Strange. Beautiful. Shocking. Surreal. APEX MAGAZINE is a digital dark science fiction and fantasy genre zine that features award-winning short fiction, essays, and interviews. Established in 2009, our fiction has won several Hugo and Nebula Awards. We publish every other month. Issue 125 contains the following: EDITORIAL Editorial by Jason Sizemore Words from the Honorary Special Editor by Jeffery Reynolds ORIGINAL FICTION COTTONMOUTH by Joelle Wellington Next to Cleanliness by Rose Keating Discontinuity by Jared Millet Candyland by Maggie Slater Gift for the Cutter Man by D. Thomas Minton Wake Up, I Miss You by Rachel Swirsky CLASSIC FICTION Deep Night by Tenea D. Johnson The Ever-Dreaming Verdict of Plagues by Jason Sanford The Rat by Yohanca Delgado INTERVIEWS Interview with Author Joelle Wellington by Andrea Johnson Interview with Author Rose Keating by Andrea Johnson Interview with Cover Artist Marcela Bolívar by Russell Dickerson NONFICTION Alone? Or, How a Survivalist Reality TV Show Defangs Publishing's Narrow Definition of Agency by Maria Dong Flesh Eggs by Ken MacGregor REVIEWS Review of Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest Review of Malefactor by Robert Repino Words for Thought: Short Fiction Reviews by A.C. Wise

Our largest book to date! With stories by Alix E. Harrow, Sam J. Miller, Sheree Renée Thomas, Cassandra Khaw, and many more, Apex Magazine 2021 is a collection of darkly beautiful tales appearing originally in Apex Magazine January-December 2021. From a spaceship in the far-flung reaches of space to a cozy living room where a detective interviews a killer, this anthology explores the good and the ugly. It dissects what makes us human versus what makes us monsters. Within these pages, you will meet a golem that doesn’t know how to save its family, a group of robots debating whether they are alive, and a woman striving for that social media-perfect life. From parasitic twins to a hospital dreamscape, to a town full of people wearing masks, this anthology will take you on journeys you never could have expected. Come with us and discover the 48 surreal, strange, shocking, and beautiful stories in Apex Magazine 2021. Table of Contents “Root Rot” — Fargo Tbakhi “Your Own Undoing” — P H Lee “Love, That Hungry Thing” — Cassandra Khaw “Mr. Death” — Alix E. Harrow “The Niddah” — Elana Gomel “All I Want for Christmas” — Charles Payseur “Gray Skies, Red Wings, Blue Lips, Black Hearts” — Merc Fenn Wolfmoor “Barefoot and Midnight” — Sheree Renée Thomas “The Amazing Exploding Women of the Early Twentieth Century” — A.C. Wise “Black Box of the Terraworms” — Barton Aikman “If Those Ragged Feet Won’t Run” — Annie Neugebauer “A Love That Burns Hot Enough to Last: Deleted Scenes From a Documentary” — Sam J. Miller “The Life and Death of Mia Fremont: An Interview with a Killer” — A.K. Hudson “This Is the Moment, Or One of Them” — Mari Ness “Throw Rug” — Aurelius Raines II “Mishpokhe and Ash” — Sydney Rossman-Reich “All This Darkness” — Jennifer R. Donohue “DEMON FIGHTER SUCKS” — Katherine Crighton “Eilam Is Forever” — Beth Dawkins “Without Wishes to Bind You” — E. Catherine Tobler “How to be Good” — R. Gatwood “Osu” — Kingsley Okpii “Survival, After” — Nicole J. LeBoeuf “What Sisters Take” — Kelly Sandoval “Cottonmouth” — Joelle Wellington “Next to Cleanliness” — Rose Keating “Discontinuity” — Jared Millet “Candyland” — Maggie Slater “Gift for the Cutter Man” — D. Thomas Minton “Wake Up, I Miss You” — Rachel Swirsky “Security Breach at Sugar Pine Suites” — Pamela Rentz “Happy Trails” — Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr. “Marked by Bears” — Jessie Loyer “Spirits of the Broken Lands” — Kevin Wabaunsee “When Evening Arrives” — Tiffany Morris “An Incident at Hellpoint Prime” — Norris Black “To Seek Himself Again” — Marie Croke “This Shattered Vessel, Which Holds Only Grief” — Izzy Wasserstein “In Haskins” — Carson Winter “Whose Mortal Taste” — Erin K. Wagner “Hank in the South Dakota Sun” — Stephanie Kraner “I Call Upon the Night as Witness” — Zahra Mukhi “Soil of Our Home, Storm of Our Lives” — Renan Bernardo “Robin’s Last Song” — Nina Munteanu “Godmother” — Cheryl S. Ntumy “The synchronism of touch” — Gabriela Damián Miravete “Dreamports” — Tlotlo Tsamaase “Samsāra in a Teacup” — Lavanya Lakshminarayan

"Meet Leda Foley; Devoted friend, struggling travel agent, sometime psychic. When Leda, proprietor of Foley's Flights of Fancy, books Seattle PD Grady Merritt on a flight back from Orlando, she does not expect it to change her life. When Grady watches the plane he was set to travel on catch fire while he remains safely in the airport, he seeks out Leda, and despite her rather scattershot premonitions, he enlists her help in investigating a cold case he just can't crack. But Leda has her own reasons for helping: her fiancé Tod was murdered under mysterious circumstances several years ago. Her psychic abilities weren't good then, but now she's been honing them at her favorite bar's open-mic nights, where she draws a crowd klairvoyant karaoke-singing whatever song comes to mind after holding other patrons' personal effects. With a rag-tag group of bar patrons and friends, Leda and Grady set out to catch a killer--and find that the two cases that haunt them may have more in common than they think"--

Robert Repino concludes the War with No Name series in an explosive final novel. Over a decade has passed since the ant queen began her apocalyptic war with the humans. In the aftermath, she leaves behind a strange legacy: a race of uplifted animals, the queen’s conscripts in the war effort, now trying to make their way in the world they destroyed. While the conflict has left deep scars, it has also allowed both sides to demonstrate feats of courage and compassion that were never possible before. And now, after years of bloodshed, the survivors have a fleeting chance to build a lasting peace. But peace always comes with a price. The holy city of Hosanna—where animals and humans form a joint government—finds itself surrounded by wolves who are determined to retake the land. A powerful matriarch has united the rival wolf packs, using a terrible power harnessed from the Queen herself. Soon, the looming violence pulls in those who sought to escape. The war hero Mort(e) suspects a plot to destroy Hosanna from within, and recruits a team of unlikely allies to investigate. Falkirk, captain of the airship Vesuvius, must choose between treason and loyalty to save the city. And D’Arc, sailing aboard the al-Rihla, learns that the wolves may have triggered a new cycle of life for the Colony, bringing a final reckoning to animal and human alike. Once reunited, the three outcasts begin a journey into wolf territory to face the last remnant of the queen’s empire. But while destiny has drawn them together, it may destroy them as well, for even love, courage, and honor may not be enough to stop the forces of destruction set to be unleashed on the world.

Inspired by the new diversity of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in the twenty-first century, Hot Equations: Science, Fantasy, and the Radical Imagination on a Troubled Planet confronts the kinds of literary and political “realism” that continue to suppress the radical imagination. Alluding both to the ongoing climate catastrophe and to Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations”—that famous touchstone of “hard science fiction”—Hot Equations reads the crises of our "post-normal" moment via works that increasingly subvert genre containment and spill out into the public sphere. Drawing on archives and contemporary theory, author Jesse S. Cohn argues that these imaginative works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror strike at the very foundations of modernity, calling its basic assumptions into question. They threaten the modern order with a simultaneously terrible and promising anarchy, pointing to ways beyond the present medical, ecological, and political crises of pandemic, climate change, and rising global fascism. Examining books ranging from well-known titles like The Hunger Games and The Caves of Steel to newer works such as Under the Pendulum Sun and The Stone Sky, Cohn investigates the ways in which science fiction, fantasy, and horror address contemporary politics, social issues, and more. The “cold equations” that established normal life in the modern world may be in shambles, Cohn suggests, but a New Black Fantastic makes it possible for the radical imagination to glimpse viable possibilities on the other side of crisis.