Apex Magazine: Issue 44

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. New issues are released on the first Tuesday of every month.

*2012 Hugo Award nominee for Best Semiprozine*

Issue 44 features the following content.

Table of Contents
Fiction
"Trixie and the Pandas of Dread" by Eugie Foster
"The Performance Artist" by Lettie Prell
"The Patrician" by Tansy Rayner Roberts

Nonfiction
"Editorial: Blood on Vellum" by Lynne M. Thomas
"All the Real (Geek) Girls" by Sarah Kuhn
"An Interview with Eugie Foster" by Maggie Slater

Cover art by David Ho.

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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apex Book Company
• Release date: Dec 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301267088

Book preview

APEX MAGAZINE

ISSUE 44

EDITED BY LYNNE M. THOMAS

Smashwords Edition

Copyrights and Acknowledgments

Blood on Vellum: Notes from the Editor-in-Chief Copyright © 2013 by Lynne M. Thomas

Trixie and the Pandas of Dread Copyright © 2013 by Eugie Foster

The Performance Artist Copyright © 2013 by Lettie Prell

The Patrician Copyright © 2011 by Tansy Rayner Roberts (Originally appeared in the collection Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts, Twelfth Planet Press, 2011)

All the (Real) Geek Girls Copyright © 2013 by Sarah Kuhn

Interview with Eugie Foster Copyright © 2013 by Maggie Slater

Cover art The Procession Copyright © by David Ho

Publisher—Jason Sizemore

Editor-in-Chief—Lynne M. Thomas

Senior Editor—Gill Ainsworth

Managing Editor—Michael D. Thomas

Slush Editors—Sigrid Ellis, Deanna Knippling, Kelly Lagor, Eileen Maksym, Michael Matheson, Travis Knight, Olga Zelanova, Maggie Slater, Andy Arnold, Fran Wilde, Jei D. Marcade

Graphic Designer—Justin Stewart

ISSN: 2157-1406

Apex Publications

PO Box 24323

Lexington, KY 40524

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

About Our Cover Artist

David Ho is a freelance digital illustrator/fine artist creating works leaning towards the darker side of human emotions. After attaining a bachelor's degree in sociology from UC Berkeley, he decided to pursue a career in the arts. His works have been seen in numerous publications including the Spectrum Annuals, Society of Illustrators Annuals, Communication Arts Annuals and Luerzers Archive. His clients have included Simon and Schuster, Ogilvy Advertising and LucasArts. Lately, some of his fine art originals and prints are available at Pop Gallery in Santa Fe.

Table of Contents

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

Lynne M. Thomas

Trixie and the Pandas of Dread

Eugie Foster

The Performance Artist

Lettie Prell

The Patrician

Tansy Rayner Roberts

All the (Real) Geek Girls

Sarah Kuhn

An Interview with Eugie Foster

Maggie Slater

Dark Faith: Invocations

Edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon

Featuring

Jeffrey Ford, Max Allan Collins, Mike Resnick, Jay Lake, Nisi Shawl, Laird Barron, Tom Piccirilli, Jennifer Pelland, and more!

Religion, science, magic, love, family—everyone believes in something, and that faith pulls us through the darkness and the light. The second coming of Dark Faith cries from the depths with 26 stories of sacrifice and redemption.

"…rises to the expectations set by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon’s first (Dark Faith) anthology, if not surpassing them."

—Dark Wolf Fantasy Reviews

ISBN: 978-1-937009-07-6

Available at ApexBookCompany.com or most major book vendors

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

Welcome to issue 44. We have some great works for your enjoyment this month!

In our new fiction, Eugie Foster brings us Trixie and the Pandas of Dread, a darkly humorous take on gods among us. Lettie Prell’s contribution The Performance Artist, sketches the gruesome price of the artistic life for one artist. This month’s classic revisited is Tansy Rayner Roberts’s The Patrician, a tale of monster-hunting, family, and history, first published in Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press 2011), and republished in The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2011.

In nonfiction, Sarah Kuhn discusses the paucity of the fake geek girl debate, and Maggie Slater interviews Eugie Foster about her work and the importance of chocolate covered potato chips to the writerly process.

Thank you, as always, if you’ve chosen to begin the year with a subscription or renewal to Apex Magazine. You make great fiction possible, month after month. If you’re enjoying what we do and have a Kindle subscription, please consider sharing the love by leaving a review on our Amazon subscriber page.

Also, Hugo Award nominations opened on January 1st. Apex Magazine is eligible in the Best Semiprozine category. Each of our 2012 original stories (all of which are available free online) are eligible in the Best Short Story category.

We have reopened to submissions as of January 1st. I very much look forward to reading the tales that the next group of Apex Magazine writers are working on. I hope that you will enjoy them, too.

Lynne M. Thomas

Editor-in-Chief

Trixie and the Pandas of Dread

Eugie Foster

Trixie got out of her cherry-red godmobile and waved away the flitting cherubim waiting to bear her to her sedan chair. She wasn’t in the mood for a reverent chorus of hosannas, and the sedan chair desperately needed re-springing. She felt every jostle and jounce from those damned pandas. A day didn’t pass that she didn’t regret adopting giant pandas as her sacred vahanas. Sure, it seemed like a good idea at the time. They were so cute with their roly-poly bellies and black-masked faces, but they were wholly unsuited to be beasts of conveyance. The excessive undulation of their waddling gaits was enough to make Captain Ahab seasick, and their exclusive diet of bamboo made them perpetually flatulent. The novelty of being hauled along by farting ursines in a stomach-roiling sedan chair had gotten very old very fast. But there wasn’t a lot she could do about it now. It was all about the brand. Pandas were part of her theology. If she adopted new vahanas, she’d likely end up with a splitter faction, possibly even a reformation. Such a pain in the ass.

So she’d started walking more—well, floating really, since gods weren’t supposed to tread the earth. Appearances and all.

Drifting a hairsbreadth above the pavement, Trixie pulled out her holy tablet and launched the Karmic Retribution app. The first thumbnail belonged to a Mr. Tom Ehler, the owner of the walkway and the two-story colonial house it led to. She unpinched two fingers across the screen to zoom up Mr. Ehler’s details.

Yesterday, Mr. Ehler, under the handle GodnessWins, had posted on a public forum a series of inflammatory comments in response to a