Matt Holder
For me, 2023 was the year of consuming pounds and pounds of Black Library fiction. And you know what? It was great. Horror, science fiction, fantasy, crime/noir, pseudo-philosophical tracts on the nature of empire set against the grandeur and chaos of the best ancient tragedy: if there’s a genre that you love, chances are the Black Library writers have delved deep and emerged from those Games Workshop mines to deliver pure, uncut gems. Fans of monster-hunting with Witcher or Solomon Kane vibes should check out C. L. Werner’s Witch Hunter or Briardark; if you enjoy interrogations of fantasy-flavored crusading empires told from the POV of the displaced, then Noah Van Nguyen’s recent Godeater’s Son has you covered; if action-packed detective fiction gets you going, then may I introduce Dan Abnett’s Inquisitor Eisenhorn and his planet-hopping adventures, starting with Xenos.
We wish all our readers a 2024 that brings justice and peace a little bit closer, and look forward to our shared task of finding the words that are meet for that task.
Goliath (2022) is a novel of four parts by the American writer Tochi Onyebuchi. Set on an Earth made barely habitable by climate change and pandemics, it introduces us to a society in which the wealthy and privileged—and almost entirely white—people of America (and, we assume, other nations) now live off-world in luxurious Space Colonies where the inhabitants can pursue rewarding lives free of the consequences of their ancestors’ lifestyles. On the surface, however, continue to live the poor, under-privileged—and mostly Black and Brown—men, women, and children who live an increasingly untenable existence which remains nonetheless culturally and personally vital.
The novel’s first part, “Summer,” introduces us to David and Jonathan, two wealthy-but-well-meaning beneficiaries of off-world luxury who decide to return to Earth.
Art
“Artist Interview: Juliana Pinho's Making-Of” by Juliana Pinho (01/18/21)
“Artist Interview: Aya Ghanameh” by Dante Luiz (03/29/21)
“Artist Interview: Sunmi” by Dante Luiz (05/31/21)
“Artist Interview: Palloma Barreto” by Dante Luiz (07/05/21)
Articles and Columns
“The Waters Of This Place: Aotearoa New Zealand Speculative Fiction” by AJ Fitzwater (01/25/21)
“New Horizons: A Conversation with the Editors of Rikka Zine, khōréō mag, and Constelación” by Gautam Bhatia, Terrie Hashimoto, Coral Alejandra Moore, Lian Xia Rose, Rowan Morrison, and Alexandra Hill (02/22/21)
“Taking Care: The Humane Heart of Science Fiction” by Judith Tarr (03/22/21)
“Roundtable: The palestinian speculative” by Fargo Tbakhi, N.
Marisa Mercurio: Over the past few years, I’ve devoted my evenings to catching up on classic horror movies. Or, more accurately, classics and schlocky forgotten flicks with lots of flesh and unrealistic gore. Though I don’t feel any of the nostalgia for the 1980s that makes Stranger Things so popular, I confess that the decade’s colorful and brazen take on horror appeals to me more than any other era. So, even though I’m dreadful at keeping up with new movies, I made sure to sit down to watch Prano Bailey-Bond’s debut film Censor as soon as it was released this year.
My themes for this short fiction roundup are time travel, alternate universes, and portal fantasies. As a reader and as a writer, I’ve always loved stories with magical doorways to other worlds, time-travel shenanigans, and multiverses where other versions of us might have turned out very differently than we did.
Duncan Lawie: The highlight of my reading year was M. John Harrison's The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. It is subtle and rich but could also just be the stories of two middle aged people failing to cope with their lives. The intent to remain uncategorised is core to the pleasure—and discomfort—of reading and thinking about the book. Indeed, an interview with the author at the release of his 2020 collection Settling the World was equally fascinating, with his own perspectives on his long career in fiction. Another complex delight was War of the Maps by Paul McAuley, which uses a Dyson sphere for a fantastical planetary romance reminiscent of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun and, indeed, of McAuley’s own Confluence trilogy.
