Vol. 16 / Issue 60 / Fall 2022
"Serpent Queen" by Akiko Work
Akiko Work studied oil painting in college and has since discovered a love for mixed media art and acrylics—"much more portable and quick drying." She currently works as a tattoo artist and is the owner of Angry Toad Tattoo in Billings, Montana.
Welcome News!
Candyce Byrne has joined our editorial team! Welcome to a wonderfully perceptive writer and editor!
I first met Candyce in the late 80’s at a lecture by Lou Aronica, who as an editor at Del Rey, publisher of “The Sword of Shannara,” (1977) said that with that novel, they were the first to recognize Fantasy as a genre for adult audiences separate from science fiction.
In that crowded auditorium, Candyce said she came from the same one-stoplight Texas town my family was moving to and her husband and mine would be working in the same small town clinic. The world can be amazing sometimes.
Please join me in welcoming Candyce to our pages!
Susan Shell Winston, editor
Dear Readers,
Many thanks to Scott and Susan for letting me explore the work of the extraordinary writers whose stories and poems fill this issue.
Susan, my oldest writing friend, is the one who told me I wasn’t writing mainstream but rather speculative fiction. She was right. I love splitting the skin, crushing bone, crawling up into the skull, and looking out into the ineffable—no wonder these stories picked me. There’s a little slipstream, some magic realism, a bouquet of other literary and folk traditions and some insightful nonfiction, all describing our travels through the World Tree in our one and only job of being human.
I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Candyce Byrne, Issue Editor
Background Image by Daniel Maldonado:
Section Images by Johannes Plenio:
Table of Contents
FICTION
"The Demon and the Broomstick" by Ali LaForce
Othniel, devourer of the damned, stepped through the cat flap into the predawn darkness of the back yard.
"Electric Tableau" by Gordon Sun
“
Stop saying that!” Narcissa chides. “What’s the point of optimizing human form and function if all you want to do is replicate scenes from nineteenth-century ballets?”
"This Last Island of Beauty" by Simon Kewin
She pounded the ingredients, murmuring the syllables of the spell, then took the bitter paste into her mouth. In moments, the lines of her broken hovel faded and she was back as she’d once been, Queen Syzygy of Greater Perland.
"Titanfall: Where Were You When the Giant Fell?" by Glenn Dungan
It wasn’t the impact that shocked me, it was the fallout. Buildings crushed under its weight, a giant femur crashing a bridge and slamming into the Eastern River. It was the dust clouds, Miss, the wave from the impact drowning everyone on the pier. Did you know that we still don’t know how heavy the skeleton is? It’s immovable. Where it rests now is where it fell ten years ago.
"The Ambassadors Visit the Final Fair" by Robert E. Harpold
The North American Mid-Atlantic Culture’s Final Fair comprised over a thousand booths spanning kilometers of beach in what once was the heart of Maryland.
"Spruce, Queen of Serpents" by M. M. De Voe
She could not see the forest floor in any direction—just the writhing of the snakes. Her subjects? Would she be able to command them one day? Or was Queen just an honorary title? In any event, she hoped it was not a title that was short-lived.
FLASH FICTION
"North of the Paranaiba" by Paul Iasevoli
"The Time-Traveling Healer" by Rachel Rodman
"Apocalypso" by Laura Sanchez
POETRY
"The Annual Witch Convention" by Ken Poyner
"The Unborn and the Dead" by Lorraine Schein
"The Surface of Last Scattering" by Maija Haavisto
"Cosmological Affections" by Richard Schiffman
"Cosmic Housekeeping" by Gretchen Tessmer
NONFICTION
“Music of the Future Past” by Peter Jekel
Told to the beat of music, these stories will not only be remembered but live into the future, perhaps the very futures they describe.
“The Sacred Path of the Ishir” by Mariana Escobar
The traditions of this tribe are a fountain of gold conserved almost totally. Much knowledge can and should be extracted from them before they too are influenced by mainstream Paraguayan society.