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A couple of days late this month, because I've been on holiday for the past week: so let's get to it. What have SH contributors had going on in July?

A couple of crowdfunding projects to begin: first, Rose Lemberg's An Alphabet of Embers Kickstarter, which I've been meaning to mention all month -- it has three days left to run at the time of writing -- and which has already made its target, but is heading towards assorted stretch goals, including a joke issue of Stone Telling and an audiobook edition. Second, Mary Anne Mohanraj is running a Kickstarter to support a festival of South Asian Arts and Literature in Chicago -- this hasn't reached its goal yet, and rewards include limited edition posters, totes, and book bundles, so take a look. Cat Rambo has set up a Patreon page and will be releasing a short story every two weeks. Finally, not strictly an SH alumni project, but the Kickstarter for the new new Uncanny Magazine, to be edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, may be of interest to many people reading this.

I should also include a brief awards update to congratulate all the World Fantasy Award nominees; so far as SH contributors go, Marie Brennan's A Natural History of Dragons and Sofia Samatar's A Stranger in Olondria are up for best novel, while Sofia's "Selkie Stories Are for Losers" is nominated in Short Story!

A relatively light months for new books: The latest Wilde Stories, collecting last year's best gay SF, is now out, edited as usual by Steve Berman; no SH stories in this one, but it does include Sam J Miller's Shirley Jackson-winning "57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides", and John Chu's Hugo nominee "The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere." Lucy A. Snyder's collection Soft Apocalypses is out from Raw Dog Screaming press, including her Stoker-winning "Magdala Amygdala" plus 14 others ranging from Lovecraftian steampunk to a rock-and-roll post-apocalyptic Western. And Wendy Rathbone's soft SF novel Letters To An Android is out from Eye Scry.

Lots of new stories, though: the latest Jurassic London anthology is Irregularity, an anthology of stories about order and chaos in science from 1660-1860, published in partnership with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London; it includes stories by among others Tiffani Angus ("Fairchild's Folly") and Adam Roberts ("The Assassination of Isaac Newton by the Coward Robert Boyle"). July's Lightspeed reprinted Carmen Maria Machado's "Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead" from HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY, and also featured Theodora Goss's "Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology", among others. The July Clarkesworld includes NK Jemisin's "Stone Hunger". Bogi Takács' "This Shall Serve As A Demarcation" is up at Scigentasy. Nisi Shawl's "Promised" -- an excerpt from her forthcoming Belgian Congo steampunk novel, Everfair, is in Steampunk World. The latest Shimmer includes "The Seaweed and the Wormhole" by Jenn Grunigen. Rachael Ack's "Asleep in Zandalar" is at Abyss & Apex. Octavia Cade's excellent novella Trading Rosemary has been podcast by Starship Sofa: there's also a new story, "The Absence of Feathers", in Luna Station Quarterly. Michelle Ann King's "Jump, and I'll Catch You" appeared at Daily Science Fiction. Sabrina Vourvoulias' "The Bar at the End of the World" appears in The Many Tortures of Anthony Cardno along with, among others, Steve Berman's "Three on a Match." The July issue of Apex included Victor Fernando R. Ocampo's "Blessed are the Hungry" (and a short interview), plus more. Virginia M. Mohlere's "Hold Back the Waters" appeared in Mythic Delirium. Neil Clarke's Upgraded anthology of cyborg stories is nearly out in the world, and includes work by Elizabeth Ber, Seth Dickinson, Rich Larson, Ken Liu, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Mari Ness, Genevieve Valentine, A.C. Wise, and many more. And Aidan Doyle's "Hokkaido Green," which we published in 2010, has been translated into Hebrew and published in Bli Panika.

On to poetry: Dreams & Nightmares 98 is out now, featuring work by Lynette Mejia, Alicia Cole, and Jessy Randall, among others (and you can read Romie Stott's interview with editor David Kopaska-Merkel in our latest issue). Jessy Randall also has five poems in Menacing Hedge. Joanne Merriam has two poems in the lavish Language Lessons: Volume 1, from Third Man Records. Jenny Blackford's "Ghosts of ancient underwater clouds" appears in Australian Poetry Journal 4.1. A selection of haiku by Peg Duthie are available on her page at The Haiku Foundation. Neile Graham's "Cairn by Dark by Cairn" appears in the latest Apex, while AJ Odasso has a poem co-written with Dominik Parisien in Ideomancer, "The Memory-Thief". Elizabeth Barrette's poetry fishbowl theme for the month was pieces in her polychrome heroics superhero fantasy setting.

And to finish, non-fiction: Clarkesworld has been serialising Susan E. Connolly's report on "The Issue of Gender in Genre Fiction": "A Detailed Analysis", "The Math Behind it All", "Publications From Slush", "The Math Behind the Slush", and "Conclusions." At Tor.com, Brit reviews Wilde Stories 2014, and looks at some stories from The Apex Book of World SF 3. Reviews by Liz Bourke this month include Hurricane Fever by Tobias Buckell, Magic Breaks by Ilona Andrews, and All Our Pretty Songs by Sarah McCarry. Matthew Cheney has a video essay about Snowpiercer at Press Play, with further thoughts on his blog. There's a video interview with James Dorr done at World Horror Convention, discussing among other things his Stoker-nominated collection The Tears of Isis. And at Lady Business, Renay reviews (and wrestles with) Luc Besson's new film, Lucy.

 



Niall Harrison is an independent critic based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He is a former editor of Strange Horizons, and his writing has also appeared in The New York Review of Science FictionFoundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, The Los Angeles Review of Books and others. He has been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Guest of Honor at the 2023 British National Science Fiction Convention. His collection All These Worlds: Reviews and Essays is available from Briardene Books.
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