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Where much of speculative fiction questions or outright violates our perceptions of reality, the first contribution to Murky Depths #6, “The Lastest Marianne” by Alan Frackelton, takes a more direct route. This surreal tale concerns a haunted man’s progressive descent into madness… Full review at The Fix.
Via SFScope:
Breaking news: Realms of Fantasy is closing down following publication of its April 2009 issue. Managing Editor Laura Cleveland told SFScope the news came very suddenly, indeed, even Editor Shawna McCarthy (currently on vacation in Italy) hadn’t been informed yet. The only reason we got the story is that rumors broke through the blogosphere today.
Cleveland said the April issue is currently at the printer, and will be published. The reasons she was given for the closure were plummeting newsstand sales. “Subscriptions are good, and advertising, until very recently, was fine.” She blamed the economic downturn and newsstand distribution for the closure.
Publisher Sovereign Media first got into sf magazine publishing with Science Fiction Age, which Scott Edelman edited through its eight-year life. SFAge was closed while still profitable to make room for an even more profitable wrestling magazine. Realms of Fantasy has been with us for fifteen years and “was coming up on its 100th issue,” Cleveland said. “We were excited about the special Halloween issue we’d been planning, which would have been our first.”
The staff is obviously harried by the news, and that it’s become public so quickly. Cleveland had been hoping to tell the authors and artists the news before it broke publicly. The magazine wasn’t carrying a large inventory, she said, although she did note that they’d recently purchased a number of stories which now won’t be published.
This is an excellent opportunity for writers (and readers) to check out Weird Tales for free. The summer issue is available for free download here. This issue includes original fiction from Norman Spinrad, Nick Mamatas, and Karen Heuler and an interview with Mike Mignola, creator of HellBoy.
I know I’m behind on this one, but while looking for a digital copy of the cover for issue 5 I discovered a link to the taster issue put out after issue 3 came out. If you’ve been wanting a look at Murky Depths before buying click the cover below (opens a pdf).
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.
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