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    Apex Magazine: Issue 27
    Apex Magazine: Issue 27
    Apex Magazine: Issue 27
    Ebook82 pages1 hour

    Apex Magazine: Issue 27

    By Catherynne M. Valente

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    About this ebook

    Apex Magazine is a monthly science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazine featuring original, mind-bending short fiction from many of the top pros of the field.

    Table of Contents
    Fiction:
    “The Whispered Thing”
    Zach Lynott
    “The Tiger Hunter”
    Rabbit Seagraves
    “The Secret Protocols of the Elders of Zion”
    Lavie Tidhar
    Poetry:
    “The Djinn Prince in America: A Microepic in 9 Tracks"
    Saladin Ahmed
    “Down Cycle”
    Elizabeth R. McClellan
    Nonfiction:
    “Five Genre Books that Raises Mind-numbing Philosophical Questions”
    Jason Sizemore

    Apex Magazine is edited by award-winning author and editor Catherynne M. Valente.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherApex Book Company
    Release dateJul 30, 2011
    ISBN9781465812605
    Apex Magazine: Issue 27
    Author

    Catherynne M. Valente

    Catherynne M. Valente is an acclaimed New York Times bestselling creator of over forty works of fantasy and science fiction, including the Fairyland novels and The Glass Town Game. She has been nominated for the Nebula and World Fantasy awards, and has won the Otherwise (formerly Tiptree), Hugo, and Andre Norton award. She lives on a small island off the coast of Maine with her partner, young son, and a shockingly large cat with most excellent tufts.

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      Book preview

      Apex Magazine - Catherynne M. Valente

      APEX MAGAZINE

      Issue 27

      August, 2011

      Copyright 2011 Apex Publications

      Smashwords Edition

      COPYRIGHTS & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      The Whispered Thing Copyright 2011 by Zach Lynott

      The Tiger Hunter Copyright 2011 by Rabbit Seagraves

      The Djinn Prince in America: A Microepic in 9 Tracks Copyright 2011 by Saladin Ahmed

      Down Cycle Copyright 2011 by Elizabeth R. McClellan

      The Secret Protocols of the Elders of Zion Copyright 2008 by Lavie Tidhar (First appeared in The West Pier Gazette and Other Stories, 2008)

      Five Genre Books that Raise Mind-numbing Philosophical Questions Copyright 2011 by Jason Sizemore

      Publisher—Jason Sizemore

      Fiction Editor—Catherynne M. Valente

      Senior Editor—Gill Ainsworth

      Submission Editors—Zakarya Anwar, Ferrett Steinmetz, Mari Adkins, George Galuschak, Deanna Knippling, Sarah Olson, Lillian Cohen-Moore, Katherine Khorey

      Cover designed by Justin Stewart

      ISSN: 2157-1406

      Apex Publications

      PO Box 24323

      Lexington, KY 40524

      Please visit us at http://www.apex-magazine.com

      To subscribe visit http://www.apexbookcompany.com/collections/apex-magazine/products/apex-magazine-subscription

      Each new issue of Apex Magazine is released the first Tuesday of the month. Single issues are available to purchase for $2.99. Subscriptions are for twelve months and are sold for $19.95.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      FICTION:

      The Whispered Thing

      Zach Lynott

      The Tiger Hunter

      Rabbit Seagraves

      The Secret Protocols of the Elders of Zion

      Lavie Tidhar

      POETRY:

      The Djinn Prince in America: A Microepic in 9 Tracks

      Saladin Ahmed

      Down Cycle

      Elizabeth R. McClellan

      Nonfiction:

      Five Genre Books that Raise Mind-numbing Philosophical Questions

      Jason Sizemore

      Submission Guidelines

      The Whispered Thing

      by Zach Lynott

      I have a friend who can barely string a sentence together. She’ll place a word on a page, and then agonize over the resulting ripples as though the word were a stone thrown into a deep lake. During moments like these, her great comfort is anecdotes such as the one where an old friend visits James Joyce and finds the great author slumped over his writing desk.

      I’ve written five words today, Joyce says by way of greeting, rolling his eyes toward the visitor who, knowing the angst writing caused the author, smiles and says, Why, that’s great! Joyce, though, groans, and then says, But I don’t know what order they go in!

      My friend loved retelling stories like this over coffee and stronger stuff; anecdotes, allegories, and aphorisms were so many sticks and twigs to build the nest where her great work would hatch. This particular twig came from Stephen King’s book On Writing, and she’d chosen it to illustrate both the writer’s dilemma and its solution; in her mind Joyce had worked it out and so would she—even though on that day she had not one word to perplex her gin and tonic. Of course, lots of people hate to write and get by on subject-predicated disasters, but fate cast a shadow across my friend’s destiny when it tossed a stone in her name, because as the ripples hit the shore they washed up a poet right along with them.

      Me?

      Why, I’m Mister Gregarious, a singular sum of instant gratification, no happier than when I’m surrounded by people. When I spout off, out it goes and out it stays. Friends will tell me a great story and I’ll go, Where’d you hear that? And they’ll say, Mr. Gregarious, it was you, two days back. You really don’t remember?

      What I’m getting at is the place of stories in my life. Until a year ago they were just another social lubricant to slide between the next drink and the current cigarette. Ever since I got back from Japan, though, one story’s been on my mind, and it’s the least I want to tell. But my poet friend noticed my lack of shaving, gaunt eyes, and the wasting away of weight. She told me about this little gathering you have and said, Sometimes the weight of our hearts holds back the stories that need telling. She’s probably at the page now, trying to say it better—and I don’t know if telling you about the whispered thing will change anything, but I’ve got nothing to lose.

      I’ve got to put it in perspective before I go insane.

      I encountered the whispered thing in Japan.

      I’d headed over hoping for the glitz and glam of Tokyo, full of Blade Runner nights and lost, translated days.

      Instead I got Ogaki.

      Not that I’m complaining. It was a nice enough, medium-sized town at the base of lush green mountains. The ALT Company put me up in a small, 500 square feet, one bedroom apartment beside the train station, and, in fifteen minutes, I passed Japan in all its eras as I walked between home and work, transitioning from the most modern to the exceedingly ancient and back again—a 7-11, a Shinto shrine, a Mister Donuts—before arriving at the cedar gates of the Buddhist elementary school.

      You could tell the place was well off. Each day my kids would wave from their Mercedes and BMWs, as they passed the giant iron bell that hung in a shrine where we’d gather to hear the priest chant morning prayers as cicadas screeched their leaden song. Then it was off to the modern, two-storey school next door, where I hopped between classrooms like a multilingual frog, ribbiting out strings of English for one lily pad before springing to the next. All in all, not a bad gig, and come lunch I’d head out to watch the kids during recess.

      That’s when I first saw Mizuki. She was a small girl lying on her stomach on the other side of the sand lot that marked the playground. This always struck me as unique to Japan—or, very much unlike Colorado. Even Colorado, arid as it was, had grass for its playgrounds. Not Ogaki. No, like any other Japanese school, our kids played atop an expanse of sand that doubled as a kingdom of imagination, a place where dreams were reenacted and explored within the dynamic of games and friends—but even for dreams, Mizuki’s were extreme. She used a bright yellow shovel

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