Descended from Darkness: Vol II Read online

  James Lafond Sutter is the Fiction Editor for Paizo Publishing, publisher of Pathfinder and Planet Stories. His short fiction has appeared in such venues as Catastrophia (PS Publishing), Machine of Death, and Aberrant Dreams, and his forthcoming anthology, Before They Were Giants, pairs the first published short stories of speculative fiction greats from Ben Bova and Larry Niven to China Miéville and William Gibson with anecdotes and instructional critiques by the authors themselves. In addition to fiction, he has published dozens of role-playing game products and over a hundred journalistic articles. He lives in a crooked house in Seattle with seven to twelve roommates, and more information on his fiction, game design and hardcore metal band can be found at www.jameslsutter.com.

  Genevieve Valentine's fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Fantasy, Federations, and more. She is a columnist at Tor.com and Fantasy Magazine. Her first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, is forthcoming in 2011.

  Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks on her blog glvalentine.livejournal.com.

  James F. Reilly's writings have appeared in several magazines, including Horror Garage, Apex Digest, City Slab, and Tales of World War Z, as well as the anthologies Gratia Placenti, Undead, Read by Dawn Vol.1, Vermin, and the upcoming Dark Futures from Dark Quest Books. James currently lives in Massachusetts, where he divides his time between feather-dusting his collection of Mandrill skulls and participating in Boer War reenactments. James has a wife and son. Pray for them.

  Reilly also runs the popular Horrorview.com website.

  Tobias Amadon Bengelsdorf's first story collection, An Implausibility of Gnus, was published in 2009 by Another New Calligraphy. His fiction has appeared in elimae, Pure Francis, and as a FeatherProof Minibook. He is the editor of Fiction at Work, and the Quickies! Mascot. He lives in Chicago.

  J.M. McDermott's Last Dragon, his first novel, was shortlisted for a Crawford Prize, and was #6 on Amazon.com's Year's Best SF/F of 2008. It's currently available from Apex Book Publishing as an inexpensive eBook. By day, he is a game writer for an unannounced XBox 360 title from Xaviant Software, north of Atlanta. Visit J.M.'s blog: jmmcdermott.blogspot.com

  Mary Robinette Kowal is the 2008 recipient of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Cosmos, and Asimov's. Mary, a professional puppeteer and voice actor, lives in Portland, OR with her husband Rob and eight manual typewriters. In 2009, her story "Evil Robot Monkey" earned a Hugo Award nomination.

  She has performed for LazyTown (CBS), the Center for Puppetry Arts, Jim Henson Pictures and founded Other Hand Productions. Her design work has garnered two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence, the highest award an American puppeteer can achieve.

  Seanan McGuire was born and largely raised in Northern California, which explains her love of rattlesnakes and deep fear of weather. (California doesn't have weather. California has climate.) Seanan is often described as a vortex of the surreal, and many of her personal anecdotes end with things like "and then we got the anti-venom" or "but it's okay, because it turned out the water wasn't all that deep."

  Seanan's first novel, Rosemary and Rue, was published by DAW Books in 2009. The sequel, A Local Habitation, followed in 2010, with three more already on the way. Because this wasn't time-consuming enough, Seanan also decided to masquerade as her own evil twin, Mira Grant, author of the Newsflesh Trilogy (published by Orbit/Orbit UK). Mira's first book, Feed, will be coming out in May 2010. Neither Seanan nor Mira sleeps much.

  Mark Henry traded a career in the helping profession to scar minds with his short stories and novels. He blames his crazy ideas on premature exposure to horror movies, and/or witnessing adult cocktail parties in the '70s. But surviving earthquakes, typhoons, and two volcanic eruptions might have had something to do with his nihilist fantasies. Despite being disaster prone, he somehow continues to live and breathe, residing in the oft maligned, yet not nearly as soggy as you'd think, Pacific Northwest, with his wife and four furry monsters that think they're children and have a complete and utter disregard for carpet.

  When not twittering or wasting time on Facebook, Mark somehow conjures up irreverent urban fantasy comedy about zombies who swig cocktails and vampires in bullet bras who drag race. He also writes young adult fantasy about Purgatory's angsty teen ghosts under the pseudonym Daniel Marks.

  Paul Jessup is a critically acclaimed writer of fantastical fiction. He's been published in many magazines, both offline and on, with two books published in 2009 (short novel Open Your Eyes and the short story collection Glass Coffin Girls) and a third to come out in 2010 (the illustrated book Werewolves). You can contact Paul Jessup via email at [email protected]

  Jerry Gordon is leading at least one life too many. As a full-time author, grad student, web programmer, and editor, he lacks the time to write a witty bio, but assures you that if you keep drinking, he'll get funnier. In addition to co-editing Dark Faith and Last Rites, he's published stories with Apex Magazine, Indie Review, and the Midnight Diner. He recently finished his first novel, Severed Dreams, and can be found blurring genre lines at www.jerrygordon.net.

  Holly Hight majored in Criminology and Political Science, working in government before deciding to quit her job and write full-time. She got her start writing nonfiction in 2008 and has since sold stories to Running Times, Competitor Northwest, Cosmos Magazine, and Analog. She lives in Oregon with her husband and son.

  Naomi Libicki grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to Israel at age 16, where she still lives with her husband, son, garden, and approximately 2000 books. She makes a mean apple strudel.

  Peter Atwood is a writer and editor who lives and works in Ottawa, Canada, where he once grew up and to where he returned after living in Toronto, Seoul, and Cairo. He is an alumni of the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Workshop, and his story "All In" (Weird Tales, 2008) was nominated for an Aurora (Canada's SF awards).

  Terra LeMay was born on top of a volcano (in Hawaii) and since then has crammed a lot of unusual experiences into a relatively short number of years. She tamed a wild mustang before she turned sixteen. Before twenty-five, she traveled throughout the U.S. and to parts of Europe and Mexico. She has also held some unusual jobs, like training llamas and modeling high-heeled shoes (though not at the same time!) At her current day job she pokes holes in people for a small fee, in a tattoo studio north of Atlanta.

  "Shrödinger's Pussy" is her first published short story. You can find her online at www.terralemay.com.

  Jason B. Sizemore is best known as the Editor-in-Chief of Apex Publications. A small press begun in 2005 with the first issue of Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, Apex Publishing now puts out approximately twelve books per year from award-winning authors and both established and new voices in the speculative fiction genre.

  As a quarterly print magazine, Apex Digest earned critical acclaim and positive reviews over the course of three years and twelve issues. With the move to digital in 2008, Apex Magazine was able to raise its author pay rates to SFWA professional level, allowing it to be declared a SFWA qualifying market in July 2009. By then, the magazine was only one small part of the Apex Publishing oeuvre. The book division of Apex allowed Sizemore to feature longer collections from rising stars within the genre such as Black Quill Award winner and Bram Stoker Award nominee Fran Friel, reader favorite Lavie Tidhar, and multiple Hugo Award nominee Michael A. Burstein. A series of novellas and anthologies from Apex have also earned critical and fan acclaim, including a recent Publisher's Weekly starred review for Gene O'Neill's Taste of the Tenderloin.

  Acknowledgments

  Jason and Gill would like to thank the following people for all the hard work and dedication that make such a thing as Descended From Darkness: Vol II and Apex Magazine possible: Deb Taber, Jennifer Brozek, Mari Adkins, Catherynne M. Valente, Ferrett Steinmetz, George Galuschak, Patrick Tomlinson, Zakarya Anwar, Lillian Cohen-Moore, Sarah Olson, Laura Jones, Justi
n Stewart, Tommy Delk, Katherine Khorey, Deanna Knippling, Sarah Peduzzi, Samantha Hendrix, and Maggie Jamison.

  We'd like to make a call out to the following Apex Magazine subscribers: Kathryn Viswanathan, Robert Fleck, Brandy Betz, Sara Larson, Jamie Rubin, Lydia Ondrusek, Mike Dominic, Brenton Tomlinson, Inga Gorslar, Nicholas Demarino, Aliette de Bodard, Michele Lee, Dennis Johnson, Jeffrey Spock, Andrea Boyd, Stacy Johnson, Dwayne Taylor, Sandra Niehaus, Laura Petersen, Robby Sparks, Paul Cooley, Jason Sanford, Lydia Ondrusek, Elizabeth Donald, Deanne Fountaine, Ron Dickie, Shelby Rhodes, Mary Spila, James Stitzel, Jaelith Ingold, Jennifer Garska, Sean Robson, Jennifer Brozek, Peter M. Ball, Patti Lemole, MG Ellington, Justin James, Elaine Blose, Brad Chacos, Ken Wood, Sarah Davies, Michelle Hammond, Stephen Fritter, Jason Brock, Karen Anderson, Monica Valentinelli, Larry Caldwell, Gary A. Braunbeck, Allison Bocksrucker, Phil Haddok, Jakob Drud, Anthony Boonstra, Ezra Eisenberg, David Brown, Richard Sorden, Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert, Adam Blomquist, Daniel Powell, Michael Beck, Robert Torres Miller, Hélène Pedot, Mary Clarfeld, Cheryl A. Gilbert, Amy Levy, Andrea Floegal, Joan Ratcliffe, J.M. McDermott, Preston Dubose, Deanna Knippling, Jennifer Day, Saira Ali, Stephanie Folse, John Marshall, Mark Beadles, Richard Gropp, Lynda Morehouse, Edy Prayitno, Albert Fink, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Fritz Bogott, Andy Best, Jason Feltham, Janet Harriett, Catherine Mahan, Sara Siegmann, Rebecca Rushforth, Tanya Washburn, Jessica Gillece, Gini Judd, Shawna Jacques, Michael Godwin, James Decker, Chris Taylor, Dan Campbell, Ana Christina Alves, Stephanie Coxon, Ronya McCool, Erin Kissane, Douglas Hulick, Sharon November, Brian King, and Zuzana Ubanek . Thank you.

  And we extend a special thanks to Chris Einhaus, Monica Valentinelli, Maurice Broaddus, Alethea Kontis, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jerry L. Gordon, M.G. Ellington, Elaine Blose, and Lavie Tidhar.

  Table of Contents

  She Called Me Sweetie

  ...That Has Such People in It

  Pimp My Airship

  Kenny 149

  Advert ising at the End of the World

  Fungal Gardens

  Ghost Technology from the Sun

  A Poor Man’s Roses

  To Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s Lament

  Benja min Schneider’s Little Greys

  After the Fire

  Overclocking

  59 Beads

  Wondrous Days

  White Christmas

  The Lady or the Tiger

  p.a. chic

  Beyond the Garden Close

  The Bride Replete

  D ying with Her Cheer Pants On

  Seafoam

  The Last Stand of the Ant Maker

  City of Refuge

  Sol Asleep

  Laika’s Dream

  Artifact

  Shrödinger’s Pussy

  Bios

  Acknowledgments