Strange Horizons closes up May with two issues covering one short story and two poems (plus lots of nonfiction that's very much worth checking out). The pieces look at place, and at personhood, at anger and hurt and destruction. The publication very much stays in keeping with its title, with pieces coated in weirdness, in metaphor and darkness and resilience. They find non-human characters dealing with having been made into something to serve humanity, with wanting to reach forward to a time when maybe they can be free again, and can exist without the demands that humans place on them. It's a difficult pair of issues, but very much worth checking out. To the reviews!
The May issue of Flash Fiction Online is all about family, with perhaps an additional emphasis on mothers. And as such it's...well, it's a little conflicting for me personally. But the quality of the stories is strong as ever and there's a lot here to like, stories that revolve around loss, around grief, around absence. These are stories with holes, not in the plots but in the fabric of the characters. They are missing something. Someone. And the stories set very different courses in navigating their absences. So let's get to it!
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| Art by Dario Bijelac |
Though it comes at a bit of an inconvenient time to review quickly, the new Fantasy Scroll is out and it is a mostly enjoyable experience. As always, there's a nice mix of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. The fantasy here is perhaps a bit revenge-focused, but the science fiction and horror both shine here, and as always there is a great graphic story to get a new chapter of. Overall, it's still a great source of stories, putting out nine original fiction pieces and a graphic serial. To some reviews!
Okay, here we are in the fourth week of October, and with these three weeks of Strange Horizons the month shows no signs of slowing down. The good news is that the fund drive that had been going on was fully funded! So there will be even more great stories, poems, and nonfiction next year. The other good news is that there is a lot of fiction and poetry that was released as part of the bonus issue. I say good news because, while it might destroy me, there is an awful lot to like about these pieces, many of which deal with the way we tell stories, and what we choose to tell stories about. And I just need to get to the reviews!
