Vol. 17 / Issue 65 / Winter 2023
"Evolution" by Ron Sanders
December 2023.
This evening there will be a reading of Gilgamesh on the Rice Campus in Houston, Texas as they take down a replica of a mudhif, a Sumerian reed hall. When I told my family and friends about this the other night, only blank stares answered me. They had never heard of Gilgamesh.
Perhaps that is why I love reading the stories and myths sent into NewMyths from around the world. Learning of gods and heroes and legends and histories so many of us in the western hemisphere have never heard about before.
In this issue, we explore some of those past and future legends. In “Sisters” we descend with Inanna to visit her sister goddess in the Sumerian underworld. In “The Steel God” we go with a time traveler from the future to meet a village girl fishing in the pre-Mesopotamian lakes. And in Peter Jekel’s article. “Inherit the Earth,” we go just a little farther back in time to the Neanderthals, the first people to live in that cradle of civilization.
Returning half-way back to the present world, we meet the angel of death during the crusades, our traveling companion in every war.
Then, like the two-faced Roman god Janus, besides looking into the past, our readers can glance into the future too to see universes converging, androids waiting for humans to return to abandoned spacestations, or scientists creating android dinosaurs to watch over surviving herds of rhinos and flocks of birds. Our possibilities, as always, can be endless, so welcome once again to our pages!
Susan Shell Winston, editor
Call for Submissions: The Janus Gates
Besides looking back into the past and forward into the future, Janus was also the original gatekeeper, the first god to open the portal between gods and men, the god who guarded every new beginning and ending, every transformation, the god you prayed to every morning before you could speak to any other. A Roman peasant stepping through the Janus Gate in Rome in the spring was transformed into a soldier marching off to conquer the world. The Roman soldier stepping out of the Janus Gate in the fall became the peaceful farmer again.
Who better to inspire our next NewMyths anthology centering around portals, thresholds, transformations–the future and past worlds of our dreams and myths? Send in submissions to The Janus Gates during our two reading periods next year (January-February and June-July) to editor@newmyths.com.
And...
Speaking of new anthologies, we are working hard to get The Growers out in the fall of 2024. In anticipation of this tribute to growers everywhere and throughout the universe, be sure to read our second article by Peter Jekel in this issue about new research in–wait for it!–plant communication!
Background Image by Pixabay
Issue Header & Section Images by Ashley Foote
Table of Contents
FICTION
"The Steel God" by Mike Adamson
With a hand shading her eyes, she followed the streaking descent, and made out, in the last second or two before its great, spray-pluming impact, the distinct impression of a man.
A shining man. Stooping like a hawk, as he fell from heaven.
"The Lookout" by Dennis Kohler
She would spend most days in the station looking out into the void in the observation deck. There she’d sit for hours, inspecting the void, looking for what never came, looking for hope. As usual, hope had left for a better locale. She’d find despair. Despair, loneliness, and the void.
"Chasing the Whirlwind" by Wendy Nikel
"What color is the breeze today?" I ask Imogene, rolling down the window of the old Chevy I'd 'borrowed' from my uncle's junkyard after the fight.
Imogene leans out her window and breathes deeply, as if that'll help her see the wind's hues. "Orange. Part desert dust, part anticipation, singed at the edges from the heat. I think today's going to be the day we find it, Thea."
"Azriel's Wings" by Andrew Roberts
“
“What did you see?”
"A skinless face. A skull. But when I looked back, she was just an old woman.”
"Convergence" by Yang-Yang Wang
“The universes are converging."
“Thanks Martha,” I said, taking my morning newspaper from her outstretched hand. “Once again you’ve saved me the trouble of reading today’s headline.”
"Sisters" by Carol Holland March
Her sister’s cries haunted Queen Inanna, invading her days and banishing any thought of charity for the petitioners crowding her throne room. She gazed at the sea of faces with their open mouths and beseeching hands but heard only the wailing from below. Even here, in her sanctuary, Ereshka’s pain muffled the sound of human voices.
FLASH FICTION
"Behind the Brambles" by Megan Baffoe
"The Moonlight Eels" by Sam W. Pisciotta
"Buddy System" by Dan Micklethwaite
POETRY
"The Microscopic Moments (To Carry You Through Cryo") by Jason Burnham
"Countenance" by J. Anthony Hartley
"These Are Not Your Stories Anymore" by Jessica Cho
"What Cassandra Read" by Mary Soon Lee
"Replenishing Eden" by Gerri Leen
"Chicken Cosmology" by Richard Schiffman
NONFICTION
"Finding the Light" by Peter Jekel
The next time you cut your lawn, take a moment and smell the air and you will notice that distinctive odour of freshly cut grass. What if you were told that that smell could actually be a “scream” for help by a plant?...
New research is showing us that there is nothing ordinary about our relatively stationary fellow lifeforms, the plants. They are very intimate with their environment. The question now is whether or not they are aware.
“Inherit the Earth” by Peter Jekel
One of the most interesting branches of the human family tree is the one that includes modern humans (Homo sapiens) and the Neanderthals. They are on the same branch, but the controversy lies in how that branch is interconnected.