Benjanun Sriduangkaew
2) Shattersteel
The final chapter of the Her Pitiless Command series, this dark fantasy tale finds our assassin protagonist embroiled in court intrigue, malfunctioning prosthetics, and a deadly love triangle.
For her entire life, Nuawa has made herself a weapon to assassinate the Winter Queen.
She failed. Her secrets are laid bare and she has lost everything.
The queen keeps Nuawa as a tool, and soon a sacrifice as she
...Recadat Kongmanee has lost everything to the machines: the woman she loved, the hero's prize she was promised, and her memories. All she has left is vengeance.
Within the Garden of Atonement, artificial intelligences offer healing and a return to innocence. Brought in as an inmate, Recadat must keep up a dangerous charade while she readies a weapon built to destroy AIs—and prove that machines are not gods. But as she's pulled into games
To give humanity peace, the artificial intelligence Samsara will wage an eternal war . . .
In a universe torn by combat, Samsara's world is the final haven that refugees will pay any price to enter. At the Selection Bureau, Suzhen Tang upholds the AI's will and grants citizenship to those deemed worthy. When she meets new arrival Ovuha, she judges Ovuha a model candidate―educated, beautiful, a perfect fit for utopia.
But Ovuha carries
Vishnu's Leviathan: a half-beast, half-machine warship famed for its speed and might. The great prize that armies across the galaxies will kill to possess.
Admiral Anoushka was once a ghost. Now she's the universe's most brutal commander with a debt to a godlike AI. To repay it—and to complete her long revenge—she's set her sights on the leviathan. Neither the warship's flesh horrors nor its ruthless ruler will stand in
...On a graveyard star, machines run a deadly tournament and draw humans like moths to a flame with a priceless promise. Partner with an artificial intelligence and fight to the death. Win and receive your heart's desire . . .
War veteran Thannarat has sought this hidden world to realize a single goal: bringing back the dead. To fulfill this wish, she joins the game alongside a seductive AI who pledges to give her victory. The tournament is full
The aliens came to uplift humanity—and brought with them quantum computation that allows chosen humans, called cognates, to travel between parallel universes.
Jirayu's wife Yvette disappeared when the aliens arrived. When Yvette returns, she's an artifact of the future, a soldier from another timeline . . . and she carries with her the answer to why Jirayu is targeted by killers who have snuffed out every other version of Jirayu.
Yvette
8) Mirrorstrike
Political intrigue and romance highlight this gorgeous dark fantasy novella rooted in Han Christian Anderson's Snow Queen fairy tale. This is the second book of the author's Her Pitiless Command series.
With her mother's blood fresh on her hands, Nuawa has learned that to overthrow the tyrant Winter Queen she must be as exact as a bullet ... and as pitiless.
In the greatest city of winter, a revolt has broken out and General
...9) Winterglass
In this dark fantasy retelling of the Snow Queen fairy tale, a deadly assassin must balance a tragic love triangle and her desires to free her city from the cruel clutches of the Winter Queen.
The city-state Sirapirat once knew only warmth and monsoon. When the Winter Queen conquered it, she remade the land in her image, turning Sirapirat into a country of snow and unending frost. But an empire is not her only goal. In secret, she
...Thannarat Vutirangsee has won it all: she's saved her world, married her perfect bride, and found her peace. She is meant to live the rest of her days in a fairytale.
But the machines are not done with her yet. Her wife Daji has breached the treaty between humans and machines, and for that she will be subjected to a punishment worse than execution.
Thannarat is not a hero. She is an artifact of war, a force of devastating annihilation.
...Admiral Anoushka rose from nothing to command an army unrivaled in all the galaxies. She did not rise alone.
War between godlike machines is breaking out, and at its center is the AI who aided Anoushka's ascent. Now payment has come calling: her closest allies are subverted, her body is twisted by poison that bends her toward madness, and her wife has been stolen.
The machines will devour the stars as they battle each other for the ultimate
14) After-Swarm
15) Scale-Bright
18) Upgraded
Cyborgs have been used to thrill, frighten, inspire, and educate us about just what it is to be human. Since the term was first coined in 1960—by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline—the science has finally caught up with the theory. There are cyborgs among us. Hugo Award-winning editor and cyborg, Neil Clarke has assembled here twenty-six of their stories as imagined by some of the best and brightest science fiction writers today. Among
...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 129 contains the following short stories, essays, reviews, and interviews.
EDITORIAL
Editorial by Jason