From Modern Mythcraft to Magical Surrealism

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Nov. 2011 (Issue 56)

Welcome to issue fifty-six of Fantasy Magazine! Here’s what we’ve got on tap this month … Fiction: “Seven Spells to Sever the Heart” by K. M. Ferebee, “Christopher Raven” by Theodora Goss, “Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western” by Lavie Tidhar, “The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death” by Ellen Kushner. Nonfiction: Feature Interview: Charlaine Harris by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley, “Shades of the Nineteenth Century” by Helen Pilinovsky, “Home on the Strange” by Emma Bull, “The Pen and the Sword” by Kat Howard.

Cover art by Jenny Laatsch and Madame Thenadier

In This Issue: Nov. 2011 (Issue 56)

Nonfiction

Editorial, Mid-November 2011

by John Joseph Adams

We’d like to ask our readers to participate in our reader survey, in order to get a better idea of who you all are, what you enjoy most about our content, and how you tend to access it, along with general demographic information. It should take about 5-10 minutes to complete. You can access the survey here. To thank our readers for taking the time to fill out our survey, one respondent (chosen at random) will win a free one-year subscription to Lightspeed or Fantasy from Weightless Books. The survey ends December 15, 2011. We look forward to hearing from you!

Nonfiction

Editorial, November 2011

by John Joseph Adams

Welcome to issue fifty-six of Fantasy Magazine! Here’s what we’ve got on tap this month … Fiction: “Seven Spells to Sever the Heart” by K. M. Ferebee, “Christopher Raven” by Theodora Goss, “Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western” by Lavie Tidhar, “The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death” by Ellen Kushner. Nonfiction: Feature Interview: Charlaine Harris by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley, “Shades of the Nineteenth Century” by Helen Pilinovsky, “Home on the Strange” by Emma Bull, “The Pen and the Sword” by Kat Howard.

Nonfiction

Editorial, November 2011

by John Joseph Adams

Welcome to issue fifty-six of Fantasy Magazine! Here’s what we’ve got on tap this month … Fiction: “Seven Spells to Sever the Heart” by K. M. Ferebee, “Christopher Raven” by Theodora Goss, “Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western” by Lavie Tidhar, “The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death” by Ellen Kushner. Nonfiction: Feature Interview: Charlaine Harris by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley, “Shades of the Nineteenth Century” by Helen Pilinovsky, “Home on the Strange” by Emma Bull, “The Pen and the Sword” by Kat Howard.

Fiction

Seven Spells to Sever the Heart

by K.M. Ferebee

Samuel Crewe was the son of a witch. He was, in fact, the seventh son of a witch, who had herself been one of seven daughters. In fairy tales, this sort of lineage was meant to point to great strength, good fortune, and adventures.

Nonfiction

Author Spotlight: K.M. Ferebee

by T.J. McIntyre

I don’t believe that pain is something extrinsic to goodness. I believe there can be goodness in suffering, but that this does not mean suffering itself is good.

Nonfiction

Feature Interview: Charlaine Harris

by The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

My initial thought on the series was I wanted to write about a woman dating a vampire. But to make them less frightening, to give them a reason for being out, I had to develop a theory that would let them look less vicious.

Fiction

Christopher Raven

by Theodora Goss

Why had I come back to Collingswood? That was what I asked myself, standing on the path that led to the main school building, a structure built of gray stone and shadowed by oaks that had stood for a hundred years.

Nonfiction

Author Spotlight: Theodora Goss

by Jennifer Konieczny

I struggled at first, because I couldn’t find the right voice to write it in. But then I thought of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, that sort of nostalgic tone, and I wrote in that sort of voice.

Nonfiction

Shades of the Nineteenth Century

by Helen Pilinovsky

Stories require a common consensus to become popular and to spread: When the stories in question concern the restless dead, the possibility of an angry past haunting us, what, precisely, does that say?

Nonfiction

Editorial, Mid-November 2011

by John Joseph Adams

We’d like to ask our readers to participate in our reader survey, in order to get a better idea of who you all are, what you enjoy most about our content, and how you tend to access it, along with general demographic information. It should take about 5-10 minutes to complete. You can access the survey here. To thank our readers for taking the time to fill out our survey, one respondent (chosen at random) will win a free one-year subscription to Lightspeed or Fantasy from Weightless Books. The survey ends December 15, 2011. We look forward to hearing from you!

Fiction

Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western

by Lavie Tidhar

The boy felt a tingling at the tip of his fingers. He saw with his inner eye: The leader rode unarmed because his power was great. The aura of Qi around him was unmistakable.

Nonfiction

Author Spotlight: Lavie Tidhar

by T.J. McIntyre

In a way, of course, I’m appropriating everything. I’m borrowing this very American mode—the Western—and Niven’s magic system, and I’m setting it in a sort of Victorian-era China dealing with foreign incursions.

Nonfiction

Home on the Strange

by Emma Bull

The Weird West goes back to the earliest days of the Western: to the dime novels and serial stories in weekly gazettes that turned the American west into a mythic land even before it stopped being a place you could move to

Fiction

The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death

by Ellen Kushner

Curious, he had asked the wounded man, “Did you slam into me on purpose?” People did sometimes, to provoke a fight with Richard St. Vier, the master swordsman who wouldn’t take challenges from just anyone.

Nonfiction

Author Spotlight: Ellen Kushner

by Wendy N. Wagner

It’s the book we all loved in high school (or college), the one we weren’t sure we should admit to our friends we loved—until we found out they loved it, too. It’s the one with the trashy cover that turns out to be amazingly great.

Nonfiction

The Pen and the Sword

by Kat Howard

The natural connection between pen and sword is solidified by the language of fencing, wherein the fencer’s repertoire of movements is called a conversation of blades, or a judge will “read the phrase” of the action before awarding a touch.