_Beneath Ceaseless Skies_ Online Magazine

20/02/2024

Live in BCS #400 Science-Fantasy Month 7: "The Rug-Maker and the Wonder Collector" by Emily McIntyre.

"The iris she was born with, a color I have only seen underground in the Great Temple of my people lavished in the storytelling murals, a color that has become my favorite since I met her. But also the black pupil—property of XCorp, almost human but not quite, recording every curly hair that falls over my face, every flutter of my breath, every tremble of my lips—taking away the privacy of the moment even as it occurs."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-rug-maker-and-the-wonder-collector/

15/02/2024

Now live on the BCS website: bonus stories from BCS #400 Science-Fantasy Month 7, by Emily McIntyre and Phoenix Alexander (a sequel to "Gennesaret" in BCS Science-Fantasy Month 4), plus a bonus podcast of the McIntyre read by Tina Connolly.

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/issues/issue-400/

14/02/2024

BCS #401, the second double-issue for BCS Science-Fantasy Month 7, ebook is out today at Weightless Books shop & Kindle Store and for subscribers, featuring science-fantasy stories by Natalia Theodoridou, A.T. Greenblatt, R.Z. Held, and Shanna Germain, behind cover art by Elias Stern.

A week earlier than the website, and the Greenblatt and Held stories two weeks early. Buy the ebook to read them now and support us.

https://weightlessbooks.com/fiction/beneath-ceaseless-skies-issue-401/
https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Ceaseless-Special-Double-Issue-Science-Fantasy-ebook/dp/B0CVF5MK8J/

13/02/2024

Live in BCS #400 Science-Fantasy Month 7: "The Sunset Suite" by Matthew O. Fromboluti.

"But not me. I do not stand. I will not cheer for this. This was not music. This was not truth. It is magic, an illusion, a trick meant to impress and fool. It is a novelty act, a trifle devoid of substance. It is Bao’s holographic projector, only with evil intent."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-sunset-suite/

12/02/2024

Supporters of BCS on Patreon just got a free early ebook of BCS #401, our second double-issue for BCS Science-Fantasy Month 7, featuring stories by Natalia Theodoridou, A.T. Greenblatt, R.Z. Held, Shanna Germain, ten days before they go live on the BCS website.

Want free early BCS ebooks and to help us pay our authors a pro rate and our First Readers an honorarium worthy of their work writing all replies personalized? Please support us! Thank you.

https://www.patreon.com/beneath_ceaseless_skies

09/02/2024

From the BCS Archives, with BCS Science-Fantasy Month 7:

"A Record of Our Meeting with the Grand Faerie Lord of Vast Space and Its Great Mysteries, Revised" by A.T. Greenblatt, in BCS #350 Science-Fantasy Month 6.

"I led Pilot Uma on the circuitous route through the spaceport that I had taken the morning Nina and I came upon the Grand Faerie Lord. [Addition: There were more direct routes. However, from reading my great grandmother’s records, I theorized that our search for the Faerie was based not so much on the location, but on the path one followed.] [Revision: I was correct.]"

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/a-record-of-our-meeting-with-the-grand-faerie-lord-of-vast-space-and-its-great-mysteries-revised/

08/02/2024

New Issue: BCS #400 the first double-issue for BCS Science-Fantasy Month 7, is out today!

Featuring stories by Elly Bangs, Matthew O. Fromboluti, next week Emily McIntyre, Phoenix Alexander (available in the ebook now); a podcast of the Bangs read by Summer Fletcher, and new science-fantasy cover art by Elias Stern.

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/issues/issue-400/

06/02/2024

Live in BCS #399: "The Angel Azrael and the Dead Man’s Hand," a new tale of the Angel Azrael by Peter Darbyshire.

"Only Azrael knew it wasn’t luck. He’d watched the game in the reflection of the bottles before he’d turned around, and he’d seen Nick palm a card in one hand and drop a card out of the sleeve of another. Nick was good at his tricks—at least good enough that none of the others had noticed. But Azrael was an angel and had seen all the tricks before."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-angel-azrael-and-the-dead-mans-hand/

02/02/2024

Congrats to the authors of the BCS stories named to Locus Magazine's 2023 Recommended Reading List! Myna Chang, Kel Coleman, Stephanie Malia Morris, Jonathan Louis Duckworth, .

You can read these great stories here:
https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/category/bcs-news/awards-and-accolades/

01/02/2024

Science-fantasy cover art for BCS Science-Fantasy Month 7, featuring Elly Bangs, Natalia Theodoridou, RZ Held, Phoenix Alexander, and much more, out in early-release ebook now and on the website in the coming weeks: "Relic" by Elias Stern.

Elias Stern is a self-taught freelance Austrian illustrator and 3D artist currently working in Vienna. He has worked professionally for print media, game and book illustration, advertising, television, VR and AR, and other areas, providing 2D and 3D artworks, assets and animations, as well as worked...

31/01/2024

BCS #400 (!!) Science-Fantasy Month 7 double-issue ebook is out early today Weightless Books & Kindle Store and for subscribers, featuring new science-fantasy stories by returning BCS authors Elly Bangs, Emily McIntyre, Phoenix Alexander and new one Matthew O. Fromboluti, behind science-fantasy cover art by Elias Stern.

https://weightlessbooks.com/fiction/beneath-ceaseless-skies-issue-400/
https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Ceaseless-Special-Double-Issue-Science-Fantasy-ebook/dp/B0CTFQTMJN/

29/01/2024

Please DON'T nominate BCS for Best Semiprozine Hugo. (We're eligible, but we recused two years ago.)

Consider our authors and their great stories, in BCS and elsewhere--listed at the link, along with what short fiction category each is in--and check out the Semiprozine category longlist for great other zines worthy of your reading and support.

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/2023/11/14/2024-awards-eligible-stories-from-bcs/

25/01/2024

New Issue: BCS #399 isout today, featuring stories of travel and overcoming by Peter Darbyshire (new Angel Azrael!) and Jonathan Louis Duckworth, and a From the BCS Archives story by Timothy Mudie, behind cover art by Michal Kváč.

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/issues/issue-399/

23/01/2024

It's music & food fortnight at BCS, in honor of the two stories in BCS #398 right now, by Linda Niehoff and R.E. Dukalsky.

"The Wind Shall Blow" by Gregory Norman Bossert, BCS #209 and Podcast BCS 183, read by Alasdair Stuart.

"The ballads took her that way, wherever they would, be they sad or glad. It was that blinding, unearthly intensity in her singing, her ability to sway thoughts and glances, that was the reason the townfolk looked sideways and crossed themselves or made the old warding signs. Part of the reason."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-wind-shall-blow/
https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/audio/bcs-183-the-wind-shall-blow/

22/01/2024

It's music & food fortnight at BCS, in honor of the two stories in BCS #398 right now, by Linda Niehoff and R.E. Dukalsky.

"Armistice Day" Marissa Lingen, BCS #117:

"The university kitchens would stay open for Armistice Day, but the menu would be special, so I was always up early, three hours before dawn, chopping and sorting, setting one thing to rise and another to simmer. In addition to my people's Armistice Day food, there were humans, even at the university, who would balk at eating anything out of the ordinary, anything with squash blossom in it or a hint of saffron or turmeric. That meant twice as much work for me and my line cooks."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/armistice-day/

19/01/2024

Music & food fortnight at BCS, in honor of the two stories in BCS #398 right now, by Linda Niehoff and R.E. Dukalsky, which feature characters connecting with each other and the beyond through food and music.

"Concerto for Winds and Resistance" by Cara Masten DiGirolamo, BCS #327:

"The piece was by a composer from Labadi. The trumpet had gone to the library to find out more about him, but all the books on Labadi were gone. The Dictator wanted the trumpet's home to not exist, to not ever have existed. Every rehearsal made the ache inside him hurt worse—the Labadin words in the margins, the little changes the conductor would make. She would bring in new pages, switching a part from one instrument to another, each time making it sound more like home."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/concerto-for-winds-and-resistance/

18/01/2024

Live in BCS #398 right now: "Willow Wood" by Linda Niehoff, a story of connecting to the beyond through music.

"The fiddle’s older than Granddad. Made of willow wood, graveyard wood. It’s old and scarred. Any shine it had is long gone. Dulled by rosin for the bow and countless fingers wearing it down. And it likes the night. Maybe because it sings like a sad woman’s voice. That’s what Granddad said. A fiddle is most like a voice. Most like a woman who calls out lonely, which is why it quivers so when the song gets all sad. A sound like that always causes a gathering."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/willow-wood/

18/01/2024

It's music & food fortnight at BCS, in honor of BCS #398, featuring stories of connecting to the beyond via music and food by Linda Niehoff and R.E. Dulasky.

"The Oracle and the Sea" by Megan Arkenberg, BCS #263.

"When she plays, it’s the old songs—not her heavy concertos but brisk two-fingered melodies, folk tunes and old hymns, the first songs her youngest students would master. Every month when the soldiers bring her supply of flour and milk, they also bring waterproofed parcels of manuscript paper and cool bricks of ink. She always refuses them."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-oracle-and-the-sea/

17/01/2024

BCS #399 ebook is out early today at Books & Kindle Store and for subscribers, featuring stories of travel and winning freedom by returning BCS authors Peter Darbyshire (new Angel Azrael) and Jonathan Louis Duckworth, behind cover art by Michal Kváč:

https://weightlessbooks.com/fiction/beneath-ceaseless-skies-issue-399/
https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Ceaseless-Skies-Issue-399-ebook/dp/B0CSFF999X/

17/01/2024

It's music & food fortnight at BCS, in honor BCS #398 and stories by Linda Niehoff and RE Dulasky.

"An Aria for the Bloodlords" Hannah Strom-Martin, BCS #242.

"The sound of her won me so completely that it took my brain a moment to detect her crime. Improvisation! Undeniably lovely—yet completely and utterly taboo! I’d already put my score past the censors. One did not go around altering approved notes—not unless one hoped to draw the Ministers."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/an-aria-for-the-bloodlords/

17/01/2024

It's music & food fortnight at BCS, in honor of BCS #398, featuring stories of connecting to the beyond via music and food by Linda Niehoff and R.E. Dulasky.

"Ten Fruits and Other Memories of Rialynas" by AnaMaria Curtis, BCS #353.

"When I recovered, I tried to peel a berenton myself. The skin of the fruit seemed to harden wherever my fingers landed, showed sharp scales everywhere I moved my thumb, made a bloody mess of my hand. When at last I wrestled the flesh out, it tasted of nothing at all. The flavor of a berenton is determined entirely by its surroundings. Alas, in Rialynas I came to find that I was the same."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/ten-fruits-and-other-memories-of-rialynas/

16/01/2024

Live right now in BCS #398: "Home Bread" by R.E. Dukalsky.

"Nachli filled her senses one last time with the vibrant colors and complex aromas of the living world, then pressed a fingerful of the bread spirit against her tongue and began the recitations. Soon she was balanced on the knife's edge between the worlds. The table itself seemed to stretch out into infinity; at some point, she discovered she was seated in the middle of a long road between two columns of diffuse light. If she concentrated on her memory of her body sitting at the feast instead of what her senses were currently telling her about the Famine Lands, she could feel hands resting on her shoulders as if through many thick layers of cloth. They were comforting but so distant."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/home-bread/

16/01/2024

It's music & food fortnight at BCS, in honor of BCS #398 and its stories of connecting to the beyond via music and food by Linda Niehoff and RE Dulasky.

"A Feast from Tile and Stone" by Ryan Eric Dull, BCS #317. (A life-size maze built of food, plus a murder mystery...)

"Two days ago, Gastel had walked through the floor plan of the Last Pudding with his sous chef, who was working architect and chief mason. There was a terrible friction, Gastel knew, any time you dragged something out of a dream and into mortal life. One felt terribly small, living for so long with a vision and finally settling for an earthbound knockoff."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/a-feast-from-tile-and-stone/

15/01/2024

It's music & food fortnight at BCS, in honor of the stories in BCS #398 right now, by Linda Niehoff and R.E. Dukalsky, which feature characters connecting with the beyond through food and music.
https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/issues/issue-398/

From the BCS Archives, another great fantasy story of connection through music:

"The Deepest Notes of the Harp and Drum" by Marissa Lingen, BCS #269.

"I killed my sister with my own two hands. I am not sorry for it; she lied and cheated and stole, and if it had not been her it would have been me. Blood does not mean only one thing, the same across all boundaries. For my sister it meant nothing until I spilled hers, warm and wet and surprisingly copious, up to my elbows in it. Though I loved her, I killed her; though I loved her, she did not love me."
https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-deepest-notes-of-the-harp-and-drum/

13/01/2024

It's music & food fortnight at BCS, in honor of the two stories in BCS #398 right now, by Linda Niehoff and R.E. Dukalsky, which feature characters connecting with each other and the beyond through food and music.

From the BCS Archives, another great fantasy story of connection through food:

"Five Fruits I Ate in Sandar Land" by Michael Haynes, BCS #153: "The man hesitates a moment, looking me over. I will eat the core if that is what he demands. I have come too far not to keep going; have yielded what little I was born with except my honor. If I stop now, I will retain nothing."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/five-fruits-i-ate-in-sandar-land/

12/01/2024

It's music & food fortnight at BCS, in honor of the two stories in BCS #398 right now, by Linda Niehoff and R.E. Dukalsky, which feature characters connecting with each other and the beyond through food and music. From the BCS Archives, another great fantasy story of connection through food:

"The War of Light and Shadow, in Five Dishes" by Siobhan Carroll, BCS #247 (a finalist for the 2019 Eugie Award).

"Leu wiped the plate clean—his eyes on the pot—and then, swiftly, like a bird plunging into water, scooped the egg free with a slotted spoon. From the spice pouch around his neck he took a pinch of Fera sea salt to bring out the flavor. (I always slow my hand as I lower the last flake of salt, to draw out the moment, to make the diners lean forward. When you recreate this dish, you must think how you wish to present your egg, what part of the war you wish this dish to tell.)"

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-war-of-light-and-shadow-in-five-dishes/

11/01/2024

New Issue: BCS #398 is out today, with stories of home and intersecting with the beyond through music or food by Linda Niehoff and R.E. Dukalsky, a podcast of the Niehoff read by M.K. Hobson, a From the BCS Archives story by Nghi Vo (also food and ghosts), behind cover art by Michal Kváč.

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/issues/issue-398/

05/01/2024

Reading for 2023?

Here's all BCS stories from 2023, what length category they're in, and info/links. Adventure fantasy, historical fantasy, dark fantasy; 33 Short Stories, 9 Novelettes, 2 Novellas. All moving stories of fascinating characters in rich settings. Thank you for reading BCS!

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/2023/11/14/2024-awards-eligible-stories-from-bcs/

05/01/2024

Live in BCS #397: "The Moult" by Christopher Rowe.

"Merton did not answer because Soliver's jibe had struck truer than he could know. The Moult attacked more than the body. Flightlessness was followed inevitably by madness and then total emptiness of the mind, if the disease was allowed to run its course. Most Kin afflicted as he was killed themselves long before that point though or were killed by others in pointless battles the madness caused the afflicted to seek out."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-moult/

04/01/2024

Live right now in BCS #397: "The Juggler of Red Walls" by Walter J. Wiese.

"The three stare at me—Hayrick, Handsy, and Ben whose name I wish I didn’t have to know. I want them to believe me, to see the possibility, to think about the smiling faces they’d seen while pestering the market-goers and stall-keepers, and how little their targets had been frightened. Sometimes young men like these Boys do listen. Sometimes all they need is to be shown a new direction. But this time, my best isn't enough."

https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-juggler-of-red-walls/