Vol. 18 / Issue 66 / Spring 2024
"The Lost City" by Brad Fraunfelter
"'The Lost City' was inspired while I was hiking one morning in the mountains near Glendale, CA. I had just climbed above the fog layer and witnessed the sun rising above a “sea” of fog. Here in “The Lost City,” a dragon rider emerges from a jungle overlook and witnesses an ancient city just rising through the fog bank."
See more of Brad Fraunfelter's art at http://www.bfillustration.com/
Dear Readers,
The other day I had the privilege of touring Rancho del Cielo, Ronald Reagan’s ranch retreat on the mountains above Santa Barbara. Inside the workshop where Reagan spent much of his free time, among many photos of world leaders and a riding lawnmower bearing the presidential seal, hung a rather unusual poster. Stylized as a Gone With The Wind alternate reality, the faux movie poster depicts President Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher embracing in the foreground with a nuclear explosion in the background.
The story is that a socialist organization in Europe created the poster and sent it to President Reagan, thinking he would be terribly insulted. Instead, he thought it so funny he framed it and hung it in his shop. When Prime Minister Thatcher visited, she also thought the poster hilarious and asked for a copy, which she hung in her home.
Besides the entertainment value of the poster, it reminded me of a time when people could disagree without hating one another; when satire was valued and humor (generally) used to make a point rather than to wound; when people seemed better equipped to laugh at themselves; and yes, when politicians, at least superficially, had class.
I would be interested in hearing your views on why things have changed and how things might continue changing in the future. Will AI increase or decrease our divisions? Our willingness to laugh at ourselves?
Bringing things back to NewMyths, I love the alternate history concept of the poster. I wish I could now vaunt that Issue 66 features several alternate histories, including one with Maggie T on a Rambo-style mission to another galaxy, but my visit to Rancho del Cielo and the slush pile did not synchronize that neatly. Instead, we have tremendous tales of scaling methane-covered mountains on Titan (“Cronos”), a caretaker facing a horror from Irish mythology on lonely Klattercup Island ("End of Season on Lesser Klattercup Island"), colonists on Mars (“Brushing Sand”), and much more.
I wish you happy reading.
Scott T. Barnes,
Editor and Founder
Table of Contents
FICTION
Kristen’s mother had always told her that real climbing meant losing a piece of oneself during the ascent and finding a new piece at the summit.
It was beautiful, and then it was dust, and then it was both.
Unbidden, the memory flashed through her, the same memory that had taken hold of her time and time again. A foul taste came into her throat, filling her nostrils with a putrid stench. And blood.
Everything primeval, like the time of the first people, raw nature unbound. Surely the earliest gods were about. Surely I stood upon a universe as sensitive as a raw wound, the world as it existed before McDonalds and Starbucks, the world the postcards couldn’t capture.
Abhartach appeared at the cottage’s front door, barely visible,,,
I stood downwind, smelling of human blood, too late to run now.
FLASH FICTION
POETRY
NONFICTION