Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Melissa Scott

Cat Rambo

Sacchi Green

Steve Berman

Tansy Rayner Roberts

Penny Stirling

Redfern Jon Barrett

Tori Truslow

Kenneth Schneyer

Claire Humphrey

Alex Jeffers

Layla Lawlor

Zoe Blade

Amanda Fitzwater

Meda Kahn

Chant©♭ McCoy

Robert E. Stutts

Lexy Wealleans

Alberto Y©Ł©łez

A book such as this spins not only words but also whole worlds: eighteen of them, representing the best lesbian-themed stories of the fantastic or futuristic published the prior year: An artisan who tests the skills and wares of her friends in the hope of finding the ideal housing for an idealized love. A shape-shifting sidekick ensures that the heroine, who might not even be aware of her, saves the day. The device on a young girl's wrist that counts down the years until she will meet her soul mate poses the ultimate challenge of delayed gratification. A daydreamer wonders how she will face the coming Stone Moon and its gathering when her culture demands fertility yet her heart belongs to her best friend, who is not only female but of a higher caste. The women to be met in these pages will find themselves tested not because of their sexual identity but rather the identity they have composed, constructed, and spun.

The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction

Heiresses of Russ 2014

Marie Brennan

T. Kingfisher

Lavie Tidhar

P. Djèlí Clark

Samantha Mills

James Yu

The September/October 2020 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine. Featuring new fiction by T. Kingfisher, Samantha Mills, Kenneth Schneyer, Lavie Tidhar, Marie Brennan, and James Yu. Reprint fiction by P. Djèlí Clark. Essays by Del Sandeen, Marissa Lingen, Nibedita Sen, and Christopher Mark Rose, poetry by Terese Mason Pierre, Beth Cato, Rita Chen, and Lora Gray, interviews with Kenneth Schneyer and Lavie Tidhar by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Christopher Jones, and editorials by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, and Elsa Sjunneson.

September/October 2020

Uncanny Magazine Issue 36

Tanith Lee

Nicole Kornher-Stace

Shira Lipkin

Gemma Files

Corinne Duyvis

Barbara Krasnoff

Patricia Russo

Ian McHugh

Camille Alexa

Yves Meynard

A.C. Wise

Alisa Alering

 Richard Parks

Yukimi Ogawa

The ground-breaking, boundary-pushing, award-nominated series of fantasy anthologies series returns for a fourth installment through the miracle of Kickstarter, bringing you eighteen brand new tales of beauty and strangeness. You'll find the light-hearted and the bleak, the surreal become familiar and the familiar turned inside-out. Each story leads you into unmapped territory, there to find shock and delight. With stories by Yves Meynard, Ian McHugh, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Richard Parks, Gemma Files, Yukimi Ogawa, A.C. Wise, Marie Brennan, Alisa Alering, Tanith Lee, Cat Rambo, Shira Lipkin, Corinne Duyvis, Kenneth Schneyer, Camille Alexa, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Patricia Russo and Barbara Krasnoff. Table of Contents “Our Lady of the Thylacines” by Yves Meynard “The Canal Barge Magician’s Number Nine Daughter” by Ian McHugh “On the Leitmotif of the Trickster Constellation in Northern Hemispheric Star Charts, Post-Apocalypse” by Nicole Kornher-Stace “Beach Bum and the Drowned Girl” by Richard Parks “Trap-Weed” by Gemma Files “Icicle” by Yukimi Ogawa “Lesser Creek: A Love Story, A Ghost Story” by A.C. Wise “What Still Abides” by Marie Brennan “The Wanderer King” by Alisa Alering “A Little of the Night” by Tanith Lee “I Come from the Dark Universe” by Cat Rambo “Happy Hour at the Tooth and Claw” by Shira Lipkin “Lilo Is” by Corinne Duyvis “Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer” by Kenneth Schneyer “Three Times” by Camille Alexa “The Bees Her Heart, the Hive Her Belly” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew “The Old Woman With No Teeth” by Patricia Russo “The History of Soul 2065″ by Barbara Krasnoff Praise for Clockwork Phoenix 4 This book is in several distinct ways a look into the future: the future of fantasy and science fiction, diverse, strange, and wonderful; the future of these individual writers, many of whom are at or near the beginning of careers which promise to be interesting; and, additionally, the future of publishing, in which a crowd-sourced publication from a very small press can produce, and can present professionally and beautifully, work which is at the height of what is being written in genre. This particular phoenix has risen from its ashes triumphant. — Strange Horizons Clockwork Phoenix 4, much like its predecessors, is a high quality, well-organized, engaging anthology. — Tor.com A first rate series of anthologies … The book is stylistically of a piece with its predecessors — a set of well-written stories occupying multiple subgenres, usually in the same story, often ambiguously. — Locus The tone ranges from dark to heartwarming and simple. The overall quality is high … Several of the pieces are quite challenging. Readers will do well to pick up a copy. — Locus Online What makes this fourth edition so special is that it belongs to an impassioned community of writers and readers who went above and beyond to make it happen. … All eighteen [stories] have the power to pull the reader out of his own reality and transport or transform them entirely. — Cabinet des Fées This 4th volume of Clockwork Phoenix contains an excellent diversity of speculative fiction ranging from cold and hopeless to harsh but victorious and warm and fulfilling. It was a pleasure to read. — Tangent Online What kind of stories will you find in Clockwork Phoenix 4? Only those that are magical, imaginative, heart-wrenching, just plain bizarre, forward-looking, backward-looking, biological, romantic, hopeful, darkly funny and openly frightening. All the words that describe the best speculative fiction you’ve ever read apply. In fact, if this isn’t the epitome of speculative fiction, I don’t know what is. — Little Red Reviewer

Clockwork Phoenix 4

First, the law. A time traveler confronts a judge to prevent four years of war. An author undergoes suspended animation to preserve his copyrights and escape his creditors. Then, the heart. A medical accident robs a husband of 20 years of marriage. A soldier mother struggles to tell the difference between her daughter and the alien enemy. Exploring the seams where humanity and technology, society and individuality intersect, Nebula- and Sturgeon-nominated author Kenneth Schneyer presents thirteen mind-bending, thought-provoking tales of near and far futures that will amuse, amaze, and unsettle. The law will change, and the heart will change, and the heart will change the law. These stories confront the question of just what makes and keeps us human. "The stories here are formally ingenious, even startling, and at the same time full of heart; the combination is brilliant and delightful. More please!" -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of 2312 andShaman: A Novel of the Ice Age "Spare us the lawyer jokes - here is a collection of stories from a writer who can navigate around the quiddities of the law and still plumb the tumultuous depths of human emotion. Ken Schneyer extrapolates the future of our legal systems with the dexterity of an Asimov putting his robots through their paces and yet in these (lucky) thirteen stories you will meet people just like you who live lives you would never have imagined. The Law & The Heart is a witty, moving calling card from a writer you'll want to see again soon." — James Patrick Kelly, Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award winner

Stories to Bend the Mind and Soul

The Law and the Heart

John Grant

John C. Wright

C.S.E. Cooney

Gregory Frost

Georgina Bruce

Michael M. Jones

Shweta Narayan

S.J. Hirons

The third volume in the ground-breaking, genre-bending, boundary-pushing CLOCKWORK PHOENIX anthology series, now available in digital format. Includes critically-acclaimed and award-nominated stories by Marie Brennan, Tori Truslow, Georgina Bruce, Michael M. Jones, Gemma Files, C.S.E. Cooney, Cat Rambo, Gregory Frost, Shweta Narayan, S.J. Hirons, John Grant, Kenneth Schneyer, John C. Wright, Nicole Kornher-Stace and Tanith Lee. With a whimsical introduction and new afterword by Nebula Award-nominated editor Mike Allen. CONTENTS The Gospel of Nachash • Marie Brennan Tomorrow Is Saint Valentine's Day • Tori Truslow Crow Voodoo • Georgina Bruce Your Name Is Eve • Michael M. Jones Hell Friend • Gemma Files Braiding the Ghosts • C.S.E. Cooney Surrogates • Cat Rambo Lucyna's Gaze • Gregory Frost Eyes of Carven Emerald • Shweta Narayan Dragons of America • S.J. Hirons Where Shadows Go at Low Midnight • John Grant Lineage • Kenneth Schneyer Murder in Metachronopolis • John C. Wright To Seek Her Fortune • Nicole Kornher-Stace Fold • Tanith Lee Praise for CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 3 . . . . Allen’s third volume of extraordinary short stories reaches new heights of rarity and wonder. Marie Brennan sets the bar high with “The Gospel of Nachash,” a fine reinterpretation of the Adam and Eve legend from a fresh perspective. Tori Truslow’s scholarly “Tomorrow Is Saint Valentine’s Day” tells the story of the Great Ice Train and its encounter with the merfolk on the Moon. Gemma Files’s “Hell Friend” and C.S.E. Cooney’s “Braiding the Ghosts” are sinister, spine-tingling ghost stories. Cat Rambo deals with realism and escapism in her futuristic “Surrogates,” where appearances and reality are mutable. Shweta Narayan’s “Eyes of Carven Emerald” eloquently rewrites the history of Alexander the Great to include mechanical entities. Without a wrong note, all the stories in this anthology admirably fulfill Allen’s promise of “beauty and strangeness.” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review With a balance of new names and established authors, the third Clockwork Phoenix installment collects some magnificent interpretations of fantastic ideas. “The Gospel of Nachash” opens, Marie Brennan’s haunting tale of the beginning of time, and a very interesting reinterpretation of a gospel it is, too. Tanith Lee’s “Fold” is a story of a man who wrote love letters to the people he saw passing beneath his window, and only left his apartment once. Gemma Files’ “Hell Friend” is really a heart-warming ghost story; Georgina Bruce’s “Crow Voodoo” is an unnerving take on something common to fairy tales; and Gregory Frost’s “Lucyna’s Gaze” starts off sweet, and grows more awful with every revealed detail. Clockwork Phoenix delivers on its promise of both beauty and strangeness, and adds in some fright and a few new ways of looking at old tropes. All in all, it’s a very successful collection of thematically similar, but wildly varied in subject, works. — Booklist CLOCKWORK PHOENIX is a series of anthologies from Norilana Books, edited by Mike Allen, that bears the subtitle “New Tales of Beauty and Strangeness”. This seems a quite appropriate subtitle — the stories really do seem attempts at evoking both beauty and the strange. This makes them consistently interesting . . . There is a mixture of wild science fiction (as with John C. Wright’s “Murder in Metachronopolis”, a convoluted time travel mystery) with what seems best called slipstream (say, Tanith Lee’s curious “Fold”, about a man who sends people paper airplane love letters) with out and out fantasy. One of the latter is my favorite here: C. S. E. Cooney’s “Braiding the Ghosts”, in which a girl goes to her grandmother after her mother’s death, and learns from the older woman the secret of “braiding” ghosts — which is to say enslaving them. So ghosts are the servants of the older woman. But the girl is not so happy with this . . . especially when she falls for the ghost she is forced to braid. And the ghosts — are they happy? Read the story and find out . . . lovely stuff. — Locus For the past three years editor Mike Allen has been publishing his unique CLOCKWORK PHOENIX anthologies, inviting authors like Tanith Lee and Catherynne M. Valente to give us their take on the concepts of, as the title has it, “beauty and strangeness.” The result has been a critical and artistic success and, if volume three is any indication, the spell won’t be lifting any time soon. Allen continues to assemble some of the most adventurous, beauteous, and just plain weird stuff our current crop of speculative authors are capable of producing. Adventurous minds are invited to attend. — Strange Horizons

New Tales of Beauty and Strangeness

Clockwork Phoenix 3

Kenneth Schneyer

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