Challenging Destiny is a Canadian science fiction and fantasy short story magazine published by Crystalline Sphere Publishing. We publish authors and illustrators from all over the world (so far including Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine). Number 25 is now available.

Challenging Destiny is an electronic magazine, and each issue is available exclusively from Fictionwise for a limited time. It used to be a print magazine, and copies of most back issues are still available.

Subscribers, reviewers, and contributors to issue 25: Please see these instructions on how to download your copy of issue 25.

Each issue typically contains six stories, an editorial, a review column, and an interview with a Canadian author. On the web page for each issue, you'll find sneak previews of the stories and illustrations. There are also quotations from reviews of each issue with links to the complete reviews. All of the interviews from the magazine are here, as are all of the reviews -- plus extra reviews written exclusively for the web site.

Our claims to fame:

• Four stories received honourable mentions from Gardner Dozois in The Year's Best Science Fiction:
  • "Benedice Te" from Number 18 and "Eye Teeth" from Number 22, both by Jay Lake
  • "Early Adopters" by L. Blunt Jackson, from Number 18
  • "Lonesome Cosmogonist" by Ian Creasey, from Number 20
• Two stories were chosen by Terri Windling and three by Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant as honourable mentions in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror:
  • "The Gemütlichkeit Escape" from Number 8, "Dora's Trunk" from Number 12, and "The Anabe Girls" from Number 22, all by A. R. Morlan
  • "Faller" by Will McIntosh, from Number 17
  • "Tickling the Siroko's Chin" by E. L. Chen, from Number 19
• One story was reprinted by Brian Youmans in The Best of the Rest 3: "Skullier Than the Average Bod" by Christopher East, from Number 13.
• Jay Lake, author of stories in Number 18, Number 21, and Number 22, won 2004's John W. Campbell Award for best new writer.
• Locus selected "Abigail & Chang" by Harvey Welles & Philip Raines, from Number 24, as one of the short stories on its recommended reading list for 2007.

If you're looking for links or a site map, they're on the Crystalline Sphere main page.

Our email address is csp@golden.net, and our mailing address is:

David M. Switzer, Editor
Challenging Destiny
RR #6
St. Marys, Ontario
Canada N4X 1C8

Last modified: February 18, 2008

Copyright © 1997-2008 by Crystalline Sphere Publishing