Edited by Jason Sizemore and Lesley Conner
Rating: 5/5
This story collection totally blew me away. There are 21 stories and they’re all so good. The thing I like about them most is they’re all really unique. Genre fiction can get a little formulaic sometimes, so I think it’s good to shake it up.
Apex Magazine has been publishing issues for about 10 years. They used to sell the hard copies at Barnes & Noble, but it’s ebook only now. This collection was published in January 2016, so it collects the best of 7 years of Apex Magazine.
I’ll give just a short peek at the contents (all of the stories are available to read on the Apex website):
“Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon – a Southwestern fantasy story with a little bit of body horror
“Going Endo” by Rich Larson – a cyberpunk tale about a love triangle between a pilot, a mech, and a tech. It gets fantastically weird. Haha
“Candy Girl” by Chikodili Emelumadu – This one left the strongest impression on me (I think it’s one of the best in the collection!). It’s very creepy and visual, with a great twist at the end.
“If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” by Rachel Swirsky – I honestly wasn’t the biggest fan of this one. It’s a little maudlin, but it’s very creative. It’s also one of the shorter ones (1,000 words) so it’s easy to read online.
“Advertising at the End of the World” by Keffy R.M. Kehrli – This one is really good. It’s about a woman living in a post-apocalyptic universe where only the advertising robots are left alive after a plague that kills off everyone else. It’s dark, but it has a lot of humor in it, too.
“The Performance Artist” by Lettie Prell – a performance artist named Anna Pashkin Bearfoot (based off Marina Abramovic) transfers her consciousness into a computer in front of an audience.
“A Matter of Shapespace” by Brian Trent – one of my favorites. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, a good comment on corporatism, and a more traditional scifi story in the vein of Greg Bear’s Blood Music.
“Falling Leaves” by Liz Argall – This is a bittersweet post-apocalyptic story of two girlfriends who bond over being outsiders and support each other through hard times. It gets pretty dark (tw suicide). Liz Argall also has a wholesome webcomic at thingswithout.com
“Blood from Stone” by Alethea Kontis – I thought this was the weirdest story in the collection. An aristocrat’s maid helps him with his occult rituals because she’s secretly in love with him. I think this one went too hard for shock value, and the writing style felt a bit Ren Faire-y (which did give it a fun atmosphere but felt contrived). Still, it’s, uh… an experience. Read if you want heavy occult vibes.
“Sexagesimal” by Katharine E.K. Duckett – Sexagesimal means base 60 (like 60 minutes, 60 seconds). This story is like a puzzle. It takes place in an afterlife where you can spend time/memories of your life like currency. It’s told in sections out of order, with timestamps at the start of each section. I went through and put the numbers in order from least to greatest and greatest to least, but I’m still not quite sure which way it’s meant to be read… if you like math, you should read this one and tell me if you figure it out.
“Multo” by Samuel Marzioli – This is a Filipino ghost story. It’s kind of basic, but spooky. I like how Marzioli comments on how childhood fears can continue to haunt us into adulthood.
“Keep Talking” by Marie Vibbert – An autistic teenager and a dance teacher crack an alien code. This story is also about the metaphorical distance between people and difficulties communicating. This is one of two stories featuring autistic characters (the other one is “She Gave Her Heart, He Took Her Marrow”).
“Remembery Day” by Sarah Pinsker – I really liked this one. It has the really interesting scifi concept of “The Veil”, which erases the veteran’s memories of the war (except for on “Remembery Day”).
“Blood on Beacon Hill” by Russell Nichols – I thought this one was a little too campy, but some parts were funny. It’s a historical vampire story set in a world where humans know immortals exist but they don’t intermingle. It’s an extended metaphor for racial segregation (the main character and his family are black, so it’s a pretty overt metaphor).
“The Green Book” by Amal El-Mohtar – I didn’t really like this one. It was published in 2010, which makes it the earliest published in this collection. It has a faux-medieval style similar to “Blood from Stone” which is just not my cup of tea. It’s about a girl who gets trapped in a book by a coven of witches and the scholar who talks to her through its pages.
“L’Espirit De L’Escalier” by Peter M. Ball – I love this one! I’d rate it up there with “Candy Girl”. It’s about grief and a neverending stairway.
“Still Life (A Sexagesimal Fairy Tale)” by Ian Tregillis – This one was really unique. It’s about a clockmaker woman who lives in a world where time has forgotten everyone else but her. It’s a really good dark, romantic fantasy story that paints a picture in your mind. Some pages are out of order in the printed edition, so watch out (they’re all there, just mixed up).
“Build-a-Dolly” by Ken Liu – a very short story about what happens to AI dolls when their owners get too old to play with them (kind of like Toy Story but sadder).
“Armless Maidens of the American West” by Genevieve Valentine – This is an extended metaphor for the abuse of women and why it’s important for them to be able to tell their stories and find each other, but told like an urban legend. It’s a good story.
“Pocosin” by Ursula Vernon – The main character in this one is kind of similar to the one from “Jackalope Wives”, a wise old witch. An old possum god comes to die under the woman’s porch and she fights off god and the devil to let him go in peace.
“She Gave Her Heart, He Took Her Marrow” by Sam Fleming – This one is about a lesbian autistic woman who survives the apocalypse because she can see things that others can’t. It is very strange. I liked the romance and disability aspects. I’m not sure what the spirit was doing with her bone marrow.
Overall, they’re all so fucking cool. Even the ones I didn’t like had interesting ideas.
I would highly, highly recommend this collection.
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