Fiction

Fantasy

Kaleidoscope

In this universe, the last time we talk is when I return the basketball I borrowed from you. We are seventeen. We’ve known each other for seven years. We’ve vivisected each other all through high school, intent on playing games of cruelties and making up, because it’s how wild animals play and we are nothing if not savages in denim and sneakers. We are always friends and always enemies, though on this day probably more friends than anything. You’d think we’d kiss this once, to seal a parting.

In Oct. 2018 (Issue 101)

Science Fiction

The Horror of Party Beach

by Dale Bailey

Author spotlight

All this happened a long time ago, in the summer when Blackboard Jungle ruled the screen, “Rock Around the Clock” shot up the charts, and Hal March asked the first $64,000 Question. That was the year our friend the atom lit up the streetlights of Arco, Idaho, the world’s first atomic city. Reddy Kilowatt had slain Bert the Turtle, who’d been telling us to duck and cover for years.

Illustrated by Reiko Murakami

In Oct. 2018 (Issue 101)

Fantasy

You Pretend Like You Never Met Me, and I’ll Pretend Like I Never Met You

by Maria Dahvana Headley

Author spotlight

The worst day of Wells the Magician’s life begins pleasantly enough, with a shot of whiskey at the Lost Kingdom bar. It’s a birthday party day, and as all low-rent magic men know, birthday party days begin with booze and move laterally through coffee, cake, and whichever divorcee can be convinced to unhook her bra, whether offsite or in a back bedroom. Onward from there into (dire case) helium, (better case) weed, or (best case) coke.

In Sep. 2018 (Issue 100)

Science Fiction

How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps

by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

How to tell your boyfriend you are in love with a robot: 1) Tell him, “I may possibly be in love with a robot,” because absolutes are difficult for biological brains to process. He won’t be jealous. 2) Ask him what he thinks of a hypothetical situation in which you found someone who might not be human but is still valuable and right for you. (Your so-called romantic relationship is as fake as you are.) 3) Don’t tell him anything.

In Sep. 2018 (Issue 100)

Fantasy

The Coin of Heart’s Desire

by Yoon Ha Lee

In an empire at the wide sea’s boundaries, where the clouds were the color of alabaster and mother-of-pearl, and the winds bore the smells of salt and faraway fruits, the young and old of every caste gathered for their empress’s funeral. In life she had gone by the name Beryl-Beneath-the-Storm. Now that she was dead, the court historians were already calling her Weave-the-Storm, for she had been a fearsome naval commander.

In Sep. 2018 (Issue 100)

Science Fiction

The Last to Matter

by Adam-Troy Castro

Author spotlight

Kayn knew he was being rejected by the orgynism for almost a full year before it fully expelled him. He could easily live a million years past this humiliation and never understand what he had done to deserve such a rejection from the collective that had loved him so well, for so long. He had been one of the orgynism’s founders, the man who had provided its organizing principles and solicited the first participants.

In Sep. 2018 (Issue 100)

Fantasy

Jump

by Cadwell Turnbull

Author spotlight

Mike and Jessie were walking in the park. The trees high above their heads stretched to touch each other, their leaves letting only the tiniest slivers of light through. Mike watched the freckles of light spot Jessie’s brown face, her shirt, her arms. He tried to snub them out with his fingers. It was a long day for them. They’d spent a few hours walking around the park, just talking. About old dreams and new ones, black riots and urban decay, the secrets of their hearts and the mysteries of the universe.

In Sep. 2018 (Issue 100)

Science Fiction

Harry and Marlowe and the Secret of Ahomana

by Carrie Vaughn

Author spotlight

Wine-dark sea? No, the water was black as tar when the Kestrel crashed into it. The storm came up so suddenly, they might have hit a wall. It proved too massive for the airship to try to fly around, or over—it could only ascend so high, and the storm reached higher. They stayed aloft as long they could with a torn bladder and damaged engine, searching for some spit of sand to alight on. The lightning seemed to flash green around them.

In Sep. 2018 (Issue 100)

Fantasy

Abandonware

by Genevieve Valentine

Author spotlight

Some kids do that—they imprint on empty objects, they give them stories and opinions and a will, until they feel half-inhabited even to grownups, who have to pretend that they care how Chrissy’s blanket feels about things for so long that one day when Chrissy’s at school they step on the blanket and apologize. I did it with anything, when I was young; my toys were always in the middle of some intense plot that nobody outside could understand.

In Sep. 2018 (Issue 100)

Science Fiction

Her Monster, Whom She Loved

by Vylar Kaftan

Author spotlight

Ammuya birthed five hundred gods, followed by a monster. That was her first mistake. The gods tormented the monster because they feared it. They bound it inside a black hole, and the monster’s hatred seethed. Eventually the monster raged so fiercely he escaped the event horizon. Then he hunted down his siblings, one by one. On a silent desert planet, Ammuya cried for her children.

Illustrated by Galen Dara