Summary: Kaleidotrope, 2008

There were two issues of Kaleidotrope in 2008, #4 and #5. For some reason #5 was considerably larger than #4. Between the two there were 24 stories, all short, 11 short-shorts (the 'zine has in my experience always been heavy on short-shorts). about 65,000 words total. One story was a reprint (slightly revised), a good story from Abyss and Apex in 2006: Ralph Sevush's "Emmett, Joey, and the Beelz". Leaving that out, there were 58,000 words of new fiction. There were also quite a few poems. The editor is Fred Coppersmith.

Stories I particularly liked were, from #4, Ashley Arnold's clever and surrealistic short-shorts "Word Count: Negative 1", and Adam Lowe's moving treatment of the rights of synthetic humans, "Paradise". From #5, I enjoyed "The Wroeth's Grinding Bowl", by Bill Ward, a fable about the exploitation of the title creature and the title object, which can create anything you imagine -- including, alas, various ills; and Therese Arkenberg's sweet short piece about a potential love affair with an alien, "Fortune Cookie". Other nice stories came from Michael Obilade, Flavian Mark Luminetti, Mark Rich, Brendan Connell, Eric Del Carlo, and Daniel Braum.

By my count, 6 of the 24 stories were SF (25%), and 4 were by women (17%).

Tags: 2008, magazines, yearly summaries