The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Summer 2025

EDIT: sry for the repost. I meant to add more review but hit the delete button accidentally (luckily I was able to copy paste my old review before refreshing the page!)

Firstly, the change in physical quality of the magazine is a pretty severe downgrade. It went from being like a sturdy, high quality paperback, to around comic book quality. By the end of finishing the magazine, the cover is ruffled and some pages are beginning to come loose. It's exactly like an Analog magazine (which isn't surprising, given the change in ownership).

I don't even know if I'm complaining--it's just noticeable.

But, like Analog, despite the pulpy exterior you've still got some good stuff in between those flimsy cover sheets. And this one is no exception.

All the fiction was great, and super idiosyncratic. Really, very fresh stuff! The kinds of things that open you up to new reading experiences and perspectives.

Maurice Broaddus' Soul Rebel will definitely bait you into seeking out more of his writing, but I loved the actual tech/anti-colonial/steampunk themes, with lots of Jamaican Patois as well as a little bit of introduction to the Rastafari culture and ethos.

My apologies to the other stories as I'm a very slow reader with a foggy memory, I won't have as much to say about the other, earlier entries in the magazine. If I leave anything out it's because I don't have anything to say, not because I thought it was bad.

Threat Assessment, by Matthew Kressel & Mercurio D. Rivera was very topical (AI super intelligence) to one of our latest collective anxieties, and a great mindfuck story.

The Final Trial of Jalen, Oba of Uhuri, by Justin C. Key will really get your blood going. Horror coded, "elevated" and with some of the most striking depictions of animals I've experienced since playing Animal Well, by Billy Basso.

The Corporate Soul, by John Shirley, despite being about a world that's sort of fallen to the corpos, felt good to read. It has that punchy hopeful streak through it, which comes out in the ways characters relate to each other. Like the bonds between people haven't been totally atomized away. Just straightforward and good.

The Apology Tour, by Nnedi Okorafor is really well written, I just don't know how I feel about it. It has a real clarity about it that makes it very legible, and the world it describes is one of those pseudo S-risk dystopias of personhood denied (MMAcevedo vibes). I need to think about this one a bit more, because maybe I bristle at the perceived soft-peddling of artificial intelligence/consciousness as inevitable... in the light of people anthropomorphising LLMs with chat bot interfaces tacked in front of them already waaay too much.

Not to start debating authors, but I feel like LLMs prove you don't need sentience to process information.

And a Little Garlic, by William Mangieri: lol, no notes.

The Red River Summers, by Inda Lauryn was hard to read (about enslaved people), but has that streak of hope against hope can turn a story into fuel for change, or maybe just wake some people up.

It's not fiction, but I've also got to give a big shout out to By the Numbers 10: Why We Need to Count on Each Other, by Arley Sorg. It's a seriously woke piece about systemic racism in the writing world, it's like the kind of thing I'd expect to see in progressive online circles rather than a traditional magazine, so that was really refreshing and gives me hope for the direction of the magazine overall.

Finally, I'm just happy this magazine finally got made. I think it's been about a year? since I've seen the last issue? I was not hopeful about ever seeing another issue, so just the fact that it's here in my lap is wonderful.

A better than average issue, with interesting stories by Matthew Kressel and Mercurio D. Rivera, Justin C. Key, John Shirley and William Mangieri.

• "Threat Assessment" by Matthew Kressel and Mercurio D. Rivera: an interesting story of a psychologist tasked to access the intelligence of an AI that may threaten humanity. What she discovers, instead, are lies and deceptions and a struggle to discover the truth.

• "The Final Trial of Jalen, Oba of Uhuri" by Justin C. Key: a tale set in an African country at the time when slavery was rampant. The ruler of one country was disposed and sentenced to limbo by his sister, but now has a chance to return to reclaim his throne and try to end the slavery of his people.

• "The Corporate Soul" by John Shirley: a scientist discovers a way to illuminate the 'soul' of a person, and has now been tasked to reveal the collective soul of a corporation (made up of members of its board) ahead of a vote to grant US Senate seats to corporations. But what he reveals may not be what the corporation may be expecting.

• "The Apology Tour" by Nnedi Okorafor: a scientist responsible for creating sentient AI goes on a tour, to 'apologise' for effectively turning the AIs in virtual slaves for humanity. A personal crisis and a heart-to-heart talk with her own personal AI assistant inspires her to change her ways.

• "The Seventy-Eight Spoons" by Devan Barlow: A woman visits the home left to her by her great-aunt, who was once considered the village witch. The spoons she finds in the house would lead her to discover a way to have 'fun'.

• "And a Little Garlic" by William Mangieri: a fishing trip with some garlic would lead a fisherman to discover a talking fish, with their own ideas on merits of fishing.

• "The Red River Summers" by Inda Lauryn: a Native American discovers she has powers that can help others. But she has to run from slavery and hides in a forest. Some people know of her powers, and come to her for help. With ever-growing development encroaching, she may not have a place to hide.

• "Soul Rebel" by Maurice Broaddus: part of a series of stories by the author, this one starts and ends in the middle of a tale of attempted sabotage and a man trying to keep his son with unusual abilities safe from those who want to kidnap the son for their own purposes.