Fiction

Fantasy

Audrey took her dinner quietly, without words beyond the obligatories (please, thank you, no, work was fine), and I obliged her the silence. We just ate, together but not together, in that way that you do when there are too many things to say. The meal in question was on the bad side of decent, days-old stir-fried noodles from the Japanese place down the street from her apartment, reheated and reconstituted into a slimy Pan-Asian gruel with the addition of fish sauce, soy sauce, sriracha, curry powder, chili powder, and neglect.

In Apr. 2015 (Issue 59)

Science Fiction

The Invisible Hand Rolls the Dice

by Carolyn Ives Gilman

Author spotlight

At 35,000 feet over the Indian Ocean, Lee Pao Nelson paused to re-evaluate his life. There was plenty of tangible evidence to score himself by. It was his thirtieth birthday, and here he was in first class, a piquant glass of merlot on the tray table in front of him, leather upholstery underneath him, his understated Joseph Abboud suit shrugging off the wrinkles.

In Apr. 2015 (Issue 59)

Fantasy

A Wolf in Iceland Is the Child of a Lie

by Sonya Taaffe

Author spotlight

But I know the one there is, and this is not his story. This is mine: I might have spent the summer in Tuscany, if my mother had visited Iceland in 1968. I could have found a boy in Siena with the face of an Etruscan faun and read him D.H. Lawrence among the vineyards and the oak-groves, olives silver in the sun; in Brittany, paced the stones of Carnac and the pine-dark tumuli .

In Apr. 2015 (Issue 59)

Science Fiction

The Universe, Sung in Stars

by Kat Howard

Author spotlight

There is music in the stars. The stars, the planets, the asteroids, the galaxies. Everything that is flung, whirling in orbit through space and time. We dwell inside an enormous, ever-changing symphony, and each of the many universes sings a song of its own. I replicate them.

Illustrated by Reiko Murakami

In Apr. 2015 (Issue 59)

Fantasy

Documentary

by Vajra Chandrasekera

Author spotlight

Kamaria turns into a helicopter gunship at the full metal moon. She stalks the fallow killing fields by night, chop-chop lost in the wind. Helicopter thoughts are slick with oil, but she will not fire her guns. That much she holds in place, like a single sputtering candle underneath the roar of her blades.

In Mar. 2015 (Issue 58)

Science Fiction

The New Atlantis

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Author spotlight

Coming back from my Wilderness Week, I sat by an odd sort of man in the bus. For a long time we didn’t talk; I was mending stockings and he was reading. Then the bus broke down a few miles outside Gresham. Boiler trouble, the way it generally is when the driver insists on trying to go over thirty. It was a Supersonic Superscenic Deluxe Longdistance coal-burner, with Home Comfort, that means a toilet, and the seats were pretty comfortable.

In Mar. 2015 (Issue 58)

Fantasy

The Good Son

by Naomi Kritzer

Author spotlight

I don’t just want to be with you. I want to live with you. In the kingdom under the hill, we could have been together forever. I didn’t want that. I wanted you — all of you. But that was before I understood what that meant.

In Mar. 2015 (Issue 58)

Science Fiction

Hot Rods

by Cat Sparks

Author spotlight

The winds blow pretty regular across the dried-up lake. Traction’s good — when luck’s on your side you can reach three hundred KPH or faster. Harper watches the hot rods race on thick white salt so pure and bright the satellites use it for colour calibration. Harper doesn’t care about souped-up hot rods.

In Mar. 2015 (Issue 58)

Fantasy

A Face of Black Iron

by Matthew Hughes

Author spotlight

Diomedo Obron and the Archon Filidor passed the evening and much of the night in the latter’s study, discussing the next day’s journey into the wastes of Barran and the expected confrontation with whatever survivor of the Nineteenth Aeon wizards’ cabal still lurked in the Seventh Plane. Erm Kaslo struggled to try to understand the concepts the two thaumaturges threw onto the table — sometimes literally.

In Mar. 2015 (Issue 58)

Science Fiction

The Brains of Rats

by Michael Blumlein

Author spotlight

There is evidence that Joan of Arc was a man. Accounts of her trial state that she did not suffer the infirmity of women. When examined by the prelates prior to her incarceration, it was found that she lacked the characteristic escutcheon of women. Her pubic area, in fact, was as smooth and hairless as a child’s.

In Mar. 2015 (Issue 58)