Apex Magazine: Issue 36

By Lynne M. Thomas

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:
"Decomposition" by Rachel Swirsky
"Tomorrow's Dictator" by Rahul Kanakia
"The Chaos Magician's Mega Chemistry Set" by Nnedi Okorafor

Nonfiction:
"Editorial: Blood on Vellum" by Lynne M. Thomas
"Faith in the Fantastic" by Tim Akers
"Interview with Rachel Swirsky" by Maggie Slater

Cover art by Naoto Hattori

Apex Magazine is edited by Hugo Award-winning editor Lynne M. Thomas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apex Book Company
• Release date: Apr 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476185408

Book preview

APEX MAGAZINE

May, 2012

Issue 36

Smashwords Edition

Copyrights and Acknowledgments

Blood on Vellum: Notes from the Apex Editor-in-Chief Copyright 2012 by Lynne M. Thomas

Decomposition Copyright 2012 by Rachel Swirsky

Tomorrow’s Dictator Copyright 2012 by Rahul Kanakia

The Chaos Magician’s Mega Chemistry Set Copyright 2007 by Nnedi Okorafor (Originally appeared in Space and Time #101)

Faith in the Fantastic Copyright 2012 by Tim Akers

An Interview with Rachel Swirsky Copyright 2012 by Maggie Slater

Publisher—Jason Sizemore

Editor-in-Chief—Lynne M. Thomas

Senior Editor—Gill Ainsworth

Slush Editors—Zakaraya Anwar, Deanna Knippling, Sarah E. Olson, Olga Zelenova, George Galuschak, Sigrid Ellis, Michael Damian Thomas, Andy Arnold, Travis Knight, Michael Matheson, Eileen Maksym, and Kelly Lagor

ISSN: 2157-1406

Apex Publications

PO Box 24323

Lexington, KY 40524

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

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

Cover art Pheromone by Naoto Hattori

Our cover artist Naoto Hattori was born in 1975 in Yokohama, Japan. Naoto studied Graphic Design in Tokyo before moving to New York to study in the School of Visual Arts where he received a BFA in Illustration in 2000. He has been the recipient of awards from The Society of Illustrators and the New York Director’s Club.

Visit http://www.wwwcomcom.com/ to view more work from this amazing artist.

Table of Contents

Fiction

Decomposition

Rachel Swirsky

Tomorrow’s Dictator

Rahul Kanakia

The Chaos Magician’s Mega Chemistry Set

Nnedi Okorafor

Nonfiction

Faith in the Fantastic

Tim Akers

Interview with Rachel Swirsky

Maggie Slater

Blood on Vellum: Notes from the Editor-in-Chief

Lynne M. Thomas

Blood on Vellum: Notes from the Editor-in-Chief

In this issue, things fall apart: Relationships, societies, religious systems. Dreams and hopes, bodies and minds all pay the price for the choices we make to try to get ahead.

Rachel Swirsky’s visceral Decomposition tells the disturbing story of when a villain returns home. Rahul Kanakia’s Tomorrow’s Dictator examines just how much of ourselves we sacrifice for the work we do. Our classic revisited this month is Nnedi Okorafor’s The Chaos Magician’s Magical Chemistry Set, which shows what happens when the barriers between magic and science become permeable.

In our nonfiction this month, Maggie Slater interviews Rachel Swirsky about her writing process, and Tim Akers explains how and why the depictions of religions in SF/F so often break down. Our stunning cover art this month is by surrealist artist Naoto Hattori.

The news here at Apex Magazine has been pretty darned good lately. We’re deeply honored to be nominated for a 2012 Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine, and are looking forward to WorldCon in August/September. This is our very first Hugo nomination, and we are in august company indeed, alongside Interzone, Lightspeed, Locus, and the New York Review of Science Fiction. Congratulations to all of the other nominees. I’d like to especially thank all of the Apex Magazine staff and contributors for all of their hard work that had led to this honor. We are also pleased to congratulate Damian Taylor on his promotion to Managing Editor of Apex Magazine, as he takes on a larger role in running our day-to-day business.

I hope that you enjoy this issue of Apex.

Lynne M. Thomas

Editor-in-Chief

Coming this August from Apex Publications…

The Apex Book of World SF 2

Edited by Lavie Tidhar

This much-anticipated sequel to Tidhar’s first anthology of international genre fiction is stuffed with twenty-six stories from top writers from all across the globe. Features work from noted authors Will Elliot, Hannu Rajaniemi, Shweta Narayan, Lauren Beukes, Ekaterina Sedia, Nnedi Okorafor, and Andrzej Sapowski.

http://www.apexbookcompany.com/collections/books/products/the-apex-book-of-world-sf-2-edited-by-lavie-tidhar

ISBN: 978-1-937009-04-05

Decomposition

Rachel Swirsky

PART ONE: LIVING

New Year’s celebrations crashed through the streets of Whitcry in a din of masks and swirling petticoats. Pottery smashed against cobbles, women’s shouts echoed from garrets, men groaned and fought and pissed. Sour smells of alcohol and vomit mingled in chill air. Revelers danced through alleys, tripping over each other’s feet and smashing into walls, laughter constant beneath the chaos.

In its midst, Vare stood solitary and composed, leaning against a small but expensive townhouse. It was the kind of home owned by the kind of man who wanted others to believe that instead of squandering his wealth, he was using his privilege over the poor for some noble purpose, the kind of man who used the phrase noblesse oblige without a trace of irony.

The owner was Berrat deLath, known to those who’d fought beside him as Berrat the Just, again without a trace of irony.

Berrat was the scion of a merchant house who, as a young man, had set out to prove that despite his lack of title, he still epitomized the ideal of nobility. He’d funded his own division of the church’s army, the Eagles and Hares, and used his own resources to fund the investigation and cleansing of villainous dens where other men flouted church law.

One such den had been a large and prosperous magitorium in the nearby city of Bitterbite which trafficked in the mundane, if illegal, business of charms, as well as darker things. Vare had been a procurer for the magitorium, one of a few hundred men who earned status and riches by supplying the needs of the dozen mages who were too busy casting and carving to gather their own metals and blood.

And what had been the magitorium’s crimes? Child sacrifice, yes, but only rarely. Berrat decried the enslavement of innocents, but what did the church care about such things? They had their own workhouses.

On a bright summer’s day, the Eagles and Hares broke into the magitorium, killed everyone they found inside, pillaged the goods, and left the remains in fire. All the mages died. The only survivors were those in the magitorium’s employee who, by lucky chance, had happened to be away at the time, among them Vare.

In