Beneath Ceaseless Skies #309 (2020)

Beneath Ceaseless Skies, ed. Scott H. Andrews. Issue #309 (July 2020). Online at beneath-ceaseless-skies.com.

Reviewed by Sonia Sulaiman

Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a fantasy adventure magazine published online by Firkin Press. They publish, as they put it “fantasy set in secondary-world or historical settings, written with a literary focus on the characters.” This tighter, more literary lens is what makes Beneath Ceaseless Skies distinct in the fantasy fiction market place. One of the pieces in this issue, ‘Nneamaka’s Ghost,’ is a reprint from an earlier edition of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. All three tales in issue #309 are fantastic both in theme and in execution. Running through them all is a thread of the otherworldly, be it in the form of helpful, loving ghasts, selfish ghosts, or spirit children.

Cotton Xenomorph (Summer 2020)

Cotton Xenomorph: No Creeps, ed. Chloe N. Clark, Teo Mungaray & Hannah Cohen. Spring/Summer 2020. Online at cottonxenomorph.com.

Reviewed by N.A. Jackson

This indie online magazine looks smart, and features fiction, poetry and interviews with a literary slant. Practically all the authors are graduates of one or another of the creative writing programmes in the US; the whole zine has a strong North American bias. The quality is high and it has a professional feel. The only slightly off-putting thing is the floating banner which appears at the top of every page and is there, inescapably, as you read, which says ‘Cotton Xenomorph—No Creeps.’ What does this mean? Does it mean ‘we don’t feature creeps’, ‘we don’t like creeps’, ‘we don’t want them reading our zine’? And what is a ‘creep’? Am I a creep? Gosh, I hope not.

Russell, Fragment (2016)

Craig Russell, Fragment. Thistledown Press, 2016. Pp. 214. ISBN 978-1-7718-7111-2. $19.95.

Reviewed by Nina Munteanu

Fragment is an eco-thriller by Canadian lawyer and award-winning science fiction author Craig Russell. Published in 2016 by Thistledown Press, an independent book publisher in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the book explores the climate-induced Antarctic ice sheet avalanche that changes the world. The premise of Russell’s book, which places it firmly as climate fiction or cli-fi, intrigued me. As an ecologist, I’m always curious how literature portrays the science and the socio/political effects of climate change. I first read Fragment in 2019.