Charles Payseur

Escape Pod 11/30/23 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 11/30/23 Three-Lobed Burning Eye 11/23 Fusion Fragment 11/23

Escape Pod closed out November with a gem in Uchechukwu Nwaka’s gripping “Chal­lenges to Becoming a Pro Dragonracer in Apapa-Downtown”, which takes place in a future Nigeria where people like Ishola live rather vulnerably, trying to do their best for themselves and their families but facing the grim lack of infrastructure and pervasive ...Read More

Lightspeed 11/23 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 11/2/23, 11/16/23 GigaNotoSaurus 11/23 Flash Fiction Online 11/23 F&SF 11-12/23

The November Lightspeed shows a keen inter­est in storytelling forms, with stories framed as recipes, as reviews, as confessions, and with Regina Kanyu Wang’s “A Record of Lost Time” (translated by Rebecca F. Kuang) as a series of personal narratives surrounding a new technol­ogy called FastForward, which allows users to experience “sped ...Read More

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

GigaNotoSaurus 7/23 Fantasy 6/23 Lightspeed 7/23

GigaNotoSaurus dives into secondary world fantasy with July’s “Canyon Masks” by Reed Mingault, which imagines a world where gods Mark individuals with their power, and goddess sisters of luck have chosen Lyssa to be their agent in the world. A deft hand at manipulation and planning, Lyssa finds years of work on the edge of ruin when a Marked of the ...Read More

Fiyah 7/23 Diabolical Plots 7/23 Flash Fiction Online 7/23

The theme for the July issue of Fiyah is ‘‘Car­nival,’’ celebration, costume, and commu­nity. Things that Salmik, the main character in Nkone Chaka’s novelette ‘‘Sentience’’, initially refuses to take much part in. They are a scien­tist – a famous one – who helped to stop the spread of a deadly fungal infection responsible for untold devastation across the ...Read More

Strange Horizons 6/19/23, 7/3/23, 7/10/23, 7/17/23 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 6/29/23, 7/13/23 Baffling 7/23 Kaleidotrope 7/23

Samovar’s sibling publication, Strange Horizons, opens July with, among other, C. H. Lindsay’s poem “The Legacy of Granny Van Helsing”. The piece fleshes out a bit more of the family tree of the famous vampire hunter, revealing a rich line of people who know how to keep evil at bay through herb ...Read More

Escape Pod 6/22/23 Cast of Wonders 6/24/23 Worlds of Possibility 6/23 Samovar 6/26/23

This June saw a new original from Escape Pod with Andrew Dana Hudson’s “The Uncool Hunters”, which follows Rocky, an uncool hunter (or a fucking uncool hunter to properly capture the seriousness of the profes­sion) – who wades through the actual habits of the median consumer, helping corporations to understand and profit from the ...Read More

Lightspeed 7/23 F&SF 7-8/23

Pushing on into July, Lightspeed opens with J.B. Park’s timely ‘‘Six Months After All Life on Titan Died’’, which is framed as a prompt for an algorithm-generated story, where the narrator is the prompter trying to coax out a marketable drama about a whistleblower and an accidental genocide. It’s a layered piece, commenting both on the ways algorithm-generated art can flatten and play ...Read More

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 6/1/23, 6/15/23 GigaNotoSaurus 6/23 Fusion Fragment 6/23

The first of Beneath Ceaseless Skies’s June is­sues features stories revolving around memory, death, and resistance, seen clearly in Kat How­ard’s moving “Eleanora of the Bones”, which finds a religious order dedicated to tending the bones of the dead in order to give their spirits time to come to terms with moving on to the next stage ...Read More

Flash Fiction Online 6/23 Diabolical Plots 6/23 Fantasy 6/23

Flash Fiction Online celebrated a month of fantasy stories in June, including Daniel Galef’s strange and captivating “The He-Bear”, which follows a man enjoying some time out in the country, away from the concerns of the busy hustle of city life. Until, sent on a walk with a different guest at the estate (and a terribly ob­noxious ...Read More

Cast of Wonders, 5/25/23 Strange Horizons 5/22/23, 5/29/23, 6/5/23, 6/10/23, 6/12/23 Hexagon Summer ’23

The last May originals from Cast of Won­ders share an episode and a focus on food and recipes. In Priya Sridhar’s “A Letter to A Bully’s Mother” the story unfolds as a letter from a bullied student, who is also a were-chicken, to the mother of their bully, who left a negative review ...Read More

Drabblecast 3-4/23 Zooscape 4/23 Worlds of Possibility 4/23 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 4/20/23, 5/4/23, 5/18/23

Drabblecast has been busy, with new sto­ries in March and April, and the second issue of their publication The Tentacu­lum. Inside, “Personal Best” by Michael Bet­tendorf tells the visceral and unsettling story of a young man whose parents are really into his football prospects – or so it seems. Really, they are into their ...Read More

GigaNotoSaurus 4/23 Flash Fiction Online 4/23 Lightspeed 5/23

May’s GigaNotoSaurus presents a video game-centered tale in Andrew Dana Hudson’s “Any Percent”. In the story, Luckless is a player of a simulation game where in the span of an hour people can live through sometimes multiple lives in-game, sometimes just experiencing life outside of themselves, and sometimes upping the stakes to try and speed-run a rise to the ...Read More

Strange Horizons 4/17/23, 4/24/23, 5/1/23, 5/8/23, 5/15/23 Fantasy 5/23 Diabolical Plots 4/23

Strange Horizons closed out April with the poem ‘‘In a country where history is only a memory that has grown older’’ by Michael Imossan, which imagines the world as a stage and the plot of the play something of a tragedy. The narrator has lost a brother to the violence of bullets and the people ...Read More

Flash Fiction Online 4/23 Lightspeed 5/23 F&SF 5-6/23

The April Flash Fiction Online opens with Sheila Massie’s interesting take on the fae and dance clubs in “Fae Magic on a Friday Night”. Like Biswas’s story, the standard tropes surround­ing the supernatural are subverted and turned around. The fae in this story aren’t the ones preying on humans, but rather have become sources of an almost narcotic magic ...Read More

Diabolical Plots 4/23 GigaNotoSaurus 4/23 Fusion Fragment 4/23 3LBE 4/23 Baffling 4/23

Guan Un drags Sisyphus into the modern world in April’s Diabolical Plots with ‘‘Re: Your Stone’’, a story framed as a series of emails between the unfortunate Sisyphus and the bu­reaucratic nightmare that is Hades Corp. The story deftly captures the tone and excruciating layers of automation and pointed ineptitude of working with many corporate structures ...Read More

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