Short Fiction Review — May 2024

by Danai Christopoulou in Issue Fifteen, May 2024

"An Incomplete Body Has No Answers" by Angela Liu (Lightspeed #166)

"You've been raised to believe that something without a name does not really exist even when all its parts are swinging at you." Angela Liu's horror-tinged sci-fi flash takes place in a future where the narrator has to undergo the month-long journey to Mars twice, to bring home their partner's body. With an intriguing mix of seemingly utopian technological developments and a dystopian emotional landscape (an unnamed tragedy in the narrator's past that sent them into a depression spiral, the mysterious manner of the partner's d...

Letter from the Editor

by LP Kindred in Issue Fifteen, May 2024

I It’s 4am on 5/27/2024.

II It’s been an interesting few months. I got fired in November. Ran a gofundme to support me in December. Also, got admitted to Chicago’s Art Institute as a student. Started fighting with Unemployment in January. Drained my measly 401k in February. Finally got my money from Unemployment. Received a read from a cherished friend, because of which I’m moving to Chicago in July.

III These poems and fictions, like my life at the moment, are about change. Resisting it. Surrendering to it. Massaging it and its outcomes.

IV One is about getting revenge for other versions of y...

Short Fiction Review — March 2024

by Danai Christopoulou in Issue Fourteen, March 2024

"There Are Only Two Chairs, and the Skin Is Draped Over the Other" by Alexia Antoniou (Bourbon Penn #31)

Two young girls play in the polluted stream that runs behind the backyard of one of their houses, using its waters and the unexpected gifts it brings them as a prop in their make-belief tales. Until one day, the stream carries something that changes the nature of their games for good… With imagery that is as arresting as it is unsettling, and a mercurial narrator who very much feels like a frustrated early teen in a faded 90's summer, Antoniou crafts a story about the tail end of childhood ...

Letter from the Editor, Ya Herd?

by Leon Perniciaro in Issue Thirteen, January 2024

Dear Reader,

Haven Spec Magazine is now a pro-paying market! We’re grateful to everyone who supported our Kickstarter, and we are so glad to be able to give our wonderful authors the rates that they deserve. We have big plans for 2024, including interviews with some amazing editors, stories from across the width and breadth of the human experience, and short fiction reviews from your very own Haven Spec staff (okay, mostly Danai). I very much want Haven Spec to be a part of the wider SFF community, and that means paying people what they deserve, shouting out the stories and magazines we love, ...

Short Fiction Review — January 2024

by Danai Christopoulou in Issue Thirteen, January 2024

"For as Long as You Want It" by Kanishk Tantia (Apex 142)

Atha, a dying Oldie, part of a near obsolete generation who doesn't believe in downloading their consciousness to "the collective," makes his Promisor, a Modern called Ryegrass, take care of his garden after he dies. The Modern is content to let the garden dry out, until he spots a new sprout and feels called to water it. In this short but poignant piece of flash fiction that conceals more than it reveals, Kanishk Tantia delivers a subtle criticism of technology's promise that simulated intelligence is just as impactful as hands-on expe...

Short Fiction Review — June 2022 (online only)

by TJ Price in Issue Four, May 2022

"The Gull Heart" by Constance Fay (Crow & Cross Keys)

Delicate and rugged all at once, Fay breathes new life into old golems with this story. Devastatingly vivid imagery coupled with brisk pacing lifts this out of the realm of simply retold folktales and into something much more complex and lyrical. At its core, this is a cautionary tale, a "be-careful-what-you-wish-for" whispered as a charm against Eros itself—beware of wanting and, as always, beware the inconstant, fickle moon...

"Give Me English" by Ai Jiang (Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2022)
[paywall, free on Kindle Unlimited]

The ...

Short Fiction Review — May 2022 (online only)

by TJ Price in Issue Four, May 2022

Thanks for checking out our column, the Short Fiction Review, here at Haven Spec! For me, there's always a shifting set of criteria when it comes to what constitutes a really great story. It could be that the characters are distinctly well-drawn and that I find the emotional stakes moving. It could be that the world-building is top-notch and integrated seamlessly into the text of the story, providing a rich and vibrant setting for a piece. It could be that the writing itself, on a sentence level, is so stunning that it makes my jaw drop. It could be a combination or something entirely differen...