The 2017 stories from Shimmer Magazine, collected in one beautiful book. Cover art by Sandro Castelli.
Contents Hic Sunt Leones / L.M. Davenport Shadow Man, Sack Man, Half Dark, Half Light (The Half Dark #2) / Malon Edwards Trees Struck by Lightning Burning from the Inside Out / Emily Lundgren Your Mama's Adventures in Parenting / Mary Robinette Kowal Birds on an Island / Charlie Bookout The Cold, Lonely Waters / Aimee Ogden Extinctions / Lina Rather And in That Sheltered Sea, a Colossus (Titan and Serpent #2) / Michael Matheson Fallow / Ashley Blooms Feathers and Void / Charles Payseur We Lilies of the Valley / Sonja Natasha Dandelion / John M. Shade Salamander Six-Guns / Martin Cahill Itself at the Heart of Things / Andrea Corbin Maps of Infinity / Heather Morris The Moon, the Sun, and the Truth / Victoria Sandbrook The Creeping Influences / Sonya Taaffe En la Casa de Fantasmas / Brian Holguin Fixer, Worker, Singer / Natalia Theodoridou Hare's Breath / Maria Haskins Boneset / Lucia Iglesias The Atomic Hallows and the Body of Science / Octavia Cade Raise-the-Dead Cobbler / Andrea Corbin The Weight of Sentience / Naru Dames Sundar
E. Catherine Tobler has written an awful lot of things. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Sturgeon Memorial Award, the Nebula Award, the Utopia Award. Her work on Shimmer Magazine was nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
If four short stories a month is like tasting a good wine, then an anthology like this gets you drunk. You can really get the feel of a speculative fiction market by reading the stories published in a year all at once. There is always an element or a certain mood that repeats, but because of the variety of voices and topics in the stories presented, it is hard to put your finger on the constant when reading the monthly issues. Annual anthologies makes this easier. The overall somber mood of this anthology is balanced by the diversity of characters, environments, and narrative voice in the stories. There is something here for every taste. All the stories have something to say. Some whisper and some say it loud, but none are quiet. That's what matters.
Another great annual collection from Shimmer, though admittedly I say that with bias as one of the stories in here is mine ("The Atomic Hallows and the Body of Science"). Shimmer has a very distinct aesthetic, sort of gloomy and sad and lovely, and the stories here live up to that, though I did feel this volume had a little less horror and a little more sorrow in it overall than the 2018 volume I previously read. Still there are some fantastic stories in here... I think my favourites are "The Cold, Lonely Waters" by Aimee Ogden, "Extinctions" by Lina Rather, "Dandelion" by John Shade, "Salamander Six-Guns" by Martin Cahill, "Hare's Breath" by Maria Haskins, and "The Weight of Sentience" by Naru Dames Sundar. Lovely work, all of it, and I think it just edges out the 2018 collection for me.