Charles Payseur

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