Reviewed by Storm Blakley
Lightspeed June 2024 has both sci-fi and fantasy, short stories and flash. Both sci-fi short stories offered commentary on war, while the fantasy short stories each focused on belief, and gods. The sci-fi flash stories focused on relationships, while the fantasy flash stories speak from the perspective of creatures far older and wiser than humanity.
Reviewed by Storm Blakley
Science fiction has long been a vehicle for exploring sentience; the dizzying variety of it, exploring the most fundamental emotions and needs, placing every aspect of humanity and sentience under a microscope to see what we can learn. Clarkesworld’s February 2024 issue tackles religion and belief, addiction and alien/artificial intelligence, climate change and conflict, immortality and isolation, and everything in between.
Reviewed by Storm Blakley
Kaleidotrope’s Autumn 2023 issue offers a wonderful collection of fantasy, sci-fi and a little horror. Each poem and story held, for me, a reflection on very fundamentally human needs and ideals, from a delightful array of differing perspectives.
This issue opens with “A Place We Used to Visit” by Bennett North. It is a time travel story, but not at all in the way I’d expected; it was wonderfully done. If we had the chance to go back, to avert a tragedy, would we? Knowing that that would mean we no longer become the person we are, would we? I think most of us would like to think so, but we can never really know until we’re in that situation. North does a wonderful job expressing the fear and confusion the protagonist feels, and how frightening that decision would truly be.
Reviewed by Storm Blakley
Solarpunk Magazine describes itself as a “bimonthly online publication of radically hopeful and optimistic science fiction and fantasy.” In this issue, I found a recurring theme of family, solidarity, and what we owe one another through tales of helping and supporting one another, across a great variety of worlds and times.
Reviewed by Storm Blakley
Apex Magazine’s January issue was a collection that made me think of bargains and agreements, and how those can change our perspectives on the things that really matter. Those bargains can be dangerous things, especially when made with powerful beings and magic. Whether we knowingly sign them or not, the consequences are inevitable; some bring about redemption, while others are simply dangerous.
Reviewed by Storm Blakley
Strange Horizons’ November issues have a lot to say, and in them, I saw a reflection of much happening in the world today, from the climate crisis to the digital world, monsters and magic and far-away planets. Stories and poems about communities standing together, of breaking free of what chains us, of creating a better world for those to come (including ourselves); these issues really resonated with me.
Reviewed by Storm Blakley
The 22nd issue of Polar Borealis, a publication I was until now unfamiliar with, opens with an editorial, musing on how far this Aurora-award winning publication has come in the six-plus years since its inception. Read all over the world, nominated for and winning awards, a paying market for Canadian writers and artists, while still acknowledging how challenging the industry can be. Overall, it’s cheerful and optimistic; hopeful, with an eye on the future.
