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ISSUE 12: CONTRIBUTORS
Malena Salazar Maciá, Toshiya Kamei, Deborah L. Davitt, Dean A. Brink, Drema Deòraich, Raluca Balasa, Dennis Mombauer, I. S. Heynen, May Chong, Logan Thrasher Collins, Holly Day, R. J. Keeler, Z.M. Quỳnh, Aber O. Grand & Michael T. Smith, Arvind Dubey, Kshama Gautam, Shirish Gopal Deshpande, Narendra Petkar, Lorenzo Latrofa, Massimiliano di Lauro & Salik Shah
ART Macrocheira kaempferi (1911) by Theobald Carreras, Wellcome Collection.
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Salik Shah This Extraordinary Being
Malena Salazar Maciá, Toshiya Kamei The Kiss of the Water
Deborah L. Davitt The Ghost Teas of Sakurajima
Dean A. Brink Flower Arranging at the End of the Japanese Empire
Raluca Balasa The Executioner General
Dennis Mombauer The Carnival of Human Nature
I. S. Heynen Sonya, Josephine, and the Tragic Re-Invention of the Telephone
POETRY
May Chong Social Media Manticore
Logan Thrasher Collins Glimmerglimpse
Michael T. Smith Kirby; Or Everything I Needed to Know About Consumption
R. J. Keeler Mud Dauber Wasp Nest
Aber O. Grand The Satyr’s Acolyte
Logan Thrasher Collins Electrocologies
Michael T. Smith Super Mario; Or, Everything I Needed to Learn About Relationships
Arvind Dubey, Kshama Gautam The Shuttle Took Off / और यान उड़ गया
Lorenzo Latrofa & Massimiliano di Lauro on Animating the Story of Migration & Exile
Crossing the Desert with Malena Salazar Maciá
America Under Siege: Creating An Alternate History with Dean A Brink
May Chong on Managing the Scorching Mess of Social Media
“Upshot takes place soon after the end of the Guatemalan civil war…” — Drema Deòraich
Making Sense of Absurd, All-Encompassing, Terrifying Super-Capitalism with Dennis Mombauer
I.S. Heynen on Building a Post-Apocalyptic World Where a Company of Assassins Reigns Supreme
Crowdfunding Status on Patreon
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Afterwards
Life / goes on. // The cats still demand their food, / the garbage trucks still rumble by, / your throat still craves cold liquids.
Rose Glasses over Mercury Mirrors
Who needs a mirror with eyes / like that—eyes that make you trust / your own bones, that know your form / is beautiful because it can dance.
Ghost Apples
Here in the old / Enchantments / you can find remnants / of her still, / her smile a ragged / and torn tarn shore, / her perfume / the come-gone scent / of slapdash rain.
“All true knowing is mutual…”: Notes on Vandana Singh’s Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories
Singh’s stories in this collection present a new way of articulating planetarity and narrating the cosmos and map out a new terrain of science fictionality. She incorporates the fantastic, the magical and the wondrous to create a mythopoetic engagement with the cosmos.
Avatar: An English-Italian Anthology of Contemporary Science Fiction from India
Edited by Tarun K. Saint and Francesco Verso, Avatar is a good exhibition of India’s burgeoning science fiction writing community.
A Delicate Magic: Iona Datt Sharma’s Not For Use in Navigation
Iona Datt Sharma’s Not For Use in Navigation is a mélange of earthy magic, queer protagonists, love stories involving sentient spaceships, fables in the distant future, and much else.
Discover the secret origins of Tarun K. Saint’s Avatar and The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction
The stories in Avatar focuses on SF’s transformative role in negotiating changes ushered in by digital world and social media, as well as the advances in biotech and surveillance mechanisms augmented by technology, besides the perils of climate change.
A Literary “Sci-Fi” Conversation Between Two Indian Science Fiction Writers: Rajat Chaudhuri and Jvalant Nalin Sampat
Rajat Chaudhuri and Jvalant Sampat discuss science fiction (“sci-fi”), cli-fi (climate fiction), solarpunk, classic sci-fi films, and their respective books:The Butterfly Effect and The Chronicler.
Science Fiction Writings in Punjabi: The Contemporary Scenario
Science fiction writing in Punjabi is in its infancy and has a great potential for writers to make their contributions.
A World Without Hospitals
In an ideal world, everybody will be healthy. There will be no need for a doctor in a future world where bodies can be replaced, limbs and organs regenerated. Where every home, every transport vessel is equipped with AI medical bots and sickbays, there is no requirement for a hospital—every home, every vehicle can serve as hospitals in case of emergencies. While the Star Trek future is still far, we are on the verge of a medical, biotechnological revolution right now.
From scientific haikus to epic poems, Mary Soon Lee effortlessly navigates between genres, fiction and poetry
I kept returning to The Sign of the Dragon because I got completely caught up in Xau’s story. It was almost an obsession. I thought about it when I was vacuuming, or brushing my teeth, or grocery shopping.
Odysseus Grins at Fate and the Gods
For all my guile, there have been times when my own wit / has thrown me into far worse danger. / Polyphemus laughs, despite his blindness, / to think what ill I wrought upon myself.
Strange Recollections of Brook Farm
The looking glass now contained a love letter to a boy in Waltham, a maudlin faun pining while he held his pipes, and a thousand other faces and images. Whatever had infected her and Cora had spread and crept over Brook Farm like vines on an old stone.
Sparrow
The boss has with his back to you. He grips a machine shaped like a hexagonal ship’s wheel. You saw an image of it recently in a trade magazine in his office: a newly-invented window cleaning drone. Unlike he said days ago, he isn’t firing you because he found cheaper labor, but because he has decided that a robot is better than you.
The Breaking
I’d been dreaming of something red that morning. Fire. Explosions, plumes of thick smoke. And for a moment, I saw again a line of trees catching light, blazing up into torches. A wall of roaring flame along the highway. I was in the car with my family; we were trying to escape, Dad driving as fast as the traffic allowed; and I whimpered and squeezed my eyes shut but even so I could feel the Angels watching through the flame.