From Modern Mythcraft to Magical Surrealism

Archive for December 2011

Author Spotlight: Naomi Novik

“Vici” shows the seeds of various aspects of the relationship between dragons and humans that we see initially in Britain and other European nations in His Majesty’s Dragon.

Three Dragons

The dragon is a myth that has grown and molded itself to whatever contradictions the current age requires. It’s a world-carrier or a treasure-hoarder, celestial or flawed.

Vici

“Dragon-slaying is an honorable death, and generally quick, from my understanding; and will legally clear your debts. Unless you would prefer to commit suicide?” he inquired.

Falling With Style, Travelling Through Portals

Portal travel has a lot to recommend it. It’s fast, exciting, no one has to sing any songs and you can often go directly to your destination.

Author Spotlight: Seanan McGuire

So the “kids + magical world = adventure” equation was very, very heavily used during the 1980s. Almost every cartoon had it, because it was a way to get the kids into the story.

Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage

The dire bat’s headless body lay on the floor of the cave like an accusation, blackish blood still seeping from its neck. Crystal looked at it and shuddered, disgusted, before giving it a sharp kick.

The Deathly Shadows in Our Lives

European folk tradition has placed quite a strong emphasis on the connection between the shadow and the soul; this connection can be found in German and Portuguese folklore, and in non-European folk belief as well.

Author Spotlight: Joe R. Lansdale

Write for yourself, write like everyone you know is dead. Then when you finish you can worry about who might like it.

Torn Away

The license was invalid by a couple of months, and the photo on it looked somewhat like him but it was faded and not reliable. I told him so. “Oh,” he said. “I should have noticed it was out of date.”

Fantasy is Now Lightspeed

Fantasy (and our sister magazine, Lightspeed) has a new publisher—and it’s me, your humble editor, John Joseph Adams. Our founding publisher, Sean Wallace, decided that he needed to devote more time to his book publishing company, Prime Books, and since I already edit both magazines, I was the natural choice to be his successor. But rest assured: Under my regime, we’ll still be bringing you the same quality fantasy that you’ve come to expect from Fantasy Magazine . . . albeit in a slightly different form than you’re used to.

As of January 2012, Fantasy merged into Lightspeed, so going forward all of Fantasy’s new content will appear as part of Lightspeed instead of here on www.fantasy-magazine.com. We won’t be doing away with any of Fantasy’s fiction, however; each issue of the combined magazine will contain Lightspeed’s four science fiction stories and the four fantasy stories you would have otherwise found in Fantasy. We won’t be reducing the number of stories, or replacing any Fantasy content with Lightspeed content; this is a true merger.

Also, in order to focus more on the fiction side of the magazines, we’ve cut down on our nonfiction. Now, instead of publishing a related nonfiction article alongside each story, we will publish two feature interviews per issue, along with our artist gallery and our usual assortment of author spotlights.

And finally, since we’re doubling the amount of fiction in each issue, we’re going to raise the price of our ebooks—but not by double: We’ll be raising the price to just $3.99. So you’ll be getting twice as much fiction, for just a dollar more per issue; plus, from here on out, each ebook edition of Lightspeed will feature exclusive content that you won’t find on our website—namely, in addition to the eight short stories you’ll also find our website, each ebook issue will now feature a novella-length story.

We’ll keep the fantasy-magazine.com website up as an archive indefinitely, but all future Fantasy content will appear at lightspeedmagazine.com, so be sure to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds!