May 2023 (Issue 156)

We have original science fiction by Izzy Wasserstein (“She Blooms and the World is Changed”) and Timothy Mudie (“Blood for a Stranger”). We also have two terrific flash pieces: “Moons We Can Circumnavigate in One Day, or the Space Probe Love Story” from Natalia Theodoridou and “When Shiva Shattered the Time-Stream” by Sharang Biswas. Plus, we have original fantasy by Kat Howard (“One Heart, Lost and Found”) and Wole Talabi (“Saturday’s Song”). We also have a flash story (“The Sword, the Butterfly, and the Pearl”) from Deborah L. Davitt, and another (“The Belfry Keeper”) from S.L. Harris. All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with book reviews from our terrific review team. Our ebook readers will also enjoy an excerpt from Cory Doctorow’s new novel Red Team Blues.

Cover art by Warmtail / Adobe Stock

May 2023 (Issue 156)

Editorial

Editorial: May 2023

by John Joseph Adams

Don’t miss the editorial for insights on this month’s content.

Science Fiction

Moons We Can Circumnavigate in One Day, or the Space Probe Love Story

by Natalia Theodoridou

For the last day we have together, I thought we could go back to Io, where I saw you for the first time. Her volcanoes will be reflected on your solar array once again. We will bathe in her Plasma Torus until our sensors tingle so hard we can’t take it any more. Then I will make a bouquet for you to carry on your way home: sulfur for passion, oxygen for remembrance, and sodium, for good luck.

Fantasy

One Heart, Lost and Found

by Kat Howard

Author spotlight

I came to the city to find an egg. A robin’s egg, to be precise, an oval of pale, perfect blue that echoed the spring sky. Inside, not a robin, but an emerald. Inside the emerald, a wizard’s heart. He had decided he missed it, and he wanted it back. It was the usual sort of thing, or so he had assured me. His heart taken out and stored for safekeeping, a place where his enemies—and certainly there were many, jealous of his power—would never think to look. So well hidden, in fact, that he himself was no longer quite certain where it was.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Kat Howard

by Laurel Amberdine

This story had its roots in something I saw years ago, an article on the strangest things people had ever turned into New York Subway lost and founds. (Caveat: this story originated so long ago, that I may not even be remembering the details of its origin story correctly. Do you think I can turn a lost inspiration into a lost and found?) Anyway, I remember there being a lost and found snake.

Science Fiction

She Blooms and the World is Changed

by Izzy Wasserstein

Author spotlight

My sister Sera was twelve standard years old when our parents confined her to our family habitat. They kept her there for over a year, and then they died far from home (expedition, landslide). I’ll never know if they were seeking a cure for Sera, or a way to protect the world from her. They must have died mid-morning, but I didn’t learn about it until I left Sera’s side to make lunch. The habitat’s weak AI played their pre-recorded message once I was alone.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Izzy Wasserstein

by Laurel Amberdine

Despite being from a big family, I realized I hadn’t written many sibling stories, and I wanted to change that. I loved getting to explore the sisters’ relationship and follow how it changed and grew over the course of this story. The plot grew out of my suspicion of colonization stories, and of the assumption—still prevalent in more science fiction than I’d like—that there’s a non-problematic way to colonize. And, while I admire the ethos of “leave no trace,” I also wanted to explore its limitations.

Fantasy

The Sword, the Butterfly, and the Pearl

by Deborah L. Davitt

The butterfly sword of chaos is never the same twice. But then, neither is its wielder. The sword changes those who bear it, transforming, transfiguring. The temple where you found it was a ruin, roof caved in, snow-covered floor. When you took it from the statue of the smiling god in the temple, it didn’t look like a sword at all. It perched on that stone hand, a frozen butterfly, its forlorn wings outstretched.

Nonfiction

Book Review: The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem

by Arley Sorg

If you’re looking for a fun fantasy read, Arley Sorg recommends The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem. Find out why in his full review!

Science Fiction

When Shiva Shattered the Time-Stream

by Sharang Biswas

When Shiva shattered the time-stream, he was in love. Well, maybe he didn’t shatter it per se—more like twisted it into a knot. But there were too many “Vassiliev invariants” and “nugatory crossings” in the mathematics of it that Shiva didn’t understand, so he preferred to think about it in terms of breaking rather than knotting. Besides, he was named after a god of destruction, so “shattered” fit. Poetic license and all that. When Shiva shattered the time-stream, he was heartbroken.

Fantasy

Saturday’s Song

by Wole Talabi

Author spotlight

The seven siblings sit in a place beyond the boundaries of space and time, where everything is made of stories. Even them. Especially them. People are made of stories too, but only the versions of their stories that they tell themselves. Curated, limited, incomplete. Many of the stories people tell themselves are lies layered on partially-perceived things to give their lives structure and meaning. The siblings that sit beyond sit true, for they are made of all the stories that were, that are, that are to come.

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Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Wole Talabi

by Laurel Amberdine

I’ve always wanted to write a sequel to “Wednesday’s Story,” which ends with Wednesday, one of the personified Days of the week, having committed a crime. I wanted to follow up on that. On the consequences of her actions. But since the purpose of the personified Days is to tell stories, I knew I needed a story for them to tell within that larger story. I didn’t want to return to my old trick of using another reimagined children’s rhyme to frame the larger story around.

Nonfiction

Book Review: Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi

by Aigner Loren Wilson

Wole Tolabi’s new fantasy novel, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, is a timely fantasy read that just might be for you.

Science Fiction

Blood for a Stranger

by Timothy Mudie

Author spotlight

Crunches and shrieks buffeted the Magellan LLC smartship as it plunged into Enceladus’s kilometers-thick ice crust, making their way to the subsurface ocean and the rival LuxeSpace corporation’s station situated there. Warning signals flashed through Jarrell and his fellow shipminds’ readouts, but they followed their orders and continued inward. They’d long since learned to ignore such dangers—the digitized brains of former human corporate-soldiers that controlled smartships could afford to take risks and go places traditionally-crewed spaceships wouldn’t dare.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Timothy Mudie

by Laurel Amberdine

I had a lot of fun writing the corporate-speak that MacLeish uses. While I haven’t worked in super-big corporations, that sort of language seems to have so penetrated all work spaces that it’s unavoidable. And it’s always eye-rollingly ridiculous. For this story, I tried to imagine how corporations would take advantage of being able to copy (and copyright) human consciousness, and yet I am sure that no matter what changes the empty buzzwords will remain the same.

Fantasy

The Belfry Keeper

by S.L. Harris

I rang the Academy bell the first time, when both it and I were new-penny bright, and I rang it at the end, when it was gray-green with the centuries. I was the school’s mascot and its totem and its faithful servant. By night I cleaned the halls and read the chalkboard ghosts before consigning them to oblivion. In the library, I gently laid sleeping heads on tables and reshelved the books they’d used as pillows. It may be hubris for a soulless thing of brass to say so, but if the Academy belonged to anyone, it belonged to me.

Nonfiction

Book Review: Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

by Chris Kluwe

This month we’re going to get pounded by—ahem, we’re going to read—a brand new offering from internet phenomenon Chuck Tingle, friend to buckaroos and ladybucks who look for love all over the world, only this time Mr. Tingle has something devilishly different up his sleeve: his debut horror novel, Camp Damascus.