Late in 2024, I started supplementing my regular magazine reviews with Magazine Minis, where I dip into a magazine issue for two or three stories instead of reading it in full. I’ve found some real gems that way, and I’m back at it in 2025.
This month, I’ll be looking at four magazines that are a bit under the radar in genre fiction. While one has its fair share of accolades as a publication, none of the four have ever had a story shortlisted for a Hugo Award. And it’s not for lack of quality—all four have published and continue to publish some excellent fiction. So this month, let’s take a look at Mysterion, Metaphorosis, FIYAH, and Kaleidotrope.
Mysterion
Mysterion is a speculative magazine with a religious audience, focusing on stories with Christian themes or cosmology. But there’s a fair bit of variance among the individual stories as to whether they’re written explicitly for a religious audience or whether they’re stories with broader aims that nevertheless include angels or wrestle with religious themes. For instance, “The Patron Saint of Flatliners,” one of my favorite stories of 2024, was emphatically one of the latter.
Mysterion publishes just one story each month, so I cannot pick multiple stories from a single issue and will instead be reviewing three 2024-published stories that I read this month (I reviewed “The Patron Saint of Flatliners” many months ago and will not repeat it, but my recommendation still stands).
The first I’ll discuss today is one of those that feels written for a narrow audience. Irrationality by Stephen Case has a plenty intriguing hook—a suspiciously lengthy string of zeros has been found deep in decimal expansion of pi—but what follows feels more like a philosophical thought experiment than anything else. In fact, I’ve seen almost identical thought experiments, in which what appear to be coded messages from the Old Testament God appear in natural phenomena, discussed in Intro to Philosophy classes. In “Irrationality,” a religious mathematician reckons with whether this strange phenomenon constitutes irrefutable proof of the reality of his faith, or whether his belief rests on something different. It’s undoubtedly a thoughtful, philosophical story, but likely one of interest mostly to a religious audience.
In contrast, In (Future) Memory of an Absent Father by A.W. Prihandita should appeal to a broader group of genre fans. After reading and enjoying Prihandita’s work previously in Clarkesworld and khōréō, I was excited to give this one a try, and I was not disappointed. It tells three stories, one of a family trying to hide markers of their minority religion in the face of widespread persecution, one of a teenager trying to determine whether his anticipated magical talents will manifest in special abilities related to the past, present, or future, and one of he and his mother reckoning with a pair of absent fathers. It all comes together wonderfully to deliver some touching family moments in the midst of difficult situations, all inextricably entwined with each person’s given magics.
Changeling Child by Miranda Miller tells the story of a changeling with no innate instinct for mayhem and no instruction from capricious parents who abandoned him to the world of humanity. And so he tries to carve out a life in a world that mistrusts him. He gets a job. He joins a church. It’s a quiet story, meditating on belonging and meaning through the eyes of a curious child seeking to understand why this strange fairy lives as he does.
Metaphorosis
Metaphorosis is a quarterly magazine focusing on “beautifully made speculative fiction,” and there were a couple stories that jumped out to me in their October to December 2024 issue. Core by Damien Krsteski digs into the very early days of a technology designed to alter unwanted psychological patterns, as a tester of AI therapists reckons with the implications of the developing technology, particularly against the backdrop of an uncomfortable relationship with judgmental family members. A bit heavy-handed at times, but it’s always fun to see sci-fi set before the widespread adoption of game-changing technology.
This is My City and I Am Her Song by Suzanne J. Willis, is a fantasy tale in which the lead tries to keep ahead of the powerful Siren seeking her. This one features a bit of a tradeoff between plot and atmosphere, as the lead’s ignorance about the Siren’s aims inhibits the building of plot-related tension—like the lead, the reader simply doesn’t know what to hope for—but helps create a mysterious and magical atmosphere where anything seems possible.
FIYAH
FIYAH, a magazine for Black speculative fiction, is probably the best-known of the four in this review, and their “Spacefaring Aunties” issue has received a lot of love from genre reviewers. Two of the most acclaimed stories immediately jumped out at me, starting with Fuck Them Kids by Tatiana Obey. It stars a pilot in her 30s who is extremely tired of being asked when she’s going to settle down and start a family. And dealing with her nieces and nephews at family gatherings certainly doesn’t spark baby fever. But when her oldest niece stows aboard her ship, she can’t afford to interrupt her plans to make an extra trip back home, leading to a thrilling, high-stakes adventure. This one is paced a notch or two fast for my taste, and I had some trouble suspending disbelief, but it sure is a whole lot of fun. That fun is what caught the attention of the two reviewers I’d seen recommend this one, and it’s easy to see why.
The Carcosa Pattern by Conrad Loyer, on the other hand, is tense and atmospheric, as an expert on the psychology of long-term cryosleep happens upon a ship thought to be lost long, long ago. But the ethical requirement to intervene risks drawing her into their collective nightmare. A gripping blend of sci-fi and horror.
Kaleidotrope
I love missing memory stories so much that I organized an entire book club session around the theme, so it’s no surprise that (Redacted) by Tara Calaby immediately stood out from the rest of Kaleidotrope’s Winter 2025 issue. It opens with a seven year-old who—unbeknownst to her—loses three weeks of memory without explanation. With this unexplained background onboard, the story jumps a couple decades to her fighting depression in the midst of her second pregnancy and going back through old diaries to look for similar experiences. As the reader is primed to expect, what she finds is far more than she remembers. This is a short piece, but it delivers a real punch, sharp and complex.
Once, Now, Always by Ire Coburn also features a lead returning to a mysterious event from years past. In this case, a mother’s poor health sends the lead back to her childhood home and the strange and unnatural light that no one else can see. The story expertly builds the tension, pitting the lead’s love of her mother and hard-earned coping mechanisms against a fear of the unknown and increasingly severe nightmares, opening into a story featuring no faceless monster but instead something much more personal.
January Favorites
- (Redacted) by Tara Calaby (short story, Kaleidotrope)
- In (Future) Memory of an Absent Father by A.W. Prihandita (short story, Mysterion)