the piece is fascinating, limited to children ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Escape Pod, Strange Horizons, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Escape Pod 6/23/22 Strange Horizons 6/9/22, 6/13/22, 6/20/22, 6/27/22, 7/4/22, 7/11/22 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 6/30/22, 7/14/22

Moving over to Escape Pod, June saw the release of “Love and Supervillains” by Caroline Diorio, which finds in Rosalind a narrator who was mostly just trying to enjoy her life through personal independence and lots of casual sex until the guy she hooked up with turned out to be a ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Trepass, Decoded Pride and Cast of Wonders

Trespass (Amazon Original Stories) February 2022. Decoded Pride 6/22 Cast of Wonders 6/18/22

I’m starting off today reaching back to Febru­ary, when Amazon.com released a set of origi­nal stories under the theme of “Trespass.” As a whole, the project looks at the intersections of the human world and a wild, non-human world – not necessarily a natural world, but one that is decidedly outside human influence and, at times, understanding. ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Fantasy, Lightspeed, and F&SF

Fantasy 7/22 Lightspeed 7/22 F&SF 7-8/22

Moving into July, Fantasy features a number of works that border on science fiction. Stories of stars crafting solar systems and futures where government authori­tarianism leads to water riots, mass deportations, and interments. For all the science fictional touches, though, Fantasy finds ways to focus on fantasy, as in Sabrina Vourvoulias’s “The Memory of Chemis­try”, which follows the life of a ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: GigaNotoSaurus, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Escape Pod

GigaNotoSaurus 6/22 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 6/2/22, 6/16/22 Escape Pod 6/22

June’s GigaNotoSaurus explores complicity and empire in Sid Jain’s “To Revolt is to be Undone.” The story finds Mythili becoming aware of the atrocities authored by her country and its ruling party. Here ignorance of the terrible truth is not a passive act, and she must decide how much of her own safety to risk as she uncovers more ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Strange Horizons, Hexagon, and Diabolical Plots

Strange Horizons 5/16/22, 5/23/22, 5/30/22, 6/6/22 Hexagon Summer ’22 Diabolical Plots 6/22

Finding a poem by R.B. Lemberg is always rea­son to celebrate, so I was cheering when I came across their latest in May’s Strange Horizons. “The broken hill and the breath” is a power­ful piece about long cycles of harm and healing, about a grove of fruit trees and a fragile peace unfolding around disaster and ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Black Cat Weekly, Fusion Fragment, and Cast of Wonders

Black Cat Weekly 4/9/22, 4/15/22 Fusion Fragment 5/22 Cast of Wonders 5/22

I’m starting out this month reaching all the way back to April with two issues of Black Cat Weekly. Though primarily a reprint publica­tion, there are occasional originals as well from editor Cynthia Ward. Of the two in these issues, I was a bit more taken by “It Gazes Back” by Jayme Lynn Blaschke & Don ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Anathema, Lightspeed, Fantasy, and Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa

Anathema 5/22 Lightspeed 6/22 Fantasy 6/22 Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa, Rachel Zadok, Karina M. Szczurek & Jason Mykl Snyman, eds. (Catalyst 978-1946395573, $16.95, 260pp, tp) September 2021.

Anathema officially enters 2022 with their May issue, which opens with Choo Yi Feng’s strange and haunting “Plastic Bag Girl”. In it, said girl recycles trash along the shore and turns it into animated animals to entertain ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: GigaNotoSaurus, Cast of Wonders, and Flash Fiction Online

GigaNotoSaurus 5/22 Cast of Wonders 5/22 Flash Fiction Online 5/22

May’s GigaNotoSaurus story is “In the Time of the Telperi Flower” by David-Christopher Galhea, which on one level follows the harrowing story of an expedition to see a strange, time-bend­ing flower. The story is framed, however, as an annotated account of that expedition as told by its guide, embellished and published posthumously by an unscrupulous publicist, and ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Kaleidotrope, Zooscape, Escape Pod, and Drabblecast

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

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Diabolical Plots, Lightspeed, Fantasy and F&SF

Diabolical Plots 3/22, 4/22 Lightspeed 5/22 Fantasy 5/22 F&SF 5-6/22

April Fool’s Day brought a special extra story to Diabolical Plots, and fans of the Teenage Mu­tant Ninja Turtles might want to check out Josh Strnad’s “Food of the Turtle Gods”. Then, in “She Dreams In Digital” by Katie Grace Carpenter, an intelligent starship tries to keep a garden alive following the loss of ...Read More

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Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Baffling, Fireside, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies

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

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