Allan Smulling

I felt this was a pretty strong issue. I'm here for the SF/F and for the most part the stories were excellent. Of particular note was Adam-Troy Castro's The Moving Finger and Effie Seiberg's Bots All the Way Down.

Looking forward to the February 2026 issue.

It's the 'feel good' book of the ages.

I read this in college over 30 years ago. I have to admit that I didn't remember much about it and thought that maybe it was time to revisit this classic. Now that I've reached the end of the story, I wonder if I actually finished the book when I was in school! I was always kind of a nervous, conscientious student so not having completed the book would have been really out of character for me -- but damn(!), I didn't remember most if not all of the story. Yikes!

Anyway... very depressing. No one's happy. Everyone is ill in oh, so many ways and many characters threaten to throw themselves into the river. And, thinking upon it -- I can't blame them.

This is a re-read from when I was a kid in high school. I didn't remember it all that well, and really didn't have the intention of reading it again (at least night right now) until I discovered from speaking to my son that another author that I enjoy, Michael Shea, had written a sequel to this story titled "Fat Face". He really enjoyed that story so I figured I'd refresh my memory of At the Mountains of Madness and continue on to Fat Face.

I'm happy that I re-read AtMoM because it became clear to me after a chapter that either my memory is toast, or that I didn't pay much attention when reading it as a kid. (The jury is still on on which.) Either way, the re-read was well worth the time. The story's similarity to the movie "The Thing" was striking. I understand that credit for that goes to Campbell's novella Who Goes There? but the similarity with this story made an impression on me.

It has been a while since I've picked up an Occult Detective Magazine so it was a pleasant time getting reacquainted with this publication. There was quite a variety of stories with several that I felt were outstanding (and well worth the price of admission). Of note: "A Strange Case of Something Familiar" by Dave Jeffery, "Twilight Komorebi" by Brandon Barrows, "Nobody Man" by Thomas Hunt and "The Boleskine House Affair" by Jude Reid. As an added bonus, "The Land of Lonesomeness" by Sam Gafford has been republished -- and was, for me, the cherry on top of the sundae.

John Walker, an average family man is shot in the head during a mass shooting at a mall. While in a six-month long coma he dreams of a different life in which his family was killed in the incident, and he survived.

Upon waking, John has trouble determining which ‘life’ is more real and works with a therapist to become more grounded. The problem is John has already lost and grieved for his family during those six months. To him, they’ve already died. What motivates him now is revenge.

I found this to be a very fast and disturbingly entertaining story with a Philip K. Dick vibe. I particularly enjoyed the epistolary type of storytelling using the therapist’s patient notes as the story unfolds. The writing is tight and would make an excellent comic/movie. The story packs a satisfying punch in very few pages.