Apex Magazine: January 2009

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Reminiscent of a Children’s Help Network commercial, Ruth Nestvold’s “On the Shadow Side of the Beast” is tale of a post apocalyptic world that offers no real explanation of what happened to ruin Berlin. It touches on a lot in a small space, children vs. adults, lack of education, the quest for survival, all set against a backdrop different from the America-centric one most often found in science fiction. It feels like only part of a story though, with a lot left up to the imagination and plenty of ends left open.

“In Memory” by James Stone is a disturbing tale of humans pushing their limits to unimaginable extremes. Kenny is a mathematician who uploaded himself into an experimental program long ago. After his mother’s funeral he notices a number of missing gaps in his memory and discovers he’s locked away parts of his memory from himself. What’s hidden is dark and terrible. Despite the tech heavy cloak on this tale at its core it’s about the struggles of the human mind trying to deal with the terrible and the tragic events in our lives. While Kenny is accused of becoming less human by locking his memories away, the action to cut out painful memories is very human, and in this tale, made possible by technological advances.

“Starter House” by Jason Palmer is quite the strange tale, where houses are giant creatures that must be chained and pained into submission for the survival of the humans living on a planet far away. What starts as a strange commentary touching on elitism and classism, quickly turns into a reflection of our current housing market and war issues. From there, as the prestige of owning a purebred house is stripped away by the struggle to survive in poverty, the story becomes one of a war between a man and his house. This tale is surreal, complex and not to be missed.

“Edison’s Dead Men” by Ed Turner is another reprint from Permuted Press’ History is Dead anthology. A bit too serious and dangerous to be a pure dark humor tale, it’s not your average zombie story. It is part science fiction, historically so, speculating on
“What if Edison’s electricity made zombies?” It’s a fun little mad scientist tale readers should be sure not to over look.

This Issue also features:

Popped Culture: This is Totally Going on the DVR by Justin Stewart

Confessions of a Book Junkie: Book Burning by Lavie Tidhar

Apex Magazine, December 2008

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“A Night at the Empire” by Joy Marchand kicks off the last issue of Apex Magazine for 2008. It begins with a familiar dream, a slightly distorted version of Len’s work day. As readers follow Len through a real day at the post office they can easily start to sympathize with his hatred for the cold, impersonal embrace of technological doodads that travel like parasites with everyone around him. But the wonder years of yesterday hold no comfort in their vice grip either. “A Night at the Empire” is simultaneously beautiful and creepy, and a perfect reminder in this holiday season that the past is sometimes better left behind us.

“Organ Nell” by Jennifer Pelland is the tale of a woman exploited by the medical industry, a woman who has saved countless lives, or possibly the tale of a strange genetic mutation. True to Pelland style there’s a lot layered into this mixed interview style story of a destitute woman who is selling her body in an entirely different way. In only a paragraph or two per character Pelland spins not just a large tale, but dozens of small ones with characters every bit as real than Organ Nell herself.

“The Barrow-Maid” by Christine Morgan is a Norse-flavored tale of Sveinthor the Unkillable, who though he dies in the opening, is truly unkillable in a Permuted Press way. But this tale is more than just a battle tale, or a zombie tale. It captures a sense of honest and loyal love that historians often leave out of Viking legends. Originally printed in History is Dead here’s another tale worth rereading.

The last piece of fiction for this issue is Anil Menon’s “Harris On the Pig: Practical Hints For the Farmer”. A strange, tech-heavy tale of a future pig farmer being terrorized by someone akin to a hardcore PETA activist, there are more twists and turns here than in a brick of ramen. Despite the complex scope of the tale there’s a feel of hyper focus, of only a small bit being shown to the reader. This feel adds a lot to the narrow-mined, superior mindset of the narrator. Like most excellent tales this one dwells in a muddled moral gray space where neither side is exactly wrong, but they aren’t by any stretch right either.

This issue also features:

Confessions of a Book Junkie #12: Rumours of the death have been somewhat premature (or, on the difference between print and digital storage) by Lavie Tidhar

An Interview with Michael A. Burstein

Popped Culture: Doomsgiving by Justin Stewart

Apex Digest: In the Seams by Andrew Porter

Apex Digest recently made the jump to an online magazine, raising the pay rates and making content free to readers. The new format puts out a story and a series of articles and columns each week, new content every Sunday.

This week’s fiction offering is a horror tale, Andrew Porter’s “In the Seams”. Part Appalachian thriller and part Lovecraft mythos its science fiction elements are debatable, but the story is a solid one. It centers on a pair of coal miners, excavating one of the richest veins in local history, only to discover a large number of strange fossils in the mineral itself. Scientific curiosity and a drive to be more than “the coal miners who discovered the fossils” to the annals of history lead the pair to get far too involved in uncovering what should remain buried.

It’s nice to see a story that’s both local, and doesn’t portray the region like a bunch of hicks or greedy, Earth plundering creeps. Porter manages to make what’s practically in my back yard into a near-exotic local, rich with a dark history.

Free Fiction- Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens

Issue 7 (Winter 2008) of Bust Down the Door and Eat all the Chickens is available as a downloadhere. Authors trying to “break” this market should take advantage of this to get a free peek inside.