It’s week 3 for the Short Fiction Roundup here in 2021 and I am so happy that this week I’m kicking off the recommendations with stories from two magazines that have never been featured here before.

Constelación is a brand new bilingual speculative fiction magazine that will publish quarterly and all of it’s content will be published in both Spanish and English. Fusion Fragment started publishing last year and is on its fourth issue. I’m a big fan of the design and overall approach of this magazine. It’s a gorgeous presentation and has wonderful innovations such as key word tags for each story, and book recommendations from each author in the issue.

Stories from Flash Fiction Online, Escape Pod, and Tor.com round out the Round Up.

“The Badger’s Digestion; or The First First-Hand Description of Deneskan Beastcraft by an Aouwan Researcher” by Malka Older from Constelación Magazine #1

So I can’t lie. When deciding which story from Constelación to read first I looked over it’s content warning page¹A feature I think every magazine should employ. Some do. But all should. and I chose the one that had none. That’s the kind of story I wanted at that particular moment – something to get lost in without thorns to have to be wary of and that is exactly what I got! A lovely, fascinating story with an ending that snuck up and knocked me over with how perfect it was. The theme of this first issue of Constelación is “The bonds that unite us” and this story takes it that to a very literal extreme as it follows a researcher visiting a foreign country to learn more of their legendary Beasts: kaiju-like creatures that are created by a merging of a team of humans. Some of the people of Denesk join together to become large sea serpents to protect and manage it’s harbour, others make giant kestrels to deliver messages and some are huge badgers to meet the digging needs of construction and well-making. Along with the ending, that feels as eye-opening for me as a reader as it does for our protagonist, I particularly enjoyed what the story is getting at about community. I also loved the very real feeling and layered-with-nuance view the story gives of someone exploring and trying to understand a culture not their own, and how often it is the outsider’s own cultural baggage and assumptions that can cause barriers where none would otherwise exist. Altogether, a great story with a home run use of worldbuilding.