Monday, January 10, 2022

Galaxy’s Edge 53 (2021)

Galaxy’s Edge, ed. Lezli Robyn. Issue 53 (November 2021). Online at galaxysedge.com.

Reviewed by M.L. Clark

The latest Galaxy’s Edge is warmly introduced by editor Lezli Robyn, who is excited to share in this issue the winning story for The Mike Resnick Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Short Story by a New Author. In this inaugural year for the award, the prize went to Z.T. Bright, for “The Measure of a Mother’s Love.”

This winning story, which opens the issue’s fiction section, involves a mother in an orbiting station over Guangdong Province. Its occupants are a mother and her “son,” an insectoid alien who has chosen the name Zhuang after her first son, buried on the Earth below. The story follows the mother as she relives her initial struggle to understand her first son’s choices to set out on his own, in keeping with his sense of service to nation and species—and her chance to respond differently now, when her second “son” also presents his own need to move on.

Monday, January 03, 2022

Bestwick, Devils of London (2021)

Simon Bestwick, Devils of London. Hersham Horror Books, 2021. Pp. 114. ISBN 979-8-7321-2063-9. £8.00.

Reviewed by Jason Kahler

The new novella from British Fantasy Award-nominee Simon Bestwick, out now from Hersham Horror Books, dances between urban fantasy, horror, and social commentary. The story is decidedly British, with British sensibilities and concerns that flavor the narrative throughout its brisk telling. When a story is light on plot, as it is here, success is measured by the story’s execution. Originality. Commentary. A situation that lingers with you long after you’ve finished reading. Devils of London has the pieces to be successful—timeliness, an interesting point-of-view character, high stakes—but ultimately, the execution of the story as a whole falls short of its promise.