I write monthly reviews of sci-fi/fantasy magazines and collections for The Future Fire as a way to spotlight the exciting things happening in short fiction today. You can find a round-up of my reviews here.
If you’d like me to review your magazine, anthology, or collection, get in touch on social media. (I’m not accepting email inquiries at this time, sorry.) I’m happy to accept ebooks and print books from both indie and trad pub. Since I only review one issue per month, the lead time is usually a couple of months.
I have two main policies: First, I do not award star ratings because I don’t think they communicate useful information (for more on this, see here). Second, since the purpose of these reviews is to showcase excellent short fiction, I don’t review things I didn’t like overall. That said, since these are collections, they may sometimes contain individual stories that didn’t work for me, and I will give my honest opinion.
With one notable exception, the collection focuses on intimate, personal stories, often exploring people with marginal places in society, almost all women…Apex #122 hit the track running.
3LBE has a reputation as a home for the weird, daring, and bizarre, and issue 32 certainly bears that out in a collection bursting with creativity, emotion and depth.
The satisfaction of Apparition Lit #12 is not the satisfaction of a righteous victory and a pat ending, but rather the satisfaction of a deep meditation into your inner self; the protagonists do not always achieve their goals, but they all end up being illuminated about something.
Overall, this is a meaty, thought-provoking volume with a lot of solid writing, and it’s certainly worth checking out.
Translunar Travelers Lounge #3
It opens with some great laughs and moves on through interesting ideas and deeply contemplative moments.