It’s always seemed to me that John Joseph Adams’s
Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series, now in its sixth volume, has served a somewhat different if equally important purpose than the more traditional year’s best volumes which have been a staple of SF publishing for more than 70 years. While those volumes have historically been SF’s way of presenting itself
to itself (always with the hopes of drawing a broader readership among those who simply want to check in on SF from time to time), Adams’s annual volumes are part of the “Best American” series of focused anthologies which began with
Fall 2020 brought a new online magazine, a new print periodical, and the return of a digital magazine.
Baffling launched October 1, 2020 with four “unapologetically queer and unashamedly weird” stories of under 1,200 words. (Going forward they will publish one flash story a month on Patreon, compile the offerings quarterly, then publish that for free online.)
Baffling #1 offers a welcome glimpse of
Jewelle Gomez‘s vampire Gilda in the future with “
Merida, Yucatan: 2060” and a terrifying tale of suburban wildlife in “
Velvet” by
From the Deep, the Music Rises” by
Izzy Wasserstein and
Cellars, Caskets, and Closets“, a story of madness.
Weird Horror #1 also debuted in October. It is a handsome new print periodical featuring “pulpy dark fiction in the weird fiction and horror genres” with plans to publish twice yearly. The inaugural issue is something of a mixed bag. “
The prolific, multi-award-winning Jane Yolen is a bona fide legend and, at least to those of us on the darker side of genre, has long been noted for what Theodora Goss calls – in her excellent foreword – the darkness “in much of her work, both fiction and poetry, because her writing is grounded in history and human nature, which have a dark edge.” What was obvious to us was evidently more of a surprise, however, to Yolen. In the introduction to new collection
The Midnight Circus, she writes of being somewhat surprised to find she had 40 appropriately dark stories (later cut down to 16 that she and her editors felt fit the bill) for the theme. She also matched poems to each (nine newly written for this volume). Their range is wide and varied. There are selkies and mermaids, bloody revenge and deathbed confession, rapists, murderers, strange children, bewitched lovers; tales set in the past and the future. As Goss points out, Yolen’s tales “show us how we can survive in a
David J. Schow culled 30 years of his stories (1983-2013) for 13 to fit the titular theme of new collection
Monster Movies. Or, more precisely, as the author states: “
What happens to the monsters after the movie is over? That’s the backbeat, the true north for much of this book.” Except it is also a book about those who – like the author – love movies and monsters and, often, are part of the films themselves. Lead-off “Monster Movies” reveals how important such flicks were to a man in his childhood – and maybe his future. A film historian, whose reputation rests on his knowledge of a rare film, sacrifices art to preserve his prestige for posterity in “Murder”. A trio of aging actors who once played monsters meet up in “Last Call for the Sons of Shock”. In “Blood Rape of the Lust Ghouls” a vitriolic movie reviewer finds a portal to another, somehow familiar, world through a schlock movie poster. Peculiar, never-before-seen cinema treasures in “One for