Welcome to Apex Magazine Issue 41. Summer is turning into autumn, and in this issue, we look at transformations. Cecil Castellucci’s “Always the Same. Till it is Not” challenges our assumptions about the thought processes of zombies.

Welcome to Issue 40 of Apex Magazine. This month, we have some splendid new fiction. Adam-Troy Castro provides a challenging moral twist on the first contact story in “During the Pause.”

Welcome to Issue 39 of Apex Magazine. Since last we met, Hugo Award voting has closed, and our fate has been decided. We await the decision of the Hugo voting community with great anticipation, and remain honored to be among such a distinguished group of fellow nominees.

Welcome to issue 38. It is my great pleasure to bring you some stunning fiction this month.

In this issue, I’m sharing an eclectic group of works that took my breath away when I read them. Brit Mandelo writes of anger, domestic abuse, and retribution in “Winter Scheming.” Ian Nichols’s “In the Dark,” is a frightening tale of all-consuming darkness from a Welsh mine.

In this issue, things fall apart: Relationships, societies, religious systems. Dreams and hopes, bodies and minds all pay the price for the choices we make to try to get ahead.

One of my goals for Apex Magazine is to showcase more SF/F/H from outside the United States. This special issue, focused on international or “World” SF, is another step in that direction.

This month’s fiction emphasizes the tensions inherent in contradiction: dark and light, speech and silence, good and evil, earth and sky. Richard Bowes sketches a wedding between contemporary minions of Heaven and Hell in order to save humanity in this timestream.

This issue will get under your skin. I didn’t set out to produce a themed issue, but with two stories featuring tattoos as a central motif, the urge to pair them together was overwhelming, and I succumbed.