Readers
Rich Horton's Market Summaries:
Summary: Realms of Fantasy, 2005
Realms of Fantasy published some 225,000 words of fiction this year, rather more than they published last year. (Though as always I caution that word counting is difficult with Realms of Fantasy, given their proclivity to change font sizes, use lots of different borders and interior story quotes, and irregular illustrations.) There were 37 stories in all, 11 novelettes, 26 short stories, of which only one was a "short-short" by my definition.
It was an interesting year in that I thought issue-by-issue it was very solid, very consistent. There were a lot of pretty strong stories. The only problem is, there were no stories that really stood out for me, in the sense of being award candidates. Still, I was very impressed sheer quantity of really solid stories.
Author of the year was clearly Richard Parks. He had four stories, all good. The two longest, both novelettes of about 10,000 words, were my favorites: "Fox Tails" (June) and "Empty Places" (December). The first is a touching story of an investigator in historical Japan, helping an influential Lord search for his wife (a fox spirit) and their son. "Empty Places" is about a thief recruited by a wizard to help him invade the chambers of a young Queen -- but his purpose in so doing is rather unexpected. "The Penultimate Riddle" (August), a short story, was also very fine, about a man challenging the Sphinx with questions of his own, and for that matter his other short story, "Death, the Devil, and the Lady in White" (April) was strong work as well.
Liz Williams also had a strong year for the magazine, with three good short stories. I particularly liked "All Fish and Dracula" (February), about sinister happenings one Samhain night at a Goth Weekend, and "Mortegarde" (December), set in a very weird "world" on a "world tree", and featuring a skeptical scientist-type summoned to the world of Mortegarde to present his rational viewpoint.
Other good novelettes: Graham Edwards's "Dead Wolf in a Hat" (October), a romp about a PI, a femme all too fatale, and a werewolf; and Chris Lawson's "Countless Screaming Argonauts" (August), a clever story about the Kolossus of Rhodes, Polyphemus the Cyclops, and a rather incompetent Jason.
Other good short stories included Joe Murphy's "The Secret of Broken Tickers" (August), perhaps my favorite Realms story this year. This is about a weird family that seems partly mechanical, and what happens when the main character's older brother brings home a woman from college. Also: Michael Canfield's "Peas and Carrots" (February), a nice take on the "characters in a play come to life" idea; Theodora Goss's "A Statement in the Case" (August), about an immigrant apothecary and what happens when his new wife tries to change things; and Tim Pratt and Greg van Eekhout's "Robots and Falling Hearts" (October) (like the Murphy story, this one features robots and hearts!), a very curious piece about a plague of robots and the woman at the center of it.
And this leaves out mention of solid work by such significant writers as Tanith Lee, Gene Wolfe, and Jane Yolen, all of whom had very worthwhile stuff in the magazine this year.
