Fantasy Magazine, Issue 96 (October 2023): Fantasy Magazine, #96

By Arley Sorg and Christie Yant

FANTASY MAGAZINE is a digital magazine focusing exclusively on the fantasy genre. In its pages, you will find all types of fantasy-dark fantasy, contemporary urban tales, surrealism, magical realism, science fantasy, high fantasy, folktales, and anything and everything in between. FANTASY is entertainment for the intelligent genre reader-we publish stories of the fantastic that make us think, and tell us what it is to be human. 

 

Welcome to Issue #96 of FANTASY! In this issue, we'll say our fond farewells with short stories by Ruoxi Chen ("Fandom for Witches") and P.A. Cornell ("Once Upon a Time at the Oakmont"); flash fiction by Sonia Sulaiman ("Negative Theology of the Child From 'The King of Tars'") and Wen Yu Yang ("Homecoming"); plus poetry by Joshua Effiong and Adesiyan Oluwapelumi and a feature essay by PH Low.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adamant Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223302667

Book preview

Fantasy MagazineFantasy Magazine

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 96, October 2023

FROM THE EDITORS

Editorial: October 2023

Arley Sorg and Christie Yant

FICTION

Negative Theology of the Child from 'The King of Tars'

Sonia Sulaiman

Fandom for Witches

Ruoxi Chen

Homecoming

Wen Yu Yang

Once Upon a Time at the Oakmont

P.A. Cornell

POETRY

The Equation of Time

Joshua Effiong

music in the garden

Adesiyan Oluwapelumi

BOOK EXCERPTS

River Mumma

Zalika Reid-Benta

NONFICTION

A Liminal Magic: Diaspora Parallels in Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light

P.H. Low

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Author Spotlight: P.A. Cornell

MISCELLANY

Thank You For Reading

About the Fantasy Team

© 2023 Fantasy Magazine

Cover by nataljacernecka / Adobe Stock Image

www.fantasy-magazine.com

Published by Adamant Press

From the Editors

Editorial: October 2023

Arley Sorg and Christie Yant | 1048 words

This is it, friends. Today we say farewell–but not goodbye. We’re both still very much around, sticking our thumbs in all kinds of SFF pies!

The past three years have been a remarkable epoch in our lives. We are so grateful for your support of our magazine and our authors–it’s been an honor to showcase the first professional publications of so many of them. We’ll be watching their careers blossom, as we imagine you will, too.

We can’t go without making sure you know exactly who’s been working behind the scenes, making us look good. Every single one of them volunteered their time and expertise to this project.

Phoebe Barton and Mayookh Barua interviewed authors for the Author Spotlights. Phoebe joined us shortly after we launched; Mayookh took over when Veronica Henry moved on to focus on her novels. Mayookh has also handled a lot of our social media. In the time they’ve been with us, Phoebe has won an Aurora Award, and Mayookh earned his MFA and acceptance into a PhD program.

Madison Brake is our author wrangler, ensuring that we have updated bios where you can learn more about our authors and their accomplishments. She continues her work with the Lightspeed and Nightmare teams.

Chloe Smith is our tireless copyeditor; she has saved us from ourselves many times, as did Alex Puncekar before her.  Anthony Cardno has been proofreader for both Fantasy Magazine and Lightspeed for many years; Devin Marcus joined him in 2016 and has been proofreader for all three magazines in our publishing family since. Anyone who has worked in any kind of quality control role knows what all three of them have put up with: Everyone gets to be late but them, and they have tolerated our lapses with grace.

Wendy Wagner helped us get on our feet in the beginning, showing us the ropes of the Managing Editor role and generally being her amazing, supportive self.

The website itself was artfully designed and is expertly maintained by Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios.

Our submissions system is Moksha, created and maintained by Matt Kressel. Matt has simplified the lives of countless authors and editors.

And of course, the great John Joseph Adams is ultimately our publisher, the guy who handles all the fiddly details, makes sure that our authors get paid, our subscribers get their ebooks, and the web content isn’t eaten by packet mites.

Our content will remain online for you to read and hopefully for others to discover.

Christie has other editorial irons in the fire and will be giving them the attention they deserve, much to the relief of the authors patiently waiting for her to do so. She’s also looking forward to getting back to her own writing.

Arley has taken on a new role as Associate Agent with kt literary, which he describes as "in many ways, a continuation of things I did as co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy." He recently taught week five of the six-week Clarion West Workshop. He is still a senior editor at Locus Magazine, still working with F&SF, Clarkesworld, and others, including reviewing books for Lightspeed. Look him up at arleysorg.com for calendar info and so on.

• • • •

Christie: What a ride this has been! We’ve had the good fortune to work with so many wonderful people, and I hope to do so again, one way or another. Everyone on this team has left their mark, and we wish every one of them the very best in all things. Thanks, too, to the many authors who submitted their work to us, whether or not we ultimately purchased it. It’s always an honor to be trusted with a person’s art.

To our readers, thank you so much for giving us a try and sticking with us. We hope that you’ve found stories here that moved and inspired you.

One of the things that I love about the SFF short fiction community is the coopetition between magazines. I’m grateful to all of the other editors and publishers out there who boosted FM and supported us from the start. Go subscribe and support your favorites!

Finally, I’m so glad to have done this with Arley. This has been a project of shared values and shared goals, and we’ve stayed true to them and to each other for the entirety of this three year run. It’s a thing we made together, and I love that Arley will forever be such a huge part of my personal and professional journey.

Arley: I’m immensely grateful to everyone who gave this magazine a read – I believe we did something special with this space, and I’m glad it touched so many people. I’m super grateful for the authors who worked with us, who trusted us, and whose work we had the privilege of publishing. It’s been wonderful to get to share these amazing works with the world! I’m even glad I got to read a lot of the work we didn’t have room to publish, and I sincerely hope more readers get to see those pieces. I feel immensely lucky to have been able to do this, and I’m really glad I got to do it with Christie Yant, who is a powerhouse and a creative force. I’m super super super grateful to both Christie and John – look, y’all: folks who don’t work in this industry have no idea how much trust and faith goes into the simple act of letting someone do something with your mag. Besides this, they put in tons of behind the scenes work, and gave me room to make creative decisions. A huge THANK YOU to everyone who had their hands in making Fantasy Magazine happen. THANK YOU to reviewers and other folks who shouted about how much they loved something they read. A huge THANK YOU to all of you, taking a moment to look at this editorial. Support your favorite mags, authors, and venues, and please be kind to each other.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Arley Sorg is an associate literary agent at kt literary. He is a two-time World Fantasy Award Finalist and a two-time Locus Award Finalist for his work as co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine. Arley is also a SFWA Solstice Award Recipient, a Space Cowboy Award Recipient, and a finalist for two Ignyte Awards, for his work as a critic as well as his creative nonfiction. Arley is senior editor at Locus, associate editor at both Lightspeed and Nightmare, a columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and an interviewer for Clarkesworld. He takes on multiple roles, including slush reader, movie reviewer,