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What's on your bookshelf?: slightly useful useless edition

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A lady reads a book in Eugène Grasset's Poster for the Librairie Romantique
Image credit: oldbookillustrations.com

No cool industry person this week, I’m afraid, but I do have a consolation prize for you. A comment from valued RPS community member #1694 a few weeks back reminded me that I once spent a long time tracking down good SF/Fantasy/Horror short story magazines. Partly for pitching purposes, and partly because I was just really excited such things still existed.

Short stories are my favourite form of fiction, and finding such a trove was a treat. Anyway, I figured a few of you might find my list useful. Not all of these are still active, and a few have sadly shut down quite recently, but digital back issues are usually still available online. Enjoy!

  • Lightspeed
  • Beneath Ceaseless Skies
  • Cosmic Horror Monthly
  • Clarkesworld
  • Black Static
  • Interzone
  • Galaxy’s Edge
  • Apex
  • Vastarien
  • Weird Tales (yep, the original Weird Tales has been back for a few years)
  • Apex
  • Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens (‘Bizzaro fiction’ is a rabbit hole I highly recommend)

As a bonus, my favourite collections of short stories from individual authors I’ve read recently are: The Dangers of Smoking In Bed by Mariana Enriquez, Her Body And Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, and A Collapse Of Horses by Brian Evenson. Please share your finds below! Short story magazine for now!

Now that definitely doesn't work.

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Nic Reuben avatar
Nic Reuben is secretly several Skaven in a trenchcoat that have somehow developed a predilection for weird fiction, onion bhajis, RPGs, FPS, Immersive Sims, FromSoftware titles and Strategy Games that tell emergent stories.
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