Apex magazine tends toward the dark side of fiction, so it is appropriate that I finished reading the latest issue just before Halloween. It was definitely more of treat than a trick.

The issue starts with a dystopian story in a world experiencing climate change called “Whisper Songs” by Lyndsie Manusos. A woman experiencing post-partum depression witnesses three birds die in her yard. As required by law, she calls the authorities so they can come collect the birds’ songs. They come but things get off track. A close examination of one of these collectors and the mom. Unique and interesting. (My rating: 4/5)

A new writer with the name Zohair gives on odd story called “Quietus“. A man is condemned to death and put alive into a coffin and floated down the river. As the coffin travels, people seem to see what they want to see and have very different experiences, including seeing an empty coffin. It doesn’t seem to have much to say, at least not to me. (My rating: 2/5)

A game of mahjong centers “Life Wager” by Lucy Zhang. A woman who is the child of a god and a human returns to heaven and plays a series of games with the emperor. But that’s about all that happens. Just kind of meh for me. (My rating: 3/5)

“Kɛrozin Lamp Kurfi” by Victor Forna is an experimental story that I really wanted to like much more than I did. It tells of a mother who chases her son into a story to save him and struggles to get out with her mind intact. I liked the idea of going into the story but the telling was a little disjointed and confusing for me. (My rating: 3/5)

Apex excels at stories with atmosphere that provoke emotions. “Junebug” by Sarah Hollowell is an excellent example. Three friends are traveling to visit their dying friend when they get stuck in traffic on the highway. The emotions build and overflow, leading to unusual experiences. (My rating: 5/5)

“Spitting Image” by Rich Larson is the kind of creepy story that is perfect for Halloween. A boy’s friend leads him to a well in the forest that returns things dropped into it, changed. I shiver just remembering this story. Makes your skin crawl, just like it is supposed to. (My rating: 4/5)

After her grandmother dies, a woman wears the hat she did and starts to experience the same thinning of skin and hair. In “Brainpink Umber“, Chelsea Sutton explores questions like: What makes us who we are? And what happens when that starts to fade? This story feels like a metaphor for dementia running in a family. (My rating: 4/5)

Talk about metaphors that work! “From This Beating Heart, From This Fractured Mind” by Elisabeth Ring tells of a man with a wooden ticking heart and a woman with a glass mind living together and supporting one another. He is a bit cold and disconnected. She can’t seem to wrap her mind around things like she should. It is a tale of mental health and isolation. Well done. (My rating: 4/5)

In a future with sentient biorobots, a young man lives with his male partner while his mother from the old country begs him to get married and have children. At the same time, he struggles with what to do with one of his under performing charges. “Memories of the Old Sun” by Eugen Bacon addresses two tropes but never really brings them together. Disappointing with great writing. (My rating: 3/5)

The issue ends with the beautiful “Through Dreams She Moves” by Tonya Liburd. A woman who can enter other people’s dreams enters those of a man in a coma in an effort to wake him up. What makes this especially poignant and evocative is the clever use of the second person. The story addresses several people as it goes: her mom, then boss, the client’s father, the client, and her great grandfather in the past. It works beautifully. (My rating: 5/5)

My average rating for this issue is 3.7 out of five. Be sure to at least spend the time to read the two best stories in the issue.

When I finally picked up the September/October issue of Uncanny Magazine, I was excited. I had been looking forward to reading since early September. Right away I was rewarded with a spectacular story.

Advertising has become so much a part of our culture. In “Can You Hear Me Now?“, Catherynne M. Valente uses that fact to amazing effect. Imagine if a woman in the ads you see was suddenly a real person, aware that they played different roles in each commercial? How would she deal with that? This masterpiece explores that idea while touching on all the real troubles and desires that consumerism covers up. (My rating: 5/5)

I was initially intrigued by the indigenous setting of “We Do Not Eat Much Fish” by Grace P. Fong. A woman called a witch by her father and husband, encounters a fisherman and brings him home to her son with dire results. The story is a bit gruesome for me and doesn’t explore as much as I wanted about the context of a woman taken to strange home by her husband. (My rating: 3/5)

Remember being a kid and peeling Elmer’s glue off your hand in sheets? In Kristina Ten’s “The Curing“, the outcast immigrant kids go a bit further. They cover their whole bodies and peel them off, and the glue copies come “alive”! Now, just one wouldn’t do, right? These kids make multiple copies and absorb all the memories that their copies make. It is a great story with lots of metaphor, subtle, and not too much in your face. (My rating: 5/5)

The longest story in the issue is “The Kingdom of Darkness” by Sarah Monette. In an alternative past, a man protects a demoniac after his witch finder is murdered. I am sorry to say that I could not finish this story. I found myself forcing myself to read it. I didn’t care what was going on. And it seemed a bit all over the place. (My rating: 1/5)

I found “The Girl with a City Inside of Her” by Jeannette Ng to be a little confusing. A girl with a city inside her sits on a stool in the sideshow of a carnival talking to the visitors about her city. The author seems to switch back and forth between the girl literally having a city inside her to it being simply a metaphor. I didn’t really care for it. (My rating: 2/5)

On a doomed mission to look for a replacement planet, a reluctant outfitter does her best to keep the surveyors alive after a deadly pandemic at home. This is “The Coffin Maker” by AnaMaria Curtis, and she really creates a palpable atmosphere. I could feel what was going on in this story. The desperation, the frustration. (My rating: 4/5)

“Four Words Written on My Skin” by Jenn Reese is a kind of a romance with a trope I don’t care much for. A woman follows her wife into the woods where the Fae have stolen her in an attempt to get her back. Their relationship was rocky but once her wife is taken, the main character realizes how important she is to her. That said, it is a good story well-written. (My rating: 3/5)

My excitement at the start of the issue had pretty much petered out by the end. The issue comes to a disappointing average rating of 3.25 out of five. Issue 55 is likely to be the last in my subscription.

I always look forward to the wide variety of stories in Lightspeed Magazine, and the September issue was no exception.

The issue starts with an odd adventure written by John Kessel and Bruce Sterling entitled “Money in the Bank“. A veteran using a false identity to sell his services as a body guard gets what seems to be a run-of-the-mill assignment. He is sent to guard a cryptocurrency genius. He succeeds but learns that there is much more going on behind the scenes. Madcap humor and an out-there plot that turns out to be a fun combination. (My rating: 3/5)

“Eve’s Prayer” by Victor Forna is an actual prayer. A woman on a habitable planet prays for guidance on whether to send a beacon to let humanity know they can safely come. The planet is safe for humans, but she is concerned about what they will do to it. (My rating: 4/5)

The next entry is a bedtime story, literally. In “The Hole in the Garden” by Gene Doucette, a hard-working man comes home late to find his seven-year-old daughter still up waiting for him to tell her a story. Tired, he searches his memory for one that won’t take too long. He comes up with one about a quantum singularity in a man’s garden. But the ending has a surprise twist. This story really pops. (My rating: 5/5)

Many science fiction writers experiment with the way they tell stories. Maria Haskins does this in “Death by Water“, and it doesn’t work for me. The result is a trippy, psychedelic, confusing story about a woman who sails away from Vancouver in a ship as her body slowly falls apart. I didn’t really understand what she was trying to say with this. (My rating: 2/5)

Have you ever wondered how to get over a broken heart? Jordan Kurella gives step-by-step guidance in “Instructions for the Broken Hearted“. This story takes the idea of someone ripping your heart out and stomping on it literally, teaching the reader what to do to get it back in your chest. It is bittersweet and really evokes all the feelings you would expect. (My rating: 4/5)

Dragon tales. Typical fantasy fare, right? Not exactly in “Simmered in Their Wealth Like the Richest of Sauces” by Jo Miles. In our modern world, a dragon is awakened by a rich man seeking the gold that the dragon sleeps on. But the dragon can smell and taste greed. And the aroma of our modern world is making the dragon salivate. (My rating: 5/5)

“Remains” by N.R. Lambert is another experimental story. It seems to be the story of a person (“you”) trying to survive as the world around them breaks down. The language is flowery and evokes feeling but I couldn’t tell what was going on. This seems to be a modern trend in writing. I don’t care for it. (My rating: 2/5)

In “His Thing” by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, an African woman is essentially purchased by a man returning to his hometown. He imprisons her in a sentient house that he controls. She seeks to find a way to control her own life. It includes a lot of words from southern Africa that are not defined though there is context to understand their purpose. I would have preferred having them fully defined. (My rating: 4/5)

Altogether, this issue comes in for a rating of 3.63 out of five. The issue was better than that rating for me, the two stories rated at two bringing the average down.

I continue to catch up on my reviews from my vacation reading. Here is my review of the fiction in the August issue of Lightspeed Magazine.

The unusual “The Things You Can Maintain Yourself” by Benjamin C. Kinney kicks things off. A woman is forced to recycle the plant-based car she has owned and maintained for decades. It evokes a strong feeling and shows the support of communities that will be needed in such a future. (My rating: 4/5)

My favorite story is “The Letters They Left Behind” by Scott Edelman. A mother going off on a deep-space mission with aliens lasting many years, leaves behind letters for her daughter, marking milestones. But when she gets back, she finds that things turned out differently than she expected. The struggle of how to best be a parent centers this story as does the relationship. (My rating: 5/5)

In our current world of surveillance capitalism, “Monopticon” by Dani Atkinson is a wonderful story of subverting such a panopticon. Someone who has planted a file in the surveillance software system explains how the system itself came about. It is a very clever thought experiment and great exploration of individuality and privacy in a surveillance society.

“In the Nest Beneath the Mountain-Tree, Your Sisters Dance” by Lowry Poletti tells of a scientist studying alien wasp symbiotes. This scientist will die when his symbiote dies. His is dying, and he is desperately searching for a way to live. It is a fascinating premise and world. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite come together for me as much as I would have liked. (My rating: 3/5)

I really appreciated the perspective and what Sloane Leong was attempting in “The Blade and the Bloodwright“. But, I didn’t care for it. In it a violent army uses the uncontrollable magic of a witch as a weapon to punish their island chief enemies. It was too bloody and dark and abstract. (My rating: 2/5)

I’m not sure what Russell Hemmell was doing with “All the Colours of the Death Knell“. It is a straightforward tale of a witch waiting to be burned at the stake as she ponders her thoughts and feelings. Good as far as it goes, but I felt something was missing. (My rating: 3/5)

Isabel J. Kim is one of my favorite short story writers. Everything she writes is good. “You Will Not Live to See M/M Horrors Beyond Your Comprehension” is a play in which Achilles seeks his future from the Oracle while a chorus of phone obsessed future people look on and interfere. It is an amazing piece of connecting a classic tale with contemporary experiences. (My rating: 4/5)

My overall rating for the fiction in this issue comes out to 3.63 out of five stars. I hope you are enjoying whatever you are reading!

I finished reading the July/August issue while on my recent vacation and am only now getting around to posting my reviews of the fiction in it.

The issue starts off with the excellent “SuperMAX” by Daniel H. Wilson. It is the story of a father who created an AI-controlled prison whose object it is to rehabilitate the prisoners so that they can be released safely. This father used his son as the basis of the AI with predictably unpleasant effects form the research process for the son. The father shows up at the prison unannounced in an effort to make amends. Things do not go as he expects in this heartbreaking and poignant tale. (My rating: 5/5)

This is followed by another superior effort entitled “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200” by R.S.A. Garcia. An elderly woman living alone in Trinidad is given a robot by her daughter to help around the house. It becomes more than just a robot to both her and others with the same model. The story is told in dialect and is a little challenging to get used to. But this is important to the atmosphere and intimacy of the story. (My rating: 5/5)

“The Big Heavy” by Steph Kwiatkowski is about a generation ship, about the despair of being on a seemingly never-ending journey in the black void of space. The author does a good job of sharing the feelings of the community, but the story doesn’t really go anywhere. I found it depressing and pointless. (My rating: 2/5)

What follows is an explicit gay romance with a love triangle at the center in “Anything with a Void at the Center” by Lee Mandelo. A young man working in a porn shop works out his feelings for his roommates. Aspects of the action in the porn shop were a little too much for me, but the care the young men show for each other is touching as is the working out of individual quirks. (My rating: 3/5)

In “Love at the Event Horizon” by Natalia Theodoridou a filmmaker avoiding making his latest film is saved by a ghost ship and falls in love with it’s captain. It is a story of facing your fears through the care of another. (My rating: 3/5)

“The Ghasts” by Lavie Tidhar explores childhood fear. A woman who seems to have overcome hers helps children overcome theirs. Only in this case, the fears are justified. And perhaps she hasn’t overcome her own as much as she thinks. A wonderful exploration of fear and helping others and ourselves. (My rating: 5/5)

A friend has to make a hard decision in “Theses on the Scientific Management of Goetic Labour” by Vajra Chandrasekera. He finds that his fellow student is working on a thesis that will end catastrophically, forcing him to confront what he values more, his friendship or his future. (My rating: 3/5)

The titular creatures in “The Music of the Siphorophenes” by C.L. Polk are giant space creatures somewhat like cosmic worms that live in deep space. A young pilot takes a galactic superstar singer to see them and hear their music. But what they find there is more than they expected, and not in a good way. This is a lovely story of overcoming secrets and pain through sharing them. (My rating: 5/5)

With four fantastic stories, I rated this issue at 3.88 overall. Even if you don’t read all the stories, be sure to catch those fab four.

I just got back from a two-week vacation in Greece. While I was there I read in addition to doing touristy things. I’ll get to the review of all I read there later. First up is this review of the stories in the July issue of Lightspeed Magazine that I finished just before leaving on vacation.

The lead story is “Six Months After All Life on Titan Died” by J.B. Park. The format of this story is unique. It is written in the form of prompts for an artificial intelligence. While I appreciated the format, for me the story was just okay. (My rating: 3/5)

Next up was “Death Is Better” by Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe where a young slave and his sister attempt to escape slavery but a giant robot stands in their way. This story is very emotional and pulled me in right away. (My rating: 5/5)

I always appreciate stories that show me a different way to look at things. “The Bodhi Tree Asks Only For the Safe Return of Her Lover” by Ashok K. Banker is written in first person from the perspective of a tree seeking to negotiate peace in a war between humans and the trees. The difference in length of life offers a truly unique take. And the format is almost epistolary. (My rating: 4/5)

If you are from my generation, then you surely remember Live Aid and We Are the World. “The United Systems of Goodwill Concert Series and the Greatest Performance of All Time” by James Van Pelt felt like a cosmic version of those musical charity events. After a disaster, a collection of the system’s best bands plays a series of mega rock concerts. (My rating: 5/5)

The first of the fantasy stories in this issue is “Monsters of the Drunken Shore” by Nic Anstett. Since it is in written in the second person, you see a monster come out of the sea as you contemplate your first wild weekend as an adult. It may bring back your first time drinking or having sex. (My rating: 3/5)

I grew up in New York State near Syracuse and the surrounding area. It is always fun to read a story like “Starpoop” by Sandra McDonald that takes place in a setting you are very familiar with. And this story is so good. A woman with memory issues tries to live her life with her grandson, Starpoop, a social media star who seems to be perpetually three years old. Highly recommended. (My rating: 5/5)

“The Real Worlds” by Lauren Bajek is a family camping trip that doesn’t go quite as planned. A girl with her family camps between worlds as her father tries to get tenure for altering realities. Somewhat trippy but engaging. (My rating: 4/5)

“Muna in Barish” by Isha Karki is a story about writing and books. A worker in a bookstore is almost an indentured servant who dreams of becoming a published writer. She starts a correspondence with a famous author. And when that author comes to her bookshop, it don’t go as she expects. A wonderful allegory of those in the under classes supporting one another. (My rating: 5/5)

With four five-star stories, I think this issue is my highest rated so far at 4.25. All the stories are available to read for free. What are you waiting for?