Summary: Albedo One, 2007

Albedo One is a magazine based in Dublin. It has been around for quite some time now, and two issues (#32 and #33) appeared in 2007. (#32 was copyrighted 2006 but didn't appear until February 2007.) The magazine and website are rather coy about the identities of the editorial team -- but I believe at least Robert Neilson and Frank Ludlow are involved.

The two issues featured 16 stories -- 2 novelettes and 14 shorts (two of them short-shorts). The total word count (which I will caveat by noting that wordcounting this magazine is a bit difficult) was about 70,000.

Stories I particularly liked include Uncle River's "Counting Tadpoles" (#32), a novelette about an environmental engineer type visiting a remote place in the American Southwest, and bumping into a man living off the land, more or less -- it's something of a meditation on the environment and government interference with same, and its best aspect is the character of the old man living alone. Also, Simon Kewin's "Live from the Continuing Explosion" (#33) has a fascinating and metaphorically effective central idea: a terrorist act, setting off a bomb in New York, is somehow contained in a time bubble, such that the victims of the explosion are frozen so that time passes much more slowly for them than for the outside world. The central character is the twin sister of one of the victims, who missed being in the bubble by a finger's length. And Anil Menon's "A Sky Full of Constants" (#33), about a physicist mourning his wife, who could not deal with their discovery of "tweak theory": the possibility of changing the fundamental constants of the universe. Another nice work came from Ruth Nestvold, Nicola Caines, Will Sand, and S. K. Twyford.

I counted 2 female contributors of 16 (12.5%), compared with 1 of 7 (I think) in 2006. 9 of 16 stories in 2007 (56%) were SF.

 Summary: All Hallows, 2007

All Hallows is the journal of the Ghost Story Society. The editor is Barbara Roden. As one might expect for a publication of the Ghost Story Society, it is devoted to traditional ghost stories. In addition to publishing new ghost stories, it has an extremely generous supply of nonfiction, mostly lengthy and thoughtful reviews.

I saw one issue in 2007, dated October 2006 but not appearing until the Spring of 2007. It was an extra thick issue, with 24 stories, over 120,000 words of fiction, 4 novelettes, the rest short stories (one short-short). There was an additional 2007 issue that I haven't seen, apparently nearly as thick.

My favorite story was "The Moonshot Goodnight", by Ian Harding, a bar story in which the bartender tells of an encounter with a regular customer, one with a particularly bad marriage. I also quite liked David Dumitru's "Oak", about a mysterious friend a boy makes in the woods. (It is interesting how knowing that these are ghost stories colors the reading of them.) Stories by Edward Lodi, Mi Ackland, and M. C. Grassley, among others, also stood out.

As far as I can tell, 3 of 24 writers (12.5%) were women.

 Summary: Farrago's Wainscot, 2007

Farrago's Wainscot is a quarterly ezine devoted to "experimentation, decay, and the problems with form". The editor is Darin Bradley. They publish several pieces of fiction each issue (usually a couple new and a couple reprints), lots of poetry, and some nonfiction including interviews and word-oriented puzzles and such. Four issues appeared in 2007, its first year.

I counted a total of 9 new stories, all short (4 short-shorts), for nearly 20,000 words of fiction. My favorite story was the longest, David J. Schwartz's "Oma Dortchen and the Pillar of Story" (Summer), about an woman who listens to stories her whole life until she is compelled to start telling them -- and at the same time she encounters such creatures and the Frog King and the Toad King and many more. Nisi Shawl's "The Snooted One" (Winter) is very attractively weird, quasi-academic, about the legendary title figure. The zine is definitely experimental -- as promised -- which means a mix of hits and misses, but it's worth a look.

I counted 4 stories by women. Perhaps 4 stories could be called SF.

 Summary: Cabinet des Fées, 2007

Cabinet des Fées is an irregular journal devoted to fairy tales. It features fiction, poetry, essays, and art. Occasional issues appear online, and so far (to my knowledge) two print issues have come out, one of them in 2007. That issue, the first I have seen, included 10 stories for a total of 43000 words or so. One story was a reprint: the other 9 included 1 novelette and 8 short stories (1 short-short), about 35,000 words. The editors are Helen Pilinovsky and Erzebet Yellow-Boy, with Yellow-Boy having responsibility for the fiction.

The fiction was pretty high quality throughout. Highlights included Bret Fetzer's rather darkly funny "The Devil Factory", about a girl lured into working at, well, a devil factory; Mike Allen's "The Hiker's Tale", about a hiker who encounters a strange couple on a remote Appalachian trail -- and learns that they may be linked to some stranger and darker events; and JoSelle Vanderhooft's "The Tower", a Sleeping Beauty story with a darker and sadder twist than usual.

6 of 9 stories were by women, I believe.