2015 Hugo Semi Pro Zine

My notes and rankings for the Best Semi Pro Zine category of the 2015 Hugo Awards.

I’d just about given up on on the Hugo packet because of all the Puppy Shit.  Eventually I tried a few and was shocked to find a bunch of good stories. Still, I’m not a huge fan of short stories and I’m kind of burnt out. The first three below were all good but I’m not sure I can rank them. Read a story or two in ASIM and it was good as well. The thing is, while I think this was the category with the best fiction this year it’s also the hardest to rank because I’d have to go through and rank a bunch of individual stories and I really don’t feel up to it.  Writing this is kind of making me want to do it though.  I wish there was a way to indicate that this category had better fiction than anything else in this year’s crop.

  • Beneath Ceaseless Skies
    Enjoyed the first story, really enjoyed the second story, the third and fourth were okay.
  • Abyss and Apex
    Good stories all around. Poetry isn’t my thing but I did like the shape poem.
  • Lightspeed Magazine
    The SF and Fantasy stories were all good but I didn’t realize how long the magazine is. I’m not up for a novella so I’m moving on to ASIM and we’ll see how far I get there. I’m really tired of short fiction.
  • Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine (ASIM)
    Ugh, not because it’s bad (I suspect it’s not) but because there’s a lot of it and I’m kind of burnt out and I don’t generally care for short fiction because it’s so hit-or-miss. A good short story is a wonderful thing to find but there are so many that aren’t. Consequently I tend to avoid anthologies and what not.
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