The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2018

A better than average issue with nice stories by Matthew Hughes, Corey Flintoff, Ashley Blooms and William Ledbetter with an interesting story by Rachel Pollack about fantastic cities featured during a search by the protagonist.

• "The Phobos Experience" by Mary Robinette Kowal: an interesting story set in an alternate timeline where we have a colony on Mars. An astronaut there is tasked to help a military unit investigate the moon Phobos. An unexpected finding there hints at possible moves by the military to get a foothold in the Martian civilian colony.

• "The Prevaricator" by Matthew Hughes: an entertaining piece about a boy who discovers early in life that he can get rewarded by creating and then taking away unpleasant situations that people are uncomfortable with. He grows rich by planning cons to create and then remove unpleasant social situations. Then he hits upon an idea to involve a wizard to create an even more unpleasant situation. But that would eventually lead to a very uncomfortable situation for himself.

• "The Queen of the Peri Takes Her Time" by Corey Flintoff: a fantasy tale involving a beautiful, unworldly being who will remove a promised body part if your promise to love the Peri is broken. One person has lost his hand to her. Now another comes, looking for help for an even more vital body part that will be lost in his broken promise.

• "Freezing Rain, a Chance of Falling" by L.X. Beckett: in a future where wealth and social standing is determined by your social media popularity, one man loses it all when his attempt to gain social points by criticizing another socialite backfires. Then, he is offered a chance to regain it by working on a story about illegal medical drugs by a very wealthy and 'artistic' eccentric lady. As the story proceeds, he begins to realize that the lady may be more interesting in turning him into part of her private, grotesque art work, and has to figure out how to escape.

• "The Adjunct" by Cassandra Rose Clarke: a funny story about an adjunct faculty member tasked to teach students at a college how to use a peculiar indexing and referencing system in their work. Trying to understand the system better (so she can teach it better) leads her to discover the sinister origins of the system as a means to take over the world. But, as it turns out, the world might be safe due to the students themselves.

• "Visible Cities" by Rachel Pollack: growing up, a girl is suddenly aware of another world hidden from ours that only she can see. This draws the attention of a secret society, who points her to a teacher. When the teacher vanishes, she goes on a journey to various kinds of hidden cities to find him. The conclusion of her search would be an interesting one and hints at a bigger plan that she will be part of.

• "Bedtime Story" by James Sallis: a short, fragment of a story about a future when civilization is apparently breaking down due to an alien virus. In this story, a man looks for the body of his former partner. The journey would show how much the world has changed.

• "Morbier" by R.S. Benedict: a chilling story set in a country club where waiters and waitresses suffer abuses while they work. One unusual person suddenly arrives and is given the job as a waitress. Her unusual behaviour climaxes when she claims to be a time-traveller and, she has a terrible job to perform to the guests at an upcoming party.

• "Hainted" by Ashley Blooms: an interesting story involving 'haints' which are parts of a person left behind in coal mines, squeezed out by the unrelenting pressure of working in such confined, stressful underground mining conditions. A boy convinces a girl that her father's haint must be found if she is to restore her father (who has been acting distant). But as she journeys into the coal mine and learns more about haints, she discovers that finding her father's haint may not be the best way to recover her father.

• "Broken Wings" by William Ledbetter: a fast-paced story about an asteroid miner who discovers an artefact and asks for the help of a flight dispatcher on Deimos to put his claim on it. But their plans are interrupted in a sudden and suspicious manner by a customs official. As news of the discovery spreads, the dispatcher will find herself involved in a web of intrigue and needs to think fast if she is to save the miner and the discovery.