While Tor already had a large release in October in collaboration with Fiyah Magazine for Breathe Fiyah
, there’s still the matter of Tor’s regular releases to get to, which include one short story and two novelettes. These stories definitely lean on the spooky side, I think, and seem rather appropriate for the season. There’s a ghost story, a nested narrative about erasure, reclamation, and the nature of storytelling. And there’s a heartwarming story about witches. All in all, it’s a powerful collection of mostly fantasy, and fantasy with some grim ornamentation. So let’s dive right into the reviews!
It’s another full issue from Clarkesworld, with six stories (four short stories and two translated novelettes) that cover a wide range of pasts, presents, futures, and never-wases. The stories are mostly science fictional, though there’s one fantasy and one alt-history, and they examine hope and progress, what makes a person human or makes them...different. It features naturalized aliens, uploaded consciousnesses, artificial wombs, and colonies on Neptune. And through it all it remains fairly philosophical, wrenchingly visceral, and intimately emotional. There are spills and chills, laughs and more than one heartwarming moment, so let’s cut the chitchat short and get to the reviews!
This month’s Uncanny Magazine gets dark
. From monsters and murder to abuse and death to magic and exploitation, the fiction features a number of characters facing their own demons. The dark places inside themselves, and the dark forces outside seeking to use them for further harm. Who are seeking to devour them, to corrupt them, to twist them. The works don’t have a lot of bright spots to them, and poetry gets in on the darkness as well, featuring doomed astronauts and haunting songs. The issue on the whole is difficult for me, visceral and tragic, though not entirely without warmth. To the reviews!
Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! is here!!! And with it comes a whole heck of a lot of fiction and poetry. To be specific, ten stories and ten poems. But, because this is also a regular issue of Uncanny, the work will be released publicly over two months. And so, to keep things manageable for me, I’m going to be tackling this extra-big issue in four parts—September fiction, September poetry, October fiction, and October poetry. So let’s dig in! The first half of the issue’s fiction is up and features five short stories touching on aliens, assistive devices, families, and a whole lot of disabled characters getting shit done. The work in these focuses primarily (for me, at least) on occupations and growing up. About facing down intolerance and violence and finding ways to find community, hope, and beauty in a universe that can often be ugly and cruel. So let’s get to the reviews!
It’s an extra helping of SFF poetry for November’s Uncanny Magazine, with three original stories and four original poems, all exploring love and resistance, history and harm. The stories range quite widely, from a wrenching historical fantasy to a strange alt present to a love story from an artificial to a human. They interrogate art and love, design and trajectories. They feature characters wondering what to do next, fleeing violence and abuse, reaching out for kindness and trust. The poetry is rich and reveals a sense of place and family and the need to come together and work toward a better world, to rewrite the accepted past in order to find justice and identity and a space to be. It’s a full month of content and an excellent crop of short SFF, so I’ll get right to the reviews!
The two stories in this month's Nightmare Magazine both seem to look at the effects of trauma. The ways that people can react to extreme emotions and situations, the ways that people can fracture. These are both sorts of ghost stories, or maybe stories of hauntings. Not necessarily literally but both stories question whether a thing must be literally true to be real. To have a deep and meaningful impact. These are rather shocking stories, and ones that are difficult to face. Because the situations are terrible, violent, and tragic. And because these things happen, because these tragedies do happen in literal ways, in the real world, these are important stories to face and examine, and I will waste no more time in getting to the reviews!
 |
| Art by Rod Julian |
March has arrived at Uncanny Magazine and with it comes an interesting look at love and history and oppression and labels. People stuck in bad situations and people in some ways responsible for sticking people there. It's a nice mix of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and there's definitely a lot to read through and enjoy. Much of pairs quite well, too, echoing themes of men as products of their times and places (and how inadequate an excuse that is when it comes to causing harm) to escaping harmful patterns and oppression and labels. As I said, there's a lot to read, so I'm going to jump right into the reviews!
 |
| Art by Katy Shuttleworth |
I think it might be stretching things a bit to say that the February Clarkesworld is Valentine's Day themed. However, there are a number of stories that do a fine job of being romantic at the same time they are action-packed and morally dense. Most of the stories here lean science fictional, but there is fantasy as well, and a 15k genre-bending story that makes the issue a rather heavy one. No new translations this month, but a fine mix of stories that challenge and provoke. About AI and about dragons and about the humanity of everything. So let's get to those reviews!
With the end of the year looming, things are getting...weird with the stories coming out, and Lightspeed Magazine keeps that trend going with four original stories steeped in the strange. Mad Hatters stand beside visions of humans among the stars so odd they're barely recognizable, and grief and loss and guilt become a tangible thing following the loss of a parent. From epic revenge tales to the dissolution of relationships, the stories this month are not the cheeriest of adventures, but most offer a bit of hope through it all, and a healthy spoonful of weird. To the reviews!
