Beneath Ceaseless Skies 421
Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a magazine dedicated to publishing what they describe as "literary adventure fantasy". It's a magazine I've been aware of for many years but have never properly dipped into for some reason. While I've always considered myself a fantasy reader my love of it has dropped off over the past year or so (as evidenced, I think, by this blog) and my tastes have started to swing much more in the direction of literary fiction, so I went into this hoping that it would scratch a very specific itch for me.
The first surprise was that the issue only contains two stories. I've grown used to much bigger issues, and honestly this was sort of refreshing. Back when I read Clarkesworld religiously they only published two stories per month - one from the slush pile and one commissioned - and I always respected that committment to wuality over quantity. That's not to say that magazines that publish more than two stories a month aren't committed to publishing quality work, obviously, but when you only buy 24 stories a year you really are targeting the absolute best of the best, very aggressively. (Edit: After writing this I went to look at back issues and realised that BCS publishes fortnightly, so that's actually 52 stories a year. I should probably rewrite or cut this paragraph, but it's my blog and it's 2:30am and I simply don't want to).
So I went into this hopeful, and while I wasn't wowed I certainly wasn't disappointed. The two stories here - 'The Vessels of Song' by Avram Klein and 'Speaking The Sun' by Thomas Bales - are both very good, and I enjoyed my time with them. 'The Vessels of Song' in particular started out really strongly for me. I became less enamoured of it once it devolved into a large fight scene after building so beautifully - not because I dislike fight scenes but because the writing there felt much less literary than the prose that had preceded it, and I came to the magazine for literary fantasy.
The second story, 'Speaking The Sun', has had an interesting effect for me. Upon first reading it I thought that I'd liked it but not quite as much as 'The Vessels of Song'. Now, though, thinking back on it I find that it's stayed with me much more than the first story. I've been trying to think of what I would actually want from "literary adventure fantasy" - how do you blend the conventions of two very different genres? - and I think this is the story out of the two in this issue that hits closest for me. The fantasy element is very much there - the main character has to sit up speaking all night, or else the sun won't rise in the morning - but the focus is very much on the quiet moments, his internal life, the ambiguity of a relationship we aren't give full access to. Contrasted with the action of 'The Vessels of Song', this is definitely the story that feels the most "literary" to me.
I enjoyed this, and I'm definitely going to dig into BCS' back issues as and when I get the chance to. I expect that the list of magazines I'm pulling from for these "magazine of the month" posts will shrink over time as I find that some venues aren't to my tastes, but Beneath Ceaseless Skies is definitely going to stay in my rotation.