Short Fiction Review — March 2025

by Danai Christopoulou in Issue Nineteen, March 2025

"Something Cruel" by Gabrielle Emem Harry (Will This Be a Problem? The Anthology, Issue V)

"When she looks up, she feels like she's falling into the sky, into all that red, swimming in blood and Fire." Minika, a member of the Usiene, crosses The World Invisible to bring back a punishment who has escaped, only to realize she may have gotten the wrong person. In what is one of the many gorgeous stories featured in Will This Be a Problem? The Anthology, Issue V, a collection of African speculative fiction edited by Olivia Kidula and Somto Ihezue, Harry paints a vibrant tableau of retribution and ...

Letter from the Editor

by Leon Perniciaro in Issue Nineteen, March 2025

Dear Reader,

I am so very happy to report that our Kickstarter was a success and we are funded through the rest of 2025 to pay pro rates! I am shy by nature, but please take a moment to hear my ragged voice cheering across time and space in celebration that we managed it. And you know what? It wouldn't have been possible without you, so yes, you should absolutely be cheering as well. Let us join in a roaring chorus of hooping and hollering so loud that we shake the rafters of creation. Who knew I could get so excited about fundraising?

But I kid, I kid, what I'm actually excited about is that ...

Interview with Terese Mason Pierre

by Leon Perniciaro in Issue Nineteen, March 2025

Leon Perniciaro: How’d you get involved with Augur?

Terese Mason Pierre: So I live in Toronto, spent most of my life here, and I went to the University of Toronto for my undergrad. And while I was at the University of Toronto, I was involved in a number of student groups. By the time I was in fourth year, I was in two choirs, directing one of them. I was volunteering at a hospital. I was doing so many things. And among the things, I was a poetry editor for a student journal called The Spectatorial. It was the only genre magazine on campus, and I worked as a poetry editor on that magazine for a...

Interview with Lindz McLeod

by TJ Price in Issue Nineteen, March 2025

TJ Price: Hi, Lindz! Thanks for agreeing to engage with these questions! I’m fascinated by your work, and have been ever since I first read a short story submission of yours (“The Sunbathers”) for Cosmic Horror Monthly, in which it was inevitably published. (Issue #42, Cosmic Horror Monthly) I was immediately struck by the polished, assured prose and the vibrant, daring voice behind it. The descriptive language was a delight, a host of metaphor and simile that roared with abandon across the entire sensory spectrum. Following my read of this—even before it was accepted for publication!—I immedi...

Short Fiction Review — November 2024

by Danai Christopoulou in Issue Eighteen, November 2024

"And She Had Been So Reasonable" by Rachel Bolton (Apex #147)

"There is no one thing that makes a woman. Don't believe people who tell you otherwise." In this deceptively detached story, a nameless Woman is struggling to escape an abusive marriage, while Bolton invites the reader to shape the form and features of the main character in their mind. The result is a frankly terrifying reminder of the universality of violence and misogyny (which feels somehow more realistic the more the story embraces its speculative element at the end), but also of our indomitable need to resist. Certainly hits di...

Letter from the Editor

by Leon Perniciaro in Issue Eighteen, November 2024

Dear Reader,

All my words have left me. My tongue has slithered sluglike from the hollow of my mouth.

It's hard to write in times like these. Hard to speak. But there is something inexplicable in the written word, something ineffable. Fiction and poetry are the canvases on which we paint our hopes and dread. In systems that would silence us, writers scream with the scribbling of pens, the soft clacking of keyboards. "Writers are among the most sensitive, the most intellectually anarchic, most representative, most probing of artists," Toni Morrison once wrote. "The ability of writers to imagine...

Short Fiction Review — September 2024

by Danai Christopoulou in Issue Seventeen, September 2024

"Sibilance" by E.G. Condé (Interzone #299)

Planetary ecologist Dr Ahim Hodei is brought to Jupiter to find the cause between the quickly diminishing levels of a Helium isotope vital to the continued function of Earth's nuclear reactors. But soon after his arrival, and with the help of his partner, he realizes that something uncanny is happening with the planet—something that has affected every other human there. Rich with stellar prose and sharp criticism on all the ways the greed of corporations wouldn't hesitate to extend beyond the stars, Sibilance delivers a powerful crescendo of humanity'...

Letter from the Editor

by Leon Perniciaro in Issue Seventeen, September 2024

Dear Reader,

The summer is ended, and we are not saved.

Okay, that sounds a little dramatic. Let's try that again.

Dear Reader,

The summer is ended, and we can now drink tea and wear our autumn jackets.

It lacks a certain gravitas, sure, but that's why no one has ever asked me to found a new religion. It'd be more pumpkin spice and less eternal damnation, and then where would we be?

One more time:

Dear Reader,

Summer is ended, but science fiction and fantasy go on.

There, that's better.

In this issue, you will find a slew of stories, a plethora of poems, and a host of heartbreaking, hopeful,...

Short Fiction Review — July 2024

by Danai Christopoulou in Issue Sixteen, July 2024

"A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places" by Marissa Lingen (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #406)

"The gods were most loved where their traits were least apparent—where their pilgrimages required the most of their followers." A disabled archivist agrees to join her mother on a "healing" pilgrimage to the deepest canyon, where the god of high places resides. When they arrive, they become enmeshed in a godly conflict that requires unusual skills to solve… Brimming with kindness and humor, Lingen's story is a quiet tale of standing one's ground (in unexpected ways), of passive aggression and bureaucracy ...

Letter from the Editor

by Leon Perniciaro in Issue Sixteen, July 2024

I once read that people facing parole hearings have a much better chance of release if their hearing is early in the morning. This is because, by the afternoon, the parole board has decision fatigue—the parts of their brains responsible for hearing testimony and weighing evidence are literally exhausted, and so they just start saying no to everyone. This is, in fact, a terrible reality that incarcerated people face in this country, and it's only one of the very many aspects of the carceral system that has to fundamentally change.

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of decision fatigue a...