Fantasy Magazine, Issue 76 (February 2022) by Adamant Press

Author:Adamant Press [Adamant Press]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adamant Press
Published: 2022-01-26T22:31:25+00:00

Looking at your short fiction to-date, do you feel like there are themes or ideas that you tend to gravitate towards? Or does it vary greatly from piece to piece?

Christopher Caldwell: I’m fascinated by syncretism. I love seeing how different elements of culture combine and change over time, but I’m especially fascinated by syncretism when it occurs because one culture is suppressed or derogated and its practitioners continue on in secret—a good example of this is Voudon, where Saint Peter is used as a stand-in for Legba, or aspects of Erzulie are celebrated with the Virgin Mary—and this is a thing you will see come up time and time again, baked right into the dough of my worlds.

Another recurring motif is transformation. There’s a fantastic line from one of my favorite movies, Todo sobre mi madre, where the character Agrado—I’m paraphrasing here—says that one is more authentic the more one resembles what one has dreamed, and the idea of becoming your more authentic self, in the sense that Agrado means it, really undergirds a lot of my writing.

WC Dunlap: I tend to gravitate towards themes of social inequity, whether it’s about enslavement in an early American colony in “The Settlement” (PodCastle) or race relations and microaggressions during an Aves apocalypse in “Caw” (Nightmare Magazine). My intention is not to be didactic, but rather to process my own experiences. My stories are often a cathartic purge of fear and anger, and sometimes a healing reimagining of justice and restoration. I’d like to write more of the latter, and even when I’m working through anger I try to center hope.

I am also obsessed with the antihero, the unlikely savior who has been demonized and dehumanized but yet holds the keys to survival. I want to tell the stories of society’s outcasts. My protagonists are “heroes” that mainstream society would deem “unlikely.”

Jaymee Goh: I occasionally joke that the name of my first collection will be “Disappointing Children,” ‘disappointing’ as both adjective and as verb. I’m interested in family dynamics, particularly forced family dynamics where there are failed expectations on all sides.

Short fiction also serves as a playspace to test out worldbuilding concepts that I don’t have a larger story to fit into—there are some concepts which sound really cool but just don’t work in a larger novel because the overarching image is difficult to sustain (at least for me). Sometimes I also use short fiction to explore secondary worlds I am thinking of writing novels in, at least to see how it works on a smaller scale.

Tenea D. Johnson: My work varies, but stories about all manner of inequality, environmental catastrophe, and connection definitely reoccur.

At times, I just want to share wonder, and that happens too. I’ve said before and most likely will again that, like a lot of spec fic, many of my stories could be categorized as wish fulfillment. They just wish for justice.

Sam J. Miller: Super gay stuff. Rage and resistance. Monsters and violence and social justice. You know. The fun stuff.

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