The Philippine Online Chronicles

Pinoy Pop continues its survey of online speculative fiction magazines this week with a look at the latest issue of Apex Magazine. Apex Magazine started out in 2005 as the Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, published by Apex Publications. Two years and twelve digests later, Apex Publications became a full-fledged independent publishing house with the creation of the Apex Book Company. The digest then became a digital magazine in constant search for dark speculative fiction and poetry.

Issues, released every first Monday of the month, are available online and as free PDF downloads. Readers are also encouraged to buy a digital copy, or make a donation of any amount as a show of support to the authors and editors.

Issue 14 marks managing editor and owner Jason Sizemore’s “last go around as fiction editor for a while.” Next month’s issue will be helmed by award-winning author Catherynne M. Valente.

No endings or major plot twists are given away in this review, but for the purists, spoiler warning commences here.

"Artifact" by Peter Atwood

Davis has been a mollusk harvester for twenty-five years, but one day he is checking his bin when out from the orange lake comes a round black object the size of a large buoy. This discovery occurs just as he is dealing with his wife’s sadness over losing their child, her wish for a new house that Davis cannot afford, and the looming danger of losing his livelihood (as there are now plans to mine the bottom of the lake instead of buying mollusks from the harvesters).

It is hard to assess whether what the black object turns out to be is good or evil, if what it gives is a gift or punishment, or if what happens to Davis in the end is cruelty or a show of mercy. It can be seen both ways, and that’s the beauty of it. Really, what comfort can a husband expect from a wife so broken she cannot hear him anymore?

In some science fiction stories, human emotion takes a backseat to technology, but here Atwood handles dialogue and character interaction so well that the first thing a reader notices and the last thing a reader takes away is a sense of tragedy.

"Schrödinger’s Pussy" by Terra Lemay

This story reminded me very strongly of Vylar Kaftan’s “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” (Lightspeed Issue #1): it had the same use of second person point-of-view, the same use of science woven into a love story. While Kaftan used Einstein’s theory of relativity and his "Twin Paradox" thought experiment as a reference point, here Lemay used quantum physics, and the thought experiment Schrödinger’s Cat (crafted by Erwin Schrödinger, a contemporary of Einstein), to map the many possibilities that can spring from a moment. What if I am a girl and you’re a boy, or we’re both girls, or we’re both men making love in a bathroom stall? Which is the first kiss, which is the true love? And who is there to remember?

Human beings (and cats) exist in a macroscopic system, where living things either live or die, where there is no middle ground of existence. But anyone who has fallen in love can say with certainty that one, like subatomic particles, can exist in gradations: dead, alive, dreaming, not-there. Lemay explores the clichés, the familiar moments we’ve read in innumerable romantic stories, and makes them new again. A good first story in Apex for Lemay; I’ll look out for her in the issues to come.

This story is also this month’s audio fiction, read by Alethea Kontis.

"Here We Are, Falling Through Shadows" by Jason Sanford (Reprint)

In this neighborhood where rippers – intelligent shadow-like beings that are frightened by light but can suck in a human being to another dimension – roam the streets, it takes an enormous amount of bravery to be a firefighter. The unnamed protagonist in Sanford’s story still rides the fire engine, even though he carries an enormous wound: his wife has been abducted by these entities, taken to god-knows-where, and his daughter Sammy has taken to talking to rippers. She even sports a ripper tattoo on her face.

This story originally appeared in Interzone 225. Stories featuring rips in the time-space continuum are a dime a dozen, but this is the first story I've ever read featuring rips that can communicate. If a portal can talk, if a void can begin a conversation, what will it tell you? Such a premise could have been a set-up for a horrible B-movie, but Sanford writes an affecting tale of a grieving husband, a daughter that wants out of this dimension, and a world that suddenly finds itself overrun by beings it does not understand.

"Those Below" by Jeremy C. Shipp (Reprint)

Shipp’s story originally appeared in Love and Sacrifice and talks about the dead: not the dead in the ground, but those that have been Remade. Those that eat animal brains, that are sold for manual labor, that receive payment to get beaten up (because they don’t feel that much pain), that wear make-up and dye their hair because “natural is ugly,” that marry the living. The Remade is an interesting concept, but I was more impressed with Shipp’s writing style: the short sentences, the focus on dialogue, the tight narrative.

Another reprint is Susannah Mandel’s puzzling “End of the Line: A Puzzle,” a flash fiction piece that originally appeared in The Daily Cabal.

Aside from fiction, this issue also contains three poems: Lydia Ondrusek’s poignant “Wisdom,” Robert Borski’s “Eclipse” with the shocking last line, and Colleen Kimsey’s time-bending “Going Woodo.”

The poetry selections and the flash fiction piece didn’t blow me away, but the fiction offerings (both the original and the excellent reprints) more than made up for it.

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