Issue 52

NewMyths.com

A quarterly ezine by a community of writers, poets and artists.

Issue 52 - September 2020

Dear Readers,

We hope you all enjoy the stories and poems in this issue of NewMyths as a welcome respite from worries over fires, hurricanes, and covid-19. Some of you have faced a rougher year than many of your favorite characters have faced, and we pray all of you, our readers, are staying safe and well.

We do have some great news! Votes for our 2020 Readers' Choice awards for fiction and poetry are in.

And the winners are...

Readers' Choice Awards 2020

Fiction 1st place Readers' Choice Award -- "Between the Zeros and Ones" by Bob Sojka

Fiction 2nd place Readers' Choice Award -- "Hubris Humbled" by David Whitaker

Poetry 1st place Readers' Choice Award -- "Dragon's Lament" by Jasmine Arch

Poetry 2nd place Readers' Choice Award -- "100% Love" by Beth Cato

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Congratulations to all our nominees. Everyone received many 1st place favorite votes, and the final count came very close in both the fiction and poetry categories.

Be sure to look for these stories and poems again in our third anthology coming out next year: NeoSapiens! stories and poems told from the non-human perspective.

-Susan Shell Winston, editor

Table of Contents

Fiction

"Wharf Rat" by Mike Adamson

Gemma Corvane grew up around the starship docks on Gagarin’s World, and what she did not know about ducking and diving was not worth knowing.

"Conquest of the Desert" by Van Aaron Hughes

Cayupil woke to sticky wetness. He touched his forehead, and his hand came away smeared with blood. A heavy smoke burdened the air, and for a precious moment Cayupil did not know where he was.

Then he remembered the dawn attack on his village...

"The Mahahaa and the Quarreling Lovers" by Herb Kauderer

The fingernails are sharp enough for hunting. But the Mahahaa prefer using their knuckles and fingertips to tickle people to death...Victims of Mahahaas can be found frozen with their faces still torn with laughter and pain. I have said already how the Mahahaa can blend into the ice, especially in the dark of winter. Some believe they actually transform into ice to hide while waiting for a lone Inuit to come...

"The Goddess in Him" by Matthew Rettino

Altai cradled the basketball like a goat’s bladder, the kind his ancestors had thrown from horseback. On the plains, this shearing would be unthinkable. A warrior displayed his pride in the span of his locks. Yet there he stood, clothed in synthetic twenty-first century fabrics. He would never know the glory of riding on the hunt, of pulling a bowstring taut to bring down a leopard.

"On the Tracks of Liberty" by Daniel Patrick Rosen

The butcher boy and the engineer rode in the front of the train, in the mouth of the Scuttler herself. A tall steel cage helped keep the beast's mouth open, to stop the powerful jaws from snapping shut

"Up from the Valley, Down to the Valley, and a Pass Between" by James Van Pelt

Darkness fell unnaturally fast, and already stars glimmered. The wood pile was large enough to last the night, but he was tired. He would have to wake often enough to keep the fire alive. If the fire went out, all would be lost.

Flash Fiction

"The Last Library" by Kate Kelly

The steps were broken, descending into darkness. You led the way, lantern swinging, and I followed, scared. We weren’t meant to be here; this whole area off limits, but Grandpa told us, just before he died, that there was a cave full of wonders, of magic and stories, of cities under the seas and ships that sailed above the clouds. He said we would be transported to different worlds, worlds of adventure, away from the drudgery of daily life, the endless struggle to survive...

"The Tube Worm" by Stephen S. Power

I admire you, son.

When my great-grandparents’ great-grandparents came to this planet, they were the same age as you, and they had the same wanderlust. You can understand why. They’d been born in space, and however enormous the Hayflick, however elaborate its intellectual and sensory diversions, it was still a metal cavern like those we’ve lived in ever since. All they wanted to do after the ship landed was get out and run.

"Warchild" by David VonAllmen

Shun-yin labored alone, standing on a stool, dim lanternlight scarcely reaching the schoolhouse’s thatched ceiling and dirt floor. Alone, save the nine identical warchild statues – two-meter tall bronze warriors standing at attention. They were the rejects, minor imperfections making them unfit for the Emperor’s army, given over to the school to see which students could bring them to life.

NonFiction

"Gene Roddenberry between Star Treks" by Patrick Baker

In creating Star Trek, Roddenberry, like many great visionaries, had fused two elements, Westerns, thus Roddenberry’s famous pitch line: “A Wagon Train to the Star” and the optimism and ambitions of the New Frontier and Great Society to build a better society. By combining the two elements he created something that in retrospect seems the product of genius and also has a special, universal appeal. This was something that could not be re-created, even by the Great Bird of the Galaxy.

"The Evil that Lies Within" by Peter Jekel

The Sound of Moonsong, the howl of the wolf, is a sound that few people will forget, once heard. It carries over the still night for kilometers around to surround the listener, like unseen wraiths coming in for a final entrapment from which there will be no escape.

"A Few Words About Venus" by Lorraine Schein

If you didn’t get a place on Earth named after you in the past because you were a woman, today you might get lucky. You might become the name of a crater on Venus.

Poetry

"In the Garden of the Moon" by Bruce Boston

"Lands of the Unwanted" by Christopher Collingwood

"Sweet Sidestep" by Ronald D. Ferguson

"Children of War" by Zainab Khan

"Lacus Autumni" by Josh Pearce

"The World is Worth Saving" by Alice Towey