Fantasy Magazine, Issue 59, December 2015: Queers Destroy Fantasy!

by Christopher Barzak (editor), John Joseph Adams (Publisher), Kai Ashante Wilson

LIGHTSPEED is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine. In its pages, you will find science fiction: from near-future, sociological soft SF, to far-future, star-spanning hard SF—and fantasy: from epic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, and contemporary urban tales, to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folktales.

Funded as a stretch goal of LIGHTSPEED’s Queers Destroy Science Fiction! Kickstarter campaign, this month we’re presenting a special one-off issue of our otherwise discontinued sister-magazine, FANTASY, called Queers Destroy Fantasy!: an all-fantasy extravaganza entirely written—and edited!—by queer creators.

Here’s what we’ve got lined up for you in this special issue:

Original fantasy—edited by Christopher Barzak—by Catherynne M. Valente, Kai Ashante Wilson, Carlea Holl-Jensen, and Richard Bowes.

Reprints—selected by Liz Gorinsky—by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Austin Bunn, Shweta Narayan, and Nicola Griffith.

Nonfiction articles—edited by Matthew Cheney—by merritt kopas, Matthew Cheney, Keguro Macharia, Ekaterina Sedia, Mary Anne Mohanraj, and Ellen Kushner. Plus an original cover illustration by Priscilla Kim and original interior illustrations by Goñi Montes, Odera Igbokwe, Sam Schechter, Elizabeth Leggett, and Vlada Monakhova.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Queer, Anthologies, Fiction, LGBT, Own

275 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 30, 2015

About the author

Christopher Barzak is the author of the Crawford Fantasy Award winning novel One for Sorrow which has been made into the Sundance feature film Jamie Marks is Dead. His second novel, The Love We Share Without Knowing, was a finalist for the Nebula Award and the James Tiptree Jr. Award. His third novel, Wonders of the Invisible World, received the Stonewall Honor from the American Library Association and most recently was selected for inclusion on the Human Rights Campaign’s list of books for libraries in LGBTQ welcoming schools. He is also the author of three short story collections: Birds and Birthdays, a collection of surrealist fantasy stories, Before and Afterlives, a collection of supernatural fantasies, which won Best Collection in the 2013 Shirley Jackson Awards, and Monstrous Alterations. His most recent novel, The Gone Away Place, received the inaugural Whippoorwill Award, and was selected for the Choose to Read Ohio program by the State Library of Ohio, the Ohioana Library Association, and the Ohio Center for the Book.

Christopher grew up in rural Kinsman, Ohio, has lived in the southern California beach town of Carlsbad, and the capital of Michigan; he taught English outside of Tokyo, Japan, where he lived for two years. He teaches creative writing at Youngstown State University, in Youngstown, Ohio.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!

this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.

this is the FOURTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2019 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.

if you scroll to the end of the reviews linked here, you will find links to all the previous years’ stories, which means NINETY-THREE FREEBIES FOR YOU!

2016: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2017: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2018: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

reviews of these will vary in length/quality depending on my available time/brain power.

so, let’s begin

DECEMBER 6: KAIJU MAXIMUS "SO VARIOUS, SO BEAUTIFUL, SO NEW" - KAI ASHANTE WILSON



They couldn’t guess what shape, this time, the hero’s metamorphosis would take; she had no idea herself. Their only forewarning was that, whatever changes, they would be always perilous, always a shock.

soooo, this was great. i'm always excited to read new stories by this guy, and this is probably my second-favorite of everything of his i've read (The Devil in America is still #1). this is the least linguistically playful of his work (although there's still a touch of that here), but it's also the biggest and broadest in terms of concept/story, even though the main focus is still small; on three of the four members of an unusual family. there's always some ambiguity leftover for later, and i would love to know more about sofiya, but i'm very happy with all of the words that exist, so i'm not gonna grouse about the ones that don't.

short review for a short story, but think of all the time i've saved you! now you can go read the story itself, which is much better than any of my sentences about it have or would have been!

read it for yourself here:

http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/new/n...

*******************************************

THE STORIES:

DECEMBER 1: FOR HE CAN CREEP - SIOBHAN CARROLL
DECEMBER 2: TAM-O'-SHANTER - DONNA TARTT
DECEMBER 3: TRASH BIRD - REZA FARAZMAND
DECEMBER 4: COLOR AND LIGHT - SALLY ROONEY
DECEMBER 5: SEONAG AND THE SEAWOLVES - M. EVAN MACGRIOGAIR
DECEMBER 7: BEWARE OF OWNER - CHUCK WENDIG
DECEMBER 8: THE TALE OF THE THREE BEAUTIFUL RAPTOR SISTERS, AND THE PRINCE WHO WAS MADE OF MEAT - BROOKE BOLANDER
DECEMBER 9: OUT OF SKIN - EMILY CARROLL
DECEMBER 10: PROBABLY STILL THE CHOSEN ONE - KELLY BARNHILL
DECEMBER 11: THE HUNDREDTH HOUSE HAD NO WALLS - LAURIE PENNY
DECEMBER 12: GIRLS, AT PLAY - CELESTE NG
DECEMBER 13: MR. THURSDAY - EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL
DECEMBER 14: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE - MADELINE ASHBY
DECEMBER 15: A FOREST, OR A TREE - TEGAN MOORE
DECEMBER 16: OUTFOXED: A FABLE - DYLAN MECONIS
DECEMBER 17: THEN LATER, HIS GHOST - SARAH HALL
DECEMBER 18: OH, WHISTLE, AND I'LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD - M.R. JAMES
DECEMBER 19: PREMIUM HARMONY - STEPHEN KING
DECEMBER 20: KNOWLEDGEABLE CREATURES - CHRISTOPHER ROWE
DECEMBER 21: THE HOLE THE FOX DID MAKE - EMILY CARROLL
DECEMBER 22: MRS. FOX - SARAH HALL
DECEMBER 23: SEASONAL WORK - LAURA LIPPMAN
DECEMBER 24: THE PLAGUE - KEN LIU
DECEMBER 25: ANY WAY THE WIND BLOWS - SEANAN MCGUIRE
DECEMBER 26: BLOOD IS ANOTHER WORLD FOR HUNGER - RIVERS SOLOMON
DECEMBER 27: CIRCUS GIRL, THE HUNTER, AND MIRROR BOY - J.Y. YANG
DECEMBER 28: ALL ALONG THE WALL - EMILY CARROLL
DECEMBER 29: SWEETNESS - TONI MORRISON
DECEMBER 30: DERIVING LIFE - ELIZABETH BEAR
DECEMBER 31: EVERY LITTLE THING - CELESTE NG

come to my blog!

[Alina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review for The Padishah Begum’s Reflections by Shweta Narayan

Set in three timelines, an oriental flavoured story with mechanical creatures.
You can find it on Fantasy Magazine's site or in Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories

[Althea Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Available for free, here: http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/new/n...

"Kaiju," of course, refers to the Japanese film genre featuring battles between giant monsters. (I used to work at a club where the band "Kaiju Big Battel" played frequently, so I can't see the word without thinking of their shows...)

Here we meet a family, one of whom is a Hero, travelling out of humanity's safe dwelling caves to do battle against a destructive alien monster.

The story is intercut with a couple of different kinds of texts. Some are notes from a geneticist, talking about the project to change some humans into "heroes" in order to fight the alien menace.
The others are like video game strategy notes, talking about how much XP and power a character can get from their companions.

The story seems to have been inspired by the idea of "lending strength" to someone, and how one might "take strength" from their family bonds - here the idea is taken quite literally.

I liked the story, and thought it got quite a lot of complex and fascinating ideas into a short amount of space. However, I wished that the main narrative had been clear enough to dispense with the need for the 'genetics notes,' and I also thought that the 'video game notes' weakened the story rather than strengthening it.

[Kalin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A commendable project whose results did not satisfy me completely. Mostly, it was a matter of aesthetic incompatibilities between me and the editors: I found some stories too slow or directionless, others, too broken or outright nasty. This is not about sexuality; it's about individual, idiosyncratic sensitivity.

But I'm going to journey on with Queers Destroy Science Fiction, eventually.

My personal highlights:

https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...

[Maija · Rating 4 out of 5]

This issue gets a 4 star rating in all, although the average rating would come down to 3.25 stars. I still enjoyed the experience of reading it, and I liked my favourite stories enough to up the rating. My thoughts on all the individual stories below.

ORIGINAL FICTION
"The Lily and the Horn", by Catherynne M. Valente: 5 stars
The preparations for an irregular, poisonous feast, told in gorgeous prose. My favourite from the whole issue. Valente's writing style, the descriptions, and the world just had me enchanted.

"Kaiju Maximus", by Kai Ashante Wilson: 3.5 stars.
A hero travels with her family to confront a Kaiju. This story doesn't focus on LGBTQ+ characters, instead it flips regular gender role expectations with a female hero and a male caretaker. I enjoyed the main story, but had to read the Author Spotlight to understand the meaning of the diversions from the main storyline.

"The Lady's Maid", by Carlea Holl-Jensen: 3.5 stars
A maid serves a lady with many changeable heads. When I read it I didn't know if the author had accidentally swiped visuals and scenes from Return to Oz or if it was intentional, until the very end. If I had read the Author Spotlight beforehand, I would've known that it was very much intentional, and that the story started life as a retelling. Then I would've probably enjoyed it much better from the start (not being confused by the parallels), and that would've affected my rating! I added 0.5 stars to my initial rating to reflect this.

This story could've well been in the horror issue, there were two very viscerally disturbing scenes. I tried to read while eating, which was a big mistake! It was impossible to swallow anything while reading those.

"The Duchess and the Ghost", by Richard Bowes: 3 stars
A young gay boy is haunted by the ghosts of his past in 60s Greenwich Village. Quite light on the fantasy elements, but the writing style is flowing and easy to read. I originally gave this 4 stars when I read it, but ultimately it hasn't stuck in my head like some of the other stories.

REPRINTS
"The Padishah Begum's Reflections" by Shweta Narayan: 3 stars
A mechanical female ruler in India meets with a French delegate. Took me a couple of false starts to finish, this is quite complex with stories within stories. I enjoyed the world!

"Down the Path of the Sun", by Nicola Griffith: 2 stars
A story about a small family (two sisters and their mother) surviving in a post-apocalyptic world. While the writing was good, I'm sad to say that I didn't really get why this was the story. It felt more like one scene from a brutal, post-apocalyptic novel. Again, more was explained in the Author Spotlight, and I understand the story's personal meaning to her, but I didn't get all that from reading it (since I don't share her experiences). Might work better and be more hard-hitting for other readers. Also, this was Nicola Griffith's first ever short story.

"Ledge" by Austin Bunn, 2 stars
A ship travels to the edge of the world. More of a metaphorical, literary story about death and longing. Not my cup of tea.

"The Sea Troll's Daughter" by Caitlín R. Kiernan: 4 stars
The hero of this story is a drunkard, boasting swordswoman who kills a troll that plagues a village, and then stays to wait for her reward while the village leaders hum and haw. This "hero kills a troll story" doesn't take the expected paths or follow the familiar story beats of revenge, which was quite refreshing.

NOVEL EXCERPT
"All the Birds in the Sky" by Charlie Jane Anders
I liked the writing style, but I have heard mixed things about this book, so I'm not sure if I'll be picking it up.

-
The non-fiction was more or less interesting, but there was no stand-out for me. "Retrofuturism and Agendered Fashion: What Will We Wear?" by Ekaterina Sedia was interesting. I admit to skim-reading the Hal Duncan interview, since I haven't read any of his books, and the interview topic wasn't that interesting to me personally.

There were also some interesting artists in the Artists' Gallery, whose names I wrote down.

[Marco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantasy and Lightspeed magazine were unified some time ago. They are very well-known science fiction and fantasy magazine. Even in fantasy, supposedly the genre of limitless possibility, where everyone is invited to the adventure, minorities are often underrepresented. Last year Lightspeed started the "destroy science fiction" series, a yearly program focusing on underrepresented minorities to give them a voice, and to see what they have to offer and to contribute to the genre. In 2014 they focused on sci-fi and women. In 2015 they focused on queer authors and themes, with three specials, one for sci-fi, one for horror, and this one, that focuses on fantasy. Next year they will focus on people of color. While fantasy is considered by many the more open of the literary genres, heterosexual, heteroromantic, and cisgendered are considered the default, to the extent that everything else is "deviation," and must be eyed with suspicion. But all fantasy is real fantasy. Fantasy is vast, and incredible fascinating in all its facets. It is inclusive. Fantasy is about people, and queer people, no matter how they identify [Gay, lesbian, bisexual, demisexual, asexual, pansexual, intersex, transgender, genderfluid, genderqueer.. anyone who fits within the QUILTBAG], are a big part of that. They always have been. They are just sometimes harder to see. So, in the interests of visibility and breaking stuff, Queers Destroy Fantasy! will show you just how wide the spectrum of sexuality and gender identity can really be. This special all-queer issue features original fantasy short stories from many award winning authors including Christopher Barzak, Kai Ashante Wilson, Catherynne M. Valente, Richard Bowes, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Nicola Griffith, Shweta Narayan , Ellen Kushner, and Charlie Jane Anders. The issue also include an interesting assortment of author and artist spotlights, interviews, nonfiction features, plus personal essays from writers about their experiences being queer reading and writing fantasy.
Two of the stories deserved a special mention, because of their power and quality: The Duchess & the Ghost, by Richard Bowes, is the story of a young man growing up queer in a time where it was very difficult to do even in the "liberal" New York City, facing his internal fears and ghosts. The Padishah Begum’s Reflections by Shweta Narayan, is the story of a clockwork monarch, adroitly weaved across multiple timelines to form a breathtaking tapestry.
A very interesting read, almost as good as the previous installment of the series that focused on science fiction. I am looking forward reading the next "destroy" issue.

[lauraღ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caitlin R. Kiernan's "The Sea Troll's Daughter" was excellent! Really engaging, really moving, really fun. I adored Kai Ashante Wilson's "Kaiju maximus ®" as I will probably adore everything he writes, but I'm a bit confused. Where was the queerness? Did I blink and miss it? "The Lily and the Horn" needed a reread for me to really get into it, but I enjoyed it a lot.

The rest of the anthology was good. Not really what I expected from something called "Queers Destroy Fantasy!" I would have appreciated less subtext and more text from several of the stories. But they were all enjoyable in some way. And I really appreciated Ellen Kushner's essay!

More or less worth the read. 3.5 stars.


Merged review:

But as we engineer the superhuman corpus, again I say, let us not neglect the heart!

Read this a few years ago as part of a collection; the reread was enjoyable and illuminating. I love what Kai Ashante Wilson does with words and lyricism, I love that he uses images and metaphors that are personal, and black ("If you’ve ever sucked and chewed on sugarcane, then you have the right image." I have!), I love the metatextuality in his work, I love the little nods he gives to video games. Reading the little interview he did after, I wasn't expecting to hear that some inspiration came from Bioware games, but thinking about it, I'm not very surprised!

Love the thought of a heroic gene, and that image of the hero, having to hold herself apart from her family, and yet depending on them so completely to complete her mission. Really good!

[Hillary · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection that introduced me to a couple of authors I definitely, definitely want to read more from. And all the stories had queer themes! Fabulous in more ways than one.

[bee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fiction
The Lily and the Horn by Catherynne M. Valente: 4.5/5
Kaiju Maximus®: “So Various, So Beautiful, So New” by Kai Ashante Wilson: 3/5
The Lady's Maid by Carlea Holl-Jensen: 3/5
The Duchess & the Ghost by Richard Bowes: 4/5
The Padishah Begum's Reflections by Shweta Narayan: 3.5/5
Down the Path of the Sun by Nicola Griffith: 4/5
The Ledge by Austin Bunn: 3/5
The Sea Troll's Daughter by Caitlín R. Kiernan: 5/5

Non-fiction
The Sleepover Manifesto by merrit kopas: 5/5
False Starts by Keguro Macharia: 3/5
Retrofuturism and Agendered Fashion: What Will We Wear? by Ekaterina Sedia: 4/5
Eggplant and Unicorns by Mary Anne Mohanraj: 4/5
Girls on Boys on Boys by Ellen Kushner: 1.5/5

Average rating: 3.65/5. Bumping it down to an even 3/5 because the extremely liberal idea of "queer" littered throughout some of the non-fiction and interviews gave me acid reflux and a lot of the LGBTness in a lot of the stories was subtext which isn't what I'm looking for in an issue of something called "Queers Destroy Fantasy".

[Dennis]

Place holder for Kaiju maximus: So Various, So Beautiful, So New by Kai Ashante Wilson

[Teacup · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish there had been more stories and less nonfiction - but that's really more of a compliment than a criticism because of the handful of short stories/reprints there were only two I really did not enjoy. The rest were each phenomenal in their own way, and I think the magazine accomplished a two-fold purpose: not only did I get to read lovely queer fantasy, but now I am curious about all these different authors and am keeping an eye out for their other work.

In short, this issue was (very nearly) everything I could have wanted and looked forward to!

[Bridget Mckinney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps it’s because fantasy is my first and forever true love under the SFF umbrella, but I’m convinced that the Fantasy Magazine entries in the DestroySF project are the best. At the very least, they’ve been consistently my favorite magazines in the series. Queers Destroy Fantasy has, hands down, the best fiction in any of the Destroy issues so far.

Read the full review at SF Bluestocking.

[Hermit Hank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Queer stories

Ok, so someone decides to write a story about being gay no problem. But you can bet that story after story about gays tended to get old fast. I suppose that some folks prefer this but I was expecting something more. The word Queer to me doesn't necessarily mean homosexual to me it means different or strange. Three stars seemed appropriate to me neither hating nor liking the book but saying that there were a few stories that I enjoyed.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I suppose it's honorable of the editors not to include their own work. But I'd much rather revisit Barzak's "Map of Seventeen" or Cheney's "Walk in the Light While There is Light", than read most of the selections here. (And I would similarly recommend many other Barzak and Cheney short stories, over the pieces in this issue.)

[Mikayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection, but I was disappointed by the lack of ace and/or aro characters/essays.

[Berta Kleiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely promising

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this prose!! I have never read, seen, or heard of a superhero story quite like this.