Uncanny Magazine – Issue #23

I don’t read magazines like this often(I’d end up subscribing to too many), but I saw the cover of this one and I just HAD to get it.

This was a pretty strong issue, considering it was encircling a “shared world” where the writers came up with an alternative Earth that had tapped into a portal-multiverse where dinosaurs keep creeping into everything! I loved it!

There were three stories in particular that grabbed me No shock that they were all in the middle, but have been left thinking about them. Great stuff all around.

“Bones in the Rock” by R.K. Kalaw

Here we follow Tenea as she seeks out her mate through more than a millennia of time until she finally reaches her goal after living nine lives. The story itself really brought me in, with its truly unique point of view(not spoiling here) and the kind of semi-mystical, but also somewhat dark tone throughout. I was hoping that there would be a story that centered somewhat on the paleontology side of dinosaurs and I was not disappointed with this one.

“By Claw, By Hand, By Silent Speech” by Elsa Sjunneson-Henry & A. Merc Rustad

This was another story that kind of struck me as being kind of great about mid-way through. Focusing on a younger paleontologist, who is deaf, she seeks to communicate with the velociraptor who is being studied in the adjacent facility. Jumping from her point of view to the raptor’s, Sjunneson-Henry and Rustad really show their stuff and creates a rather sweet little story, which surprisingly involves one of the world’s deadliest predators to have ever lived.

“The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat” by Brooke Bolander

Now, if you haven’t heard about this one yet, you must read it. Bolander outdoes herself with this one and while writing an entertaining story, ends up subverting and inverting all the common tropes you usually find in classic fairy tales. We follow a raptor, SSSSSS or Ceecee, and her sisters when they come across a rather self-absorbed Prince who ends up taking her away from her home and sisters. I can’t say much more than that, but this is one that made me wish for a full novel rather than just a one-off story.

There are others that I could talk about, but you really just need to read the issue.

And it’s not just the fiction that’s great, the nonfiction was also not worth missing. I particularly enjoyed “Island Futures” by Tobias Buckell.

Uncanny Magazine is one that any writer in genre fiction can’t afford to miss. I’ll be sure to grab another copy down the road. They haven’t won a few Hugos for just being average!