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Shimmer, Number 18 is here and with stories by Ben Peek, Rachel Marston, Ramsey Shehadeh, Christine Schirr, Ben Godby, Annalee Nevitz, Jeff VanderMeer, and Dustin Monk.

Shimmer Number 18, again I say, one of my favorite small press magazines. This issue is guest edited by Ann VanderMeer and she does a fine job with a very mixed lot of stories.

The fiction begins with "In the Broken City" by Ben Peek -+- Jeremy lives in the Broken City, a place where many broken people live. He had a perfectly normal leg removed and now feels better. He meets a nurse named Lila and they begin a relationship. But he finds out that no one else can see her and she can see no one else but him. Why? Jeremy does find out in this sad story about the broken.

"The Birth of the Atomic Age" by Rachel Marston -+- An settling look at what happens to a desert community near to where the atomic bomb is tested, perhaps meant to apply to our own time.

"Psychopomp" by Ramsey Shehadeh -+- Asgoroth is a psychpomp, formerly of Hell, who, after a failed revolt against Beelzebub, was taken in by an individual named Janikowski. Who or what Janikowski is is not clear but he is in competition with Beelzebub for claiming souls. Whatever Janikowski is, he is not nice and sends Asgoroth out to get the souls of two of his agents whom he had failed to retrieve after a massacre, Asgoroth is especially taken by one of them, a woman named Genevieve and acts accordingly. Interesting story, but I am still a bit unclear about the cosmology of the situation.

"Introduction: The Story of Anne Walden" by Christine Schirr -+- This is the story of the woman in the title and her psychiatrist, Dr. Kitty Bell. Dr. Bell is writing letter to her husband who has gone to the Philippines and will eventually abandon her. Anne Walden is woman who is descending into madness. Both are effectively portrayed i this story with a very light genre touch.

"Anuta Fragment's Private Eyes" by Ben Godby - Anuta Fragment is a very wide woman with very limited intelligence. She likes her job, being Head Cleaner for Next-Gen-Corp-Industries. The company she works for uses a huge machine she calls Boethius to wax and buff the floors of the office. But the President-Ceo, Mr. Tanner has other clean-up jobs for her, and she's pretty good at that, too. This was not supernatural but it was an excellent chiller.

"Unclaimed" by Annalee Newitz -+- Leslie Tom is a private eye looking for someone who wrote under the name J.J. Coal more than fifty years ago. Coal's Scorpion Diaries series, published between 1997 and 2004 have become immensely popular and were licensed, on behalf of the unknown author to become a multi-media empire. Tom connects J.J. Coal to a scientist named Justine Jacobsen-Coal and sets out to find her. What happens when she does make for a spectacular climax.

"Fragments from the Notes of Dead Mycologist" by Jeff VanderMeer -+- This is a series of brief notes written by (one assumes) a biologist studying fungi in a graveyard. His thoughts get stranger and more unsettling until the inevitable conclusion.

The issue concludes with "The Street of the Green Elephant" by Dustin Monk -+- Our narrator is Auw, who lives in the Shining City where her father sells tea for tea-dreaming on the back of Miss Pthik-da's Baubles shop. Tea-dreaming is illegal as it is part of the magic of the Pbenyo people, suppressed by the ruling Sotiriraj, who believe in science. Auw's mother who died of plague was Pbenyo and her father is Sitiriraj which makes her a half-breed, something people can see. The Pbenyo are growing stronger and fighting against the anti-magic laws and the death tax, heavy fees levied when a Pbenyo dies. Things come to a breaking point as the Pbenyo revolt and disaster comes to the Shining City. This was a fine fantasy that told us all we needed to know to enjoy it in just 20 pages.

Shimmer has stories that defy brief description, so I have done my best. The important thing is that they are all worth reading and supporting. Subscribe!