A REVISIT: HOT MOON: an interview with Astrophysicist & Author Alan Smale (Part I)

A year ago, one of Arc Manor’s featured novels was released:
Hot Moon: Apollo Rising, Book I.

In celebration of this hot novel’s one-year anniversary, we’re revisiting an interview with the author Alan Smale by Isaac E. Payne.

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ABOUT HOT MOON – FROM THE PUBLISHER:

“A nail-biting thriller.” −Publishers Weekly

“I loved it. Great ‘hard’ science fiction with convincing space battles. “−Larry Niven

From the Sidewise Award-winning author of the acclaimed Clash of Eagles trilogy comes an alternate 1979 where the US and the Soviets have permanent Moon bases, orbiting space stations, and crewed spy satellites supported by frequent rocket launches.

Apollo 32, commanded by career astronaut Vivian Carter, docks at NASA’s Columbia space station en route to its main mission: exploring the volcanic Marius Hills region of the Moon. Vivian is caught in the crossfire as four Soviet Soyuz craft appear without warning to assault the orbiting station. In an unplanned and desperate move, Vivian spacewalks through hard vacuum back to her Lunar Module and crew and escapes right before the station falls into Soviet hands

Their original mission scrubbed, Vivian and her crew are redirected to land at Hadley Base, a NASA scientific outpost with a crew of eighteen. But soon Hadley, too, will come under Soviet attack, forcing its unarmed astronauts to daring acts of ingenuity and improvisation.

With multiple viewpoints, shifting from American to Soviet perspective, from occupied space station to American Moon base under siege, to a covert and blistering US Air Force military response, Hot Moon tells the gripping story of a war in space that very nearly might have been.

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We hope you enjoy learning about this author and his novel, and if we’ve piqued your interest, stop by the shop and pick up your own copy HERE. It’s a lot of fun!

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It’s not often that you see a hard science fiction novel crafted with such care and meticulous research as Hot Moon by Alan Smale.

Astrophysicist by day, award-winning author by night, Alan Smale’s newest book is about an alternate 1979 where the Soviets are bent on wresting the Moon from NASA’s hands. This sci fi novel features accurate details of orbital mechanics, daring feats of ingenuity, and a thrilling battle in space.

We sat down with Alan to discuss how he started writing, the inspiration for Hot Moon, and his future plans.

Isaac Payne: So Alan, I know that not only are you an award-winning author, you’re also an astrophysicist for NASA. Tell me, how did you decide to get into astrophysics?

Alan Smale: Sure. It really started when I was a kid. I was always interested in astronomy, and fascinated by the Apollo program as well. I used to go out in the backyard with my dad when I was young and look at the Moon and planets, the stars and galaxies. I stayed interested in astronomy for all of my formative years.

And then later on, I went to college to study physics at the University of Oxford, they had optional astrophysics courses in the first and third year, and so I took those and enjoyed them thoroughly.

After my bachelors degree, I was accepted for a doctoral program. It’s actually called DPhil in Oxford, Doctor of Philosophy, rather than a PhD, but it’s the same thing. I did optical and x-ray astronomy research there for three years or so while earning my doctorate. After that I did a post-doc at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, part of University College London.

When my first post-doc ended, I moved to the States to take up a job at NASA, at the Goddard Space Flight Center. I’ve been with NASA ever since.

IP: What kind of research do you do at NASA?

AS: I study low mass x-ray binaries, which are binary star systems that are quite tightly bound, and one of those stars is a compact object, either a black hole or a neutron star. These are extremely dense objects. Material from the more normal companion star spirals into that compact object, and that’s where the x-rays come from. If we study those sources by looking at both the x-rays and the optical emission, we can learn a lot about them.

IP: So obviously you’ve been pretty ingrained with science and astronomy since you were young. Were you an avid science fiction reader, too?

AS: Oh, yeah, I cut my teeth on all of the old classics. When I was growing up, I read a lot of Isaac Asimov, Ursula Le Guin, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Larry Niven. All of this stuff was really prevalent in the atmosphere around me at the time.

I’ve been interested in science fiction all my life, as well as science and astronomy. In fact, all the sci-fi I read probably played a big role in my interest in the sciences. The space program, astrophysics, and science fiction have always coupled together quite tightly, for me.

IP: And when did you start writing science fiction? Did you start pretty early on with that as well?

AS: I started writing science fiction in a very juvenile kind of way. When I was a kid I used to write what now would be called Star Trek fan fiction. But I really started writing seriously for publication when I turned 30. I was already living in the States and working at the Goddard Space Flight Center by then. I’d finished my academic studies, and I was no longer a student at that point, so I had a little more free time. Then, pretty soon after that, I started having stories accepted.

IP: What was the name of your first publication?

AS: It was a short story called “The Breath of Princes” and it appeared in the A Wizard’s Dozen anthology from Harcourt Brace, edited by Michael Stearns.

It was actually a fantasy story, which is kind of funny looking back on it now. In fact, my first two or three published stories were fantasy, but over the past fifteen years, most of my writing has been alternate history or hard science fiction.

IP: What about the genre of historical fiction do you find fascinating?

AS: I’ve always been a history buff. Growing up in England, there was a lot of history around. My family used to go to Hadrian’s Wall for vacations, and to Bath, so I got to explore a lot of Roman ruins and remains there.

I’m not actually sure what the precipitating event was that made me focus on historical writing, but one thing about it is that it’s very different from my day job. I feel as though I’m using very different mental muscles when I’m writing history-based speculative fiction than when I’m doing academic research.

My most recent book, Hot Moon, is very technical, hard science fiction, but until I got to that book, most of my fiction writing was in a different head-space from the day-job work I was doing. Doing scientific research is very different from writing about history, so it was a complete break for my brain, the two sides didn’t bleed into each other.

It feels very refreshing, somehow, when I’m working hard at both science and writing. A change is as good as a rest!

Anyway: I’d always been fascinated by history, and by some of the older alternate history tales. Books like Lest Darkness Fall by Sprague de Camp, and The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick.

The past is a very fertile playground for fiction. And one of the things I like about alternate history is that it kind of holds up a mirror to the real history; I get the resonances of what really happened, underlying the tale that I’m telling, and they both reinforce each other and play off each other.

If you know the real historical events, then you’ll know that the events in a given story are different because of a different result in a war, or an election, and perhaps different people are in the foreground. And by doing that, it kind of makes you think about how history is made. Who the important people are. How history really works.

I just found myself gravitating more and more to that kind of writing over the last 10 or 15 years. Over that period, a lot of my reading has been historical non-fiction, and most of my writing output has been historically based.

IP: You mentioned that Hot Moon is hard science fiction, as well as being an alternate history. Can readers expect for Hot Moon to stay within the bounds of 1979 astrophysics, or does the book move into science fiction with more advanced technologies?

AS: I definitely stay within those bounds. There’s nothing in Hot Moon that wouldn’t have been possible with the technology that they had back then. I spent a lot of time researching the Apollo program, which was a real labor of love because as I mentioned before, I was really into it when I was a kid.

I spent a lot of time getting into the nuts and bolts of the technology, really getting deep into figuring out what was possible and what wasn’t. I obey the laws of physics throughout the book, which is actually a pain because orbital mechanics are quite complicated and it really constrains what my characters can do! They need large amounts of fuel for relatively small orbit changes, for example, and things like that.

So in the first book, there is nothing that wasn’t possible with the technology of the time. The Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft, the Lunar Rovers, and other hardware in the book either existed in the 1970s, or could have been in existence in that timeframe if the US and Soviet space programs had continued. There would have been no technical showstoppers with implementing any of the vehicles, machinery, or bases in Hot Moon.

In the second book we’ll certainly see more of the speculative technology that was suggested at the time. These are ideas that people had done a bit of experimentation with, some prototyping and technical development, but which never came to fruition. There were a lot of bright ideas around then, but a lot of those programs ended up being canceled, or not coming to fruition for other reasons.

So, overall, I’ve tried really hard to keep the science very close to reality. There’s a key political difference in how we get to the world of Hot Moon in 1979. And one of those differences is that the US involvement in Vietnam is much more limited, and of a shorter duration.

As a result, the US has quite a lot more money. In reality, the US couldn’t possibly have pursued the war in Vietnam and the Space Race simultaneously without making huge concessions elsewhere. So, a different Vietnam War, and a rather different Cold War, are central to the Hot Moon universe.

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Make sure to check out the second part of our conversation with Alan Smale, right here on the Signals from the Edge blog next week!

In the meantime, check out another one of our interviews: CAT RAMBO & JENNIFER BROZEK

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THE FINAL ISSUE: GALAXY’S EDGE MAGAZINE—THE LAST WEEK

Oof! This is an emotional post to put down on the page.

Not only has Galaxy’s Edge magazine been out for ten years in print with a whopping 61 issues under its belt, but here we are, not only our final issue, but also the last week of our free, two-month preview of this issue on the Galaxy’s Edge website.

In the past several weeks, we’ve shared with you a bit of history from the creator of this magazine, Mike Resnick, from a look back to his Editor’s Notes in Issue One, where he shared with us a history of some of the magazines in the field of Science Fiction and Fantasy, to his Editor’s Notes from Issue Two, where he went on to tell us more about some of the writers and editors in this genre.

We went on to share some story teasers from our final issues, here in Part 1 and Part 2; a teaser of the final Editor’s Note from our current Editor-in-Chief, Lezli Robyn; Highlights from Issue 62; our final Review Roundup from Richard Chwedyk; and a short story from Mr. Mike Resnick, the creator of this magazine.

Head over to Galaxy’s Edge, take a peek around one last time, and join us in waving farewell to this version of Galaxy’s Edge magazine.

We’ll have news about our upcoming semi-annual themed anthology series soon!

Stay tuned for all the details, and the open call … when it comes.

Thank you. ♥

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A SHORT STORY BY MIKE RESNICK

The Bride of Frankenstein
by Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick, along with editing the first seven years of Galaxy’s Edge magazine, was the winner of five Hugo Awards from a record thirty-seven nominations and was, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short fiction. He was the author of over eighty novels, around 300 stories, three screenplays, and the editor of over forty anthologies. He was Guest of Honor at the 2012 Worldcon.

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April 4:

What am I doing here?

We have no servants, we never go out, we never have company. The furniture is all decrepit and ugly, the place always smells musty, and although the rest of the village has electrical power, Victor refuses to run it up the hill to the castle. We read by candlelight and we heat with fireplaces.

This is not the future I had envisioned for myself.

Oh, I know, we made the usual bargain—he got my money and my body, and I got his title. I don’t know what I thought being the Baroness von Frankenstein would be like, but this isn’t it. I knew he owned a centuries-old castle with no improvements, but I didn’t think we’d live in it full-time.

Victor can be so annoying. He constantly whistles this tuneless song, and when I complain he apologizes and then starts humming it instead. He never stands up to that ill-mannered little hunchback that he’s always sending out on errands. And he’s a coward. He can never just come to me and say “I need money again.” Oh, no, not Victor. Instead he sends that ugly little toady who’s rude to me and always smells like he hasn’t washed.

And when I ask what the money’s for this time, he tells me to ask Victor, and Victor just mumbles and stammers and never gets around to answering.

Yesterday he sent Igor off to buy a generator. I thought he finally realized the need to upgrade the castle. I should have known better. It’s in the basement, where he’s using it for one of his simple-minded experiments that never brings us fame or fortune. He can use the generator’s power to make a dead frog’s leg twitch (as if anyone cares), but he can’t use it to heat this drafty, ugly, boring castle.

I hate my life.

#

May 13:

“My creature lives!”

That’s a hell of a scream to wake up to in the middle of the night. Of course his damned creature lives. The little bastard nagged me for money again today.

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May 14:

Well, finally I saw the results of all those months of work today. Victor was so damned proud of this hideous creature he created. Let me tell you: it is ugly as sin, it can barely speak, you’d need a microscope to find its IQ, and it smells worse than Igor. This is what he’s been spending my fortune on?

“What is it?” I ask, and Victor explains that it isn’t an it, it’s a he. He is sitting on the edge of a table, just staring stupidly at a wall. Victor takes me by the arm (he always has chemicals on his hands; I hate it when he touches me) and pulls me over toward the creature. “What do you think?” he asks. “Do you really want to know?” I answer, and he says yes he really does, so I spend the next five minutes telling him exactly what I think. He doesn’t say a word; he just stands there with his lower lip trembling and the same expression on his face that my brother had when his puppy drowned all those years ago.

The creature makes a soothing noise and reaches out to Victor, as if to comfort him. I slap his hand and tell him never to touch a human. He whimpers and puts his hands in front of his face, as if he expects me to beat him. I wouldn’t even if I could; this blouse is hard enough to clean without having to wash any disgusting monster yuck off it.

“Don’t frighten him!” snaps Victor.

Which is a perfect example of how out of touch with reality he is. The creature is about six football players and a weightlifter all rolled into one, and I’m just a helpless woman who spends an inordinate amount of time wondering why she didn’t marry Bruno Schmidt. All right, he’s bald and fat and his teeth are rotting and he’s got a glass eye, but he’s a banker, and his house doesn’t have a monster in the basement.

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May 25:

I went fishing in the stream today, since Victor is too busy making notes to notice that we’re almost out of food. (Of course, we wouldn’t run out so often if we had a refrigerator, but then we have no place to plug it in anyway.)

So I’m standing there in my rubber boots, fishing rod in hand, and I hear a noise behind me, and I turn to look because a woman alone can’t ever be too careful, and what has happened is that Victor has let the creature out for some exercise, or air, or whatever hideous eternally damned creatures get let out for.

When I turn to face him he stops and stares at me, and I say, “You lay a finger on me and I’ll scratch your eyes out!”

He kind of shudders and walks around me in a huge semi-circle, and winds up about thirty yards downstream, where he stares at the fish. Somehow they seem to know he’s not trying to catch them, and they all cluster around his ankles when he wades into the water, and he smiles like an idiot and points to the fish.

“Fine,” I say. “You catch four for dinner and maybe I’ll even cook you one.”

Up to that minute I would have sworn that he didn’t understand a word, that he only reacted to tones of voice, but he leans over, scoops up four fish, and tosses them onto the grass where they start flopping around.

“Not bad,” I admit. “Now kill them and we’ll take them back to the castle.”

“I don’t kill things,” he says in a horrible croaking voice, which is when I discover he can speak.

“Okay, eat yours while it’s alive,” I say. “What do I care?”

He stares at me for a minute, and finally he says, “I am not hungry after all,” and he begins wandering back to the castle.

“Fine!” I shout after him. “There will be more for us!”

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s an uppity creature.

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May 27:

“Don’t you realize, my dear,” says Victor, his narrow chest puffing out with pride, “that no one has ever accomplished this before?”

“I believe it,” I say, looking at the creature, who seems to get uglier every day. “But that doesn’t mean it’s anything to brag about.”

“You just don’t understand,” says Victor, and he’s pouting now, like he does whenever I point out the obvious to him. “I have created life out of the disparate pieces of the dead!”

“I understand perfectly,” I say. “Who do you think’s been paying the bills for all this?” I point at the creature, who is busy staring off into space. “That left arm should have been my new stove. That right arm is my carpet. The left leg is my automobile. The right leg is a central heating system. The torso is my new furniture. And the head is indoor plumbing that works.”

“You are being too materialistic, my dear,” says Victor. “I wish I could make you see that this creature is of inestimable value to science.”

I look at the mess my husband has made of his laboratory. “If you’re going to keep him,” I say, “at least give him a mop and teach him how to use it.”

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June 1:

I am sitting on a chair I have dragged out to the garden because I can’t stand the smell of Victor’s chemicals, and today I am reduced to reading Life and Look, because the Bavarian edition of The Wall Street Journal is late again. I had to sell all my stocks to pay for Victor’s endless experiments, but I still follow them and compute how much I’d be worth if I had just married Bruno Schmidt, or maybe some doctor who, if a patient died, let him stay dead.

Anyway, I have dragged a small table out to hold the magazines and my iced tea. I would have asked Igor to do it, but I’d sooner die than ask him for a favor. So I am sitting there reading, and I hear an earth-shaking clomp-clomp-clomp, and sure enough it is the creature, out for his daily airing.

“Good afternoon, Baroness,” he croaks.

I just glare at him.

He notices my magazines. “Are you reading?” he asks.

“No,” I say coldly. “I am speaking to an animated nightmare from the deepest pits of hell.”

“I don’t mean to distress you,” he says.

“Good,” I said. “Go halfway around the castle and try not distressing me there.”

He sighs and walks away, and I go back to reading. After a few minutes my magazine is covered by a huge shadow, and I look up and the creature is standing next to me.

“I thought I told you to—”

His hand juts forward with a delicate golden flower in it. “For you,” he says.

“Thanks,” I say, taking it from him and tossing it onto the ground. “Now go away.”

Maybe it is the way the sun hits him at just that moment, but I could swear a tear trickles down his cheek as he turns and walks away.

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June 3:

Today I caught him in the wood-paneled library that should have been my pride and joy but is now just my daily escape from the boring reality of my life.

“What are you doing here?” I demand as I enter.

“I was bored, just sitting around,” he answers. “I asked permission to go into town, but The Master”—that’s Victor—“doesn’t want anyone to see me yet. He told me to read some of his books instead.”

Can you read?” I ask.

“Of course I can,” he replies. “Is it so surprising?”

“Fine,” I say with a shrug. “Go read. You’ll find Victor’s scientific books on the other wall.”

“I have no interest in them,” he says.

“That’s not my problem,” I say. “I can’t help but notice that you’re standing right next to a row of romances by Jane Austen and the Brontes. They’ll be wasted on you.”

“I think I would like romantic stories,” he says.

“That’s disgusting!”

“Do you really think so?” he asks curiously.

“I said so, didn’t I?” I reply.

“Perhaps that is why the Master spends his nights in the laboratory,” he says.

I pull a thick book off the shelf. I feel like pummeling him with it, but I don’t think he feels pain, so finally I just thrust it in his hands and tell him to get out my sight.

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June 4:

He lumbers up to me while I am outside reading the Journal, which has finally arrived.

“What is it now?” I demand irritably.

“I have come to thank you,” he says.

“For what?” I ask.

“For this.” He lays the book on the table. “I read A Christmas Carol last night. It was very uplifting.” He pauses for a second, staring into my eyes with his cold dead orbs. “It is comforting to know that even Scrooge could change.”

“Are you comparing me to Scrooge?” I ask angrily.

“Certainly not,” he answers. Another tiny pause. “Scrooge was a man.”

I stand up and lean forward, bracing my hands on the table and glaring at him. I am about to give him a piece of my mind, to explain that I’m going to speak to Victor and insist that we donate him to some university, when a big hairy spider appears from nowhere and races across my hand and starts crawling up my arm. I scream and shake my arm, and the spider falls to the ground.

“Kill it!” I yell.

He kneels down and picks the spider up in his hand. “I told you the other day,” he says. “I don’t kill things.”

“I don’t care what you told me!” I snap. “Stomp on it, or crush it in your hand—but just kill the damned thing!”

“I have been dead, Baroness,” he replies somberly. “It is not an experience I would wish upon anyone or anything else.”

And so saying, he carries the spider about fifty feet away and places it on the branch of a young sapling.

I don’t even notice when he comes back to pick up the book. I am too busy thinking about what he said.

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June 7:

The next day it is Wuthering Heights and then it’s Anna Karenina and finally he reads Gone With the Wind, which is making so much money in the bookstores that even Victor couldn’t run through the royalty checks.

“You’re developing quite a taste for romance,” I say as I find him in the library again. It is the first time I’ve initiated a conversation with him. I don’t know why. I suppose if you spend enough nights alone you’ll talk to anyone.

“They are heartbreaking,” he says with a look of infinite sorrow. “I thought romances had happy endings, like A Christmas Carol, but they don’t. Heathcliff and Catherine die. Anna and Vronsky die. Scarlett loses Ashley, and then she loses Rhett.”

“Not all romances end unhappily,” I say. I think I am arguing with him, but I wonder if I am not trying to comfort him.

“I remember, as though through a mist, the story of Arthur and Guenevere.” A body-wrenching sigh. “It ended poorly. And so did Romeo and Juliet.” He shakes his massive head sadly. “But it does explain a lot.”

“What do a bunch of tragic romances explain?” I ask.

“Why you are so bitter and unhappy,” replies the creature. “The Master is a wonderful man—brilliant, generous, thoughtful, and he is constantly saying that he is very much in love with you. Clearly you must feel the same emotions toward him or you would not have married him, and because all such romances end in tragedy, you behave as you do from resentment at what must be.”

“That will be quite enough!” I say. “Take whatever book you want, and then keep out of my sight for the rest of the day.”

He picks up a book and walks to the door.

Just before he leaves, I ask: “Did Victor really say he loved me?”

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June 8:

The toady brings me my breakfast on a wooden tray while I am still in bed. I stare at his misshapen body and ugly face for a moment, then have him set the tray down on my nightstand.

“What is this all about?” I demand.

“The creature is afraid that he may have hurt your feelings,” answers Igor. “I tried to explain that it is impossible, but he insisted on preparing your breakfast. Then at the last minute he was too frightened of you to bring it here himself.”

“What do you mean, it’s impossible to hurt my feelings?” I say.

“I have never known it to happen, Baroness,” he answers, “and I have been with the Master longer than you have.”

“Maybe we’ll have to do something about that,” I say ominously.

“Please don’t,” he says so earnestly that I stop and stare at him. “You have abused me, physically and verbally, since the day the Master brought you to the castle, and I have never complained. But if my services are terminated, where is an illiterate hunchback who left school at the age of eight to support his ailing mother to find employment? The townspeople laugh at me, and the children tease me and make up terrible songs about me. They even throw things at me.” He pauses, and I can see he is struggling to control his emotions. “No one in the town—in any town—will ever give me a job.”

“You’re still supporting your mother?” I ask.

He nods his head. “And my widowed sister and her three little ones.”

I just stare at him for a minute. Finally I say, “Get out of here, you ugly little wart.”

“You won’t speak to the Master about terminating me?” he persists.

“I won’t speak to Victor,” I tell him.

“Thank you,” he says gratefully.

“He probably wouldn’t have listened anyway,” I say.

“You are wrong,” says Igor.

“About what?”

“If it comes to a choice,” says Igor with conviction, “he will always side with the woman he loves.”

“If he loves me so much, why is he always working in that damned laboratory?” I say.

“Perhaps for the same reason the creature did not bring you the tray himself,” says Igor.

I am still thinking about that long after he has gone and the eggs and coffee have both grown cold.

#

June 9:

Today is the first day that I willingly go down to the laboratory since the day after Victor created the creature. The clutter is awful and the stench of chemicals is worse.

Victor looks startled and asks me what’s wrong.

“Nothing is wrong,” I say.

“The townspeople aren’t coming to burn the castle down?”

“It’s an eyesore,” I agree, “but no, no one’s coming.”

“Then what are you doing down here?” he asks.

“I thought it was time you showed me what you’ve been doing down here day and night.”

Suddenly his whole homely face lights up. “You mean it?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” I say.

There follows one of the most boring afternoons I have ever spent in my life, as Victor proudly shows me every experiment, failures as well as successes, plus all his notes and all his calculations, and then explains in terms no one could possibly understand exactly how he created the creature and brought it back to life.

“That’s fascinating,” I lie when he’s finally done.

“It is, isn’t it?” he says as if it is some great revelation.

I check my wristwatch. “I have to go upstairs now.”

“Oh?” he says, clearly disappointed. “Why?”

“To make you your favorite dinner.”

He smiles like a child looking forward to opening his Christmas presents. I try to remember what he likes to eat.

#

June 14:

I encounter the creature in the library.

“Igor thanks you.”

“It was nothing,” I say.

“By raising his salary, his mother can now remain where she is. That is something.”

“I went over the ledgers,” I answer. “He went fifteen years without a raise in pay.”

“He is very grateful,” says the creature.

“If I fired him,” I say, “Victor would just go out and find an uglier, clumsier assistant. Handling money and running his life in an orderly fashion are not his strong points.”

“He seems much happier this past week.”

“He is obviously pleased with the results of his experiment,” I say.

The creature stares at me, but doesn’t respond.

“Have you found any happy romances yet?” I ask.

“No,” he admits.

“Then since the tragic ones upset you, why keep reading?”

“Because one must always have hope.”

I am about to say that hope is a greatly overrated virtue. Instead, much against my will, I find myself admiring him for clinging to it.

“For every Romeo, there must be a Juliet,” he continues. “For every Tristan, an Isolde.” He pauses. “There are those who say we are put on this Earth only to reproduce, but the Master has shown there are other ways to create life. Therefore, we must be here for a higher purpose—and what higher purpose can there be than love?”

I stare at him for a moment, and then find myself pulling Pride and Prejudice off the shelf. I hand it to him, and do not even shudder when his fingers touch mine. “Read this,” I say. “Not every romance ends tragically.”

I wonder what is happening to me.

#

June 16:

Victor looks upset as he sits down at the table for dinner.

“Is something wrong?” I ask.

He frowns. “Yes. Something is missing.”

“From the table?” I ask, looking around. “What is it?”

He shakes his head. “No, not from the table, from the laboratory’s office.”

“Has someone stolen your notes?” I ask.

He looks confused. “Stranger than that,” he says. “My cot is missing.”

“Your cot?” I repeat.

“Yes,” he replies. “You know—where I sleep when I finish working late at night.”

“How odd,” I say.

“Who would steal a bed?” he asks.

“It seems very strange,” I agree. “Fortunately there’s another bed in the castle.”

He looks confused again, and then he stares at me for a long moment, and then, suddenly, he smiles.

#

July 2:

Are you sure?” asks Victor.

“We can’t turn him loose in the world,” I say. “What could he do to support himself? I joked about it with him this afternoon and said he could always become a wrestler, that he looks the part of a villain.”

“What did he say?”

“That he wants to be loved, not feared—and that he doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”

Victor shakes his head in amazement. “What kind of brain did Igor bring me, I wonder?”

“A better one, I think, than you had any right to expect,” I say.

“Almost certainly,” Victor agrees. “But that will have no effect on the way people react to his appearance.”

“It could destroy him,” I say.

“Literally,” agrees Victor.

“If we want him to stay,” I tell him, “then you know what we have to do.”

Victor looks at me. “You are quite right, my dear,” he says.

#

July 3:

I find him in the library, where he spends most of his time these days. He is sitting on the oversized chair that Victor and Igor constructed for him, but the second he sees me he gets to his feet.

“Have you spoken to the Master?” he asks nervously.

“Yes,” I say.

“And?”

“And he has agreed.”

His entire massive body seems to relax.

“Thank you,” he says. “No man, no person,” he amends with a smile toward me, “should live his life alone, even one such as myself.”

“She won’t be pleasing to the eye,” I warn him. Or the ear, or the nose, I want to add.

“She will be pleasing to my eye,” he answers, “for I will look past her face to the beauty that lies within.”

“I’m surprised you want this,” I say. “I’d have thought all those tragic romances would discourage you.”

“It may end unhappily,” he acknowledges. “But that is better than it never beginning. Would you not agree?”

I think of Victor, and I nod my head. “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I would agree.”

Then there is nothing left but to send Igor out to start visiting the graveyards again.

I hope Victor finishes work on the new project by Christmas. I can hardly wait for the five of us to sit around the tree, a happy family unit. Maybe it won’t end well, but as my new friend says, that is no reason for it not to begin.

Copyright © by Mike Resnick

~~~

Find the entire last issue at Galaxy’s Edge Magazine — where you can read for free until June 30, 2023.

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GALAXY’S EDGE REVIEW ROUNDUP: MAY 2023

Richard Chwedyk sold his first story in 1990, won a Nebula in 2002, and has been active in the field for the past thirty-two years.

GOING OUT IN STYLE

Well, the curtain is coming down, the swan is waiting in the wings, the song is sounding. One phase in the history of GALAXY’S EDGE is coming to a close. It’s time for me to pack up my bindle and find a new train to hop.

Funny thing: I feel like I never really hopped this train in the first place. I’ve been running behind it, or alongside it at best, for most of the journey. Which is not to say that it hasn’t been informative, educational, and even fun.

I was also fortunate enough to acquire this gig at a time when the field, and the publishing world in general, was undergoing fundamental changes.

Or does it always feel that way?

Perhaps, but for some reason this feels different. “Professional” publishing, for the most part, seems to have become more “corporate” than ever, trying harder than ever to manufacture saleable product, which seems, from a corporate perspective, to necessitate more sharply defining categories and genres. Conversely, our authors are producing work that, where it doesn’t defy the old categories, confounds them. Smaller presses and independents are making their own rules, and it’s always been from them that the innovations have come.

At one level, it’s a fascinating time to be reviewing books. Which makes it a little sad to find myself turning in my last column.

And yet, the less time I spend putting together columns, the more time I have to read.

#

Tasting Light: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions
edited by A. R. Capetta and
Wade Roush
MITeen Press
October 2022

Why hasn’t someone thought of this before?

Perhaps they have, and I was just not on the mailing list.

While many of us (looking at the mirror now) have lamented the perceived lack of interest in short science fiction by younger readers, and have also noted that much science fiction in the YA market are variations on dystopic themes or heroic fantasy gussied up with zap guns and warp-drive starships, MITeen Press, through the editorial auspices of A. R. Capetta and Wade Roush, have done something about it with this fine collection of ten stories. The hardcover edition premiered last autumn, so I’m late in including it here, but the trade paperback will be coming out next fall, so I’m not exceedingly remiss (this time).

The goals of this anthology seem to be threefold: 1.) familiarize YA readers with the joys of short science fiction; 2.) with the emphasis on science; and 3.) to do so with as much innovation in style and approach as the authors can provide. One of the stories is written as a sequence of text messages. Another is a graphic story. The others, written in more familiar prose styles, are not slouching in exploring the boundaries of narrative form.

Every story here is of a quality that, if it doesn’t command your attention, is worthy of your committed perusal. That being said, the ones I enjoyed most were “The Weight of a Name” by Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson, Capetta’s own “Extremophiles,” Elizabeth Bear’s “Twin Strangers” and “Melanitis” by Junauda Petrus-Nasah. The graphic story, “The Memory of Soil” by Wendy Xu, is also great in its literal approach to its title. Perhaps because it resonates with the attitude to nature I encountered in Nancy Marie Brown’s book, of which more later.

Would that more of our “big,” i.e. “professional,” publishers would think along these lines. Science fiction in many respects has always been at its strongest in its shortest form. And the move to more digital publishing extinguishes many of the arguments against short fiction getting low sales. This may be a good time to re-emphasize the joys and importance of short fiction to a new generation. In fact, there may never be a better time than now.

#

Victory City
by Salman Rushdie
Random House
February 2023

Let me say this at the outset: this is a fantasy novel.

The reason I’m saying that is, apparently, critics and Rushdie fans either can’t say the word, or can’t find the word—fantasy.

There, I’ve said it again.

When a goddess speaks through the mouth of a little girl who is her namesake, it’s fantasy.

When that namesake has a lifespan of 247 years, it’s fantasy.

When an entire city is grown from a bag of magic seeds, it’s fantasy.

When your protagonist can change humans into other animals, it’s fantasy.

And Rushdie, no matter what else he is or what else he does, is a fantasy writer.

Rushdie is a great storyteller, and he first embraced storytelling at a time when the literary currents in which he chose to swim were churning in the opposite direction.

Much of this story is based upon folklore and history—like much fantasy. And, like much contemporary fantasy, he uses folklore and history to explore contemporary themes. It’s not so much that he is doing anything different as he is doing some things better.

The tale of Pampa Kampana, and her founding of the city of Bisnaga, a sort of feminist utopia, and the tale itself—and how the tale is told—is very much at the heart of the novel. The prose is presented as a translation from Sanskrit, and as a reflection of that language, so that its cadences and vocabulary seem of another time as much as its content may reflect ours.

In a way, it is South Asian Tolkien.

Did I say that?

I did. And I mean it.

If you’ve never read Rushdie before, read this one. Just … read it. Forget about the Booker Prizes. Forget about the controversies. Hard as it may be, even try to forget about the fatwa and the more recent horrendous physical attack that nearly took his life. Leave that aside, and just enter the reality, the fabric, of this novel, and allow it to perform its enchantments.

If you’re any reader of fantasy, you’ll find yourself in familiar territory.

#

Wraithbound
by Tim Akers
Baen
April 2023

You can check with my editor: I turned this column in very, very late.

I have an excuse. I’ve been waiting for a copy of Wraithbound to arrive. And I’m pleased to say it was worth the wait.

The premise is simple. Young Rae Kelthannis, the son of a “stormbinder” who is stitched to an elemental wind spirit and can command those forces of nature, wants to follow in his father’s footsteps. Hastily, and against his father’s wishes, he attempts the procedure—and botches it. Instead of stitching himself to an air elemental, he is bound to a demonic wraith. The world in which father and son live is already dipping into chaos, and the mayhem picks up from there.

I’ve only recently become familiar with Tim Akers’s work, and I’m highly impressed with the economic precision of his prose and his real gift for keeping the action moving throughout his novels. In Wraithbound I believe he gets even better. My perception may be a bit blurred because for once I’m actually starting with the first book in a fantasy series, but his storytelling skills are impressive. And on a thematic level, this novel demonstrates the kind of clarity and maturity I wish were more evident in other volumes of this sort. I’m anticipating the release of the next volume in this series, especially since this time I won’t have to read it on deadline.

#

Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland’s Elves Can Save the Earth
by Nancy Marie Brown
Pegasus Books
October 2022

I’ve never reviewed a nonfiction book here, at least not that I recall, but this humble meditation that brings together Iceland, its folklore, climate change, particle physics and … J. R. R. Tolkien(!) is very much worth your attention, no matter where your interests lie.

I’ve said, I think, in these very pages (if not, I’m saying it now) that fantasy, like science fiction, is not so much a literary category as it is a way of looking at the world (and Damon Knight said something like it before, so there!). In that way, we might find Tolkien the most important of the topics included in this book. Brown quotes from his seminal essay, “On Fairy-stories” extensively. I’ve always read the essay as a kind of manifesto, not for fantasy itself but for a way of looking at fantasy, and the insights it can provide for how we perceive the world around us. The sentiment is echoed in another book from which Brown quotes, about James M. Barrie. Neuroscientist Rosalind Ridley, in Peter Pan and the Mind of J. M. Barrie, points out that fairies, like paper currency, are things that exist and have value only if everyone agrees they do. There are differences between solid objects and socially constructed ones.

Ridley writes: “There are also occasions when art tells us something that science only recognizes at a later time.”

That’s not news to us. But Brown puts this together with Icelandic beliefs in “hidden folk,” like elves and gnomes and such, and how they are held even by hard-edged rationalistic scientists and intellectuals, and how these beliefs inform their attitude towards the environment. Desolate stretches of the countryside, with nothing visible but ice and stone, are seen as having something akin to a sentience, if not a consciousness. They are “alive.” We might regard our environment differently if we considered it as connected to ourselves, through the hidden folk, and in turn we connected to it. We might make different choices before digging up rocks to build a highway or an oil well.

And the means by which we can see the world this way is through the fantasy of “fairy-stories”—in the widest sense of this term.

I’m presenting this thesis in only the most elementary fashion. The detail to which Brown gives her thoughts are wonderfully lucid and thought-provoking. In a way, it’s what we in the field have always understood, but greatly appreciate its being articulated so beautifully in this book, so that others might see what we’re talking about.

#

Observer
by Robert Lanza and Nancy Kress
The Story Plant
January 2023

And speaking of consciousness …

Robert Lanza is a brilliant scientist and remarkable thinker, but perhaps the smartest decision he ever made was to collaborate with Nancy Kress when he decided to present some of his farthest-out concepts in novel form. Great scientists do not have an outstanding record in the novel-writing sweepstakes. Kress not only is as fine a professional novelist as is working today, but she has explored some similar themes as Lanza presents here with her own work, most notably genetics and the uploading of consciousness—whatever that is.

Tolkien once said in an interview that at the heart of all great literature is the inevitability of death. What’s at the heart of this novel is to find a way of overriding that certainty. Dr. Caroline Soames-Watkins, whose brilliant career has been derailed by a twitterstorm, is hired by her great-uncle, a Nobel laureate, to work on that very project, with himself as the subject.

The question of surviving natural death often boils down to the question of what actually survives. If you download the memories of a dead person, are you saying a person consists of memories and nothing more? If you can succeed in transferring a neuro-system into some other entity or host, does that mean all that matters is the neuro-system? What is the nature of consciousness, and how much of it is dependent upon the biosystem that houses it? What is the nature of personhood?

Questions like these can be perplexing enough to make a reader want to swear off consciousness forever. And yet Lanza explores them thoroughly in ways that don’t make you think you’ve accidentally dropped LSD. Kress has created characters and settings to house these big ideas in ways that feel perfectly natural and emphasize the tensions and attractions which weave these characters together. This is supposed to be a “novel of ideas,” and yet it doesn’t feel like one, or not “merely” like one. It is a human (even all-too-human) story with all the depth and breadth one looks for in any good novel, and does so with an enviable simplicity of language and structure.

If anything underscores the mysterious complexity of consciousness (and its scary doppelganger, the unconscious), it’s a novel, or any work of art, really.

Which makes, I guess, Observer, the novel itself, its own best argument. And a most convincing one at that.

#

High Noon on Proxima B
edited by David Boop
Baen Books
February 2023

Yes, yes, I know. I reviewed David Boop’s previous anthology on this theme, Gunfight on Europa Station, not very long ago. This time, though, I think he’s outdone himself in attracting some fine science fiction with western themes. And I’ll emphasize science fiction, because very often with “genre-bending” stories, the SF gets a little lost. As Boop makes clear in his Foreword, the authors have done their painstaking homework. And the results are evident.

Especially notable are stories by the always-reliable Brenda Cooper and Walter John Williams, not to mention Ken Scholes and Susan R. Matthews. Thea Hutcheson’s “Five Mules for Madame Calypso” took me by surprise; I thought stories about bordello ships were abandoned after Mike Resnick stopped writing them a few decades ago. “Justice and Prosperity” by Milton J. Davis is, frankly, a brilliant evocation of African American themes brought into a new perspective. The story from which the anthology takes its title, “High Noon on Proxima Centauri b,” by Cliff Winning, moves its action swiftly and effectively while juggling seemingly impossible loads of astronomical information with grace.

It’s all fine work.

Often, when editors return to themes like this for a follow-up collection, the results are not unlike “sequel syndrome” with popular films. In this case, Boop gets better, or his authors do. Personally, I wouldn’t tempt the fates with another in this series, but if Boop proves more intrepid than I, and rides the bronco one more time, I’ll be more than willing to slap a twenty-dollar gold piece down on the bar and say, “Hit me again.”

#

Fort Privilege
by Kit Reed
Doubleday Books
April 1985

Let us now praise Kit Reed.

I first encountered her work in the pages of F&SF. She wrote the kind of short fiction that I considered “experimental” at the time. Kind of a cosmopolitan Carol Emshwiller, with a touch of Margaret St. Clair and even a little Robert Sheckley. Innovative, sophisticated, witty. I still like her short fiction best, but fans also highly value some of her novels, especially Little Sisters of the Apocalypse.

Her novel, Fort Privilege, has always intrigued me. Critics in the field at the time seemed to pay little attention to it, though it displayed the kind of maturity and stylistic skill they called for. It was like a dish they ordered from the kitchen, then sent back without comment.

Which isn’t an inappropriate metaphor, since the novel is about a contingent of New York City’s super-wealthy, luxuriously ensconced in the fortress-like Parkhurst apartments (modeled on the famous Dakota) on Central Park West while the metropolis becomes an enormous reenactment of Escape from New York. Most of the city’s elite have retreated and, in the world of this novel, there isn’t much between the super-rich and the super-angry “rabble.” Led by the current owner, the Parkhurst residents intend to have at least one more defiant fling—not just interested in fiddling while Rome burns, but adding an entire symphony orchestra doing back flips on roller skates.

I think the novel was not accepted at the time because it didn’t engage in the usual class-struggle stereotypes. The wealthy Parkhurst residents, though far from admirable, are not execrable caricatures of all we hate about the super-rich. The mobs outside, justifiably raging against the inequities and filled with criminal intent, are barely depicted at all. Every critic seemed to have a predetermined notion of how this story should be told, and no regard for the story Reed was telling them. She had a distinct take on the growing disparity between the wealthy and everyone else. It wasn’t that different from the social justice issues the critics were looking for. In fact, in some ways she had taken those issues for granted to focus on other aspects of human behavior under such severe divisions.

Those aspects? Hard to summarize, if I really have a handle on what they are, but they seem to be expressed or alluded to in this passage early on in the novel, from the point of view of Bart, our closest protagonist and one of those not quite “to the manor born”:

 … What if things were as bad as everybody said? The Parkhurst was impregnable. The worse things were outside, the harder you danced. There was a kind of bizarre recklessness about this that pulled him along. They danced before the Battle of Waterloo, he thought; the night before the Sepoy uprising at, he thought it was one of the stations north of Delhi, there was one hell of an officers’ ball. Better have fun tonight; no telling what you would be called upon to do the next day.

We don’t need to see the rioters in Central Park to understand a common thread may run between “them that got” and “them that don’t.” To do so might spawn moral questions that are, in this novel, beside the point. And in these times, when the divisions between the “gots” and the “don’ts” have grown further than could have been imagined in 1985 (at least by many of us), it may be worthwhile to rediscover, or reexplore, this novel by an author of speculative fiction who never went for easy answers.

For which we should be ever grateful to her, and always remember her.

Copyright © 2023 by Richard Chwedyk.

~~~

Find the entire last issue at Galaxy’s Edge Magazine — where you can read for free until June 30, 2023.

AND

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GALAXY’S EDGE MAGAZINE FINAL ISSUE: STORY TEASERS ~ PART 2

#

To reiterate from our Part I Teasers post: it was Mike Resnick’s hope in starting Galaxy’s Edge magazine that: “Most of the new stories are by less-well-know (but not less talented) authors.” In keeping with that spirit, our Editor Lezli Robyn filled this final, and extra-large issue ~ Issue Sixty-Two: May 2023 ~ with twenty-two spectacular stories.

This week we’re bringing you a second taste, more teasers, the next bite of the second eleven stories of those stories, and our hope still? That you’ll read on, fall in love, and find your next favorite author! ♥

~~~

FIVE STAGES OF WHEN THE STARS WENT OUT
by Samantha Murray

Samantha Murray’s fiction has appeared in ClarkesworldStrange HorizonsThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science FictionLightspeedInterzone, Fantasy MagazineBeneath Ceaseless Skies and Escape Pod, among other fine places, and been collected in The Best Science Fiction of the Year. Samantha is a two-time Aurealis Award winner, and her work has been translated into Chinese and Vietnamese. You can find her on twitter @SamanthaNMurray. Samantha lives in Western Australia in a household of unruly boys.

***

You make a list of the things you will do when the stars come back.

  1. Have a big party with all of your friends. A star-party; outside, on the side of the grassy hill that slopes down towards the creek, where you can lay on a blanket and be filled up with the night air and look up and up and up and feel thankful and glorious. Of course it won’t actually be a big party though, because if you invite all of your friends it will only be two of you since you only have one friend. But it will still be awesome.
  2. You’ll make more effort at school. You won’t copy Lise’s answers in Chemistry anymore. You’ll study for the tests. You’ll complete all of your homework, instead of ignoring it or leaving it to the last minute or losing it scrunched up in the bottom of your bag. You’ll do it during the day because at night time you’ll climb onto the roof and talk to the stars like you used to do.
  3. You’ll teach your little brother to play chess, like he’s been bugging you to do for ages. You’ll be kinder and nicer and have more patience with him in general even when he’s annoying. You promise you will if only the stars when the stars come back.
  4. You’ll kiss your friend Lise. If she wants to. At the star-party when you are both looking up at the sky. You will definitely do this when the stars come back …

#

PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE
by Auston Habershaw

Auston Habershaw is a science fiction and fantasy author whose stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science FictionBeneath Ceaseless SkiesAnalog, and other places. He lives and works in Boston, MA. Find him on his website at aahabershaw.com

***

I climbed down into the dark canyons of Sadura with Hito Ghiasi’s head in a mesh sack.

This far down into the frontier planet’s abyssal crevasses, only a vestige of civilization was in evidence. Indelible spray paint marked the stone walls in Dryth characters—signs for construction crews, planetary geologists, and so on. Here and there was a seismic sensor spiked into a fault line—a little nub of steel with a blinking green light, reminding the locals that they were no longer alone.

Between these marks and strung between the canyon walls stretched kilometers of semi-organic cables, crisscrossing at crazy angles and fused together with crystalized binding agents in a complex network of webs. The work of the Quinix, the locals—the arachnids. The people paying me for the head.

My meeting with the arachnids wasn’t for an hour. I always arrive early—best way to stay alive in the contract killing business …

#

PROBABLY THE MOST AMAZING KISS EVER
by Robert P. Switzer

Robert P. Switzer lives and writes in London, Ontario, Canada. His fiction has been published in Tales of the UnanticipatedOn SpecNeo-opsisAndromeda Spaceways, and Space & Time. Robert’s story “Vibrations of the Wishful Kind” appeared in Issue Forty-Two of Galaxy’s Edge.

***

Being friends was great, but being more than friends would be even better, and as Zoe watched Ange innocently lick her lips, she imagined a kiss, a hellishly good kiss, probably the most amazing kiss ever.

They were both almost through their third beer, which meant they would soon call it a night and head their separate ways. It was looking a lot like the other dozen times they’d gone out for drinks, except that tonight Zoe had decided to be honest.

“Hey,” she said. “I really enjoy spending time with you.”

Ange smiled. “I enjoy spending time with you too.”

The smile encouraged Zoe. “Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to kiss you.”

Time seemed to slow right down, and Zoe had a chance to imagine ways Ange could respond. Maybe she would lean forward and say, “Come over here and find out.” Alternatively, maybe she would reach across the table and slap Zoe in the face. Other responses were no doubt possible, but for some reason Zoe was convinced it would be one of those two …

#

MERCY
by Stephen Lawson

Stephen Lawson is a veteran of the Navy and of the Army National Guard. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife. Stephen’s writing has appeared in Writers of the Future, Galaxy’s EdgeDaily Science Fiction, and several anthologies. He won the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award in 2018.

***

Alexander Northcott floated in space in his EVA suit. He’d watched his ship, the Arrow, disintegrate into nothing just minutes ago. Only he had survived—fortunate that he’d been doing hull repairs, but now doomed to die alone in the vacuum. The Arrow had been on an exploratory mission, far from any known inhabitable world, and well out of range of anyone who would hear a distress call.

He watched his oxygen reserve diminish—sixty percent, then forty, then twenty. He considered pulling off his helmet in the vacuum to speed the process, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Available oxygen gave way to carbon dioxide, and Alexander Northcott’s vision grew black at the edges. Soon, he was unconscious …

#

THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
by Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick, along with editing the first seven years of Galaxy’s Edge magazine, was the winner of five Hugo Awards from a record thirty-seven nominations and was, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short fiction. He was the author of over eighty novels, around 300 stories, three screenplays, and the editor of over forty anthologies. He was Guest of Honor at the 2012 Worldcon.

***

April 4:

What am I doing here?

We have no servants, we never go out, we never have company. The furniture is all decrepit and ugly, the place always smells musty, and although the rest of the village has electrical power, Victor refuses to run it up the hill to the castle. We read by candlelight and we heat with fireplaces.

This is not the future I had envisioned for myself.

Oh, I know, we made the usual bargain—he got my money and my body, and I got his title. I don’t know what I thought being the Baroness von Frankenstein would be like, but this isn’t it. I knew he owned a centuries-old castle with no improvements, but I didn’t think we’d live in it full-time.

Victor can be so annoying. He constantly whistles this tuneless song, and when I complain he apologizes and then starts humming it instead. He never stands up to that ill-mannered little hunchback that he’s always sending out on errands. And he’s a coward. He can never just come to me and say “I need money again.” Oh, no, not Victor. Instead he sends that ugly little toady who’s rude to me and always smells like he hasn’t washed …

#

THE BLEEDING MOON
by Monte Lin

While being rained on in Oregon, Monte Lin edits, writes, and plays tabletop roleplaying games. He has stories in Cossmass InfinitiesCast of WondersFlame Tree Press, Dark Matter, and Ignyte-nominated nonfiction at Strange Horizons. He is also Managing Editor of Uncanny Magazine and Staff Editor for Angry Hamster Press.

***

The Moon was bleeding again. Selene’s mother gestured to the crimson circle high in the sky, her silver chain in her hands, whispering a hurried prayer. Selene merely shrugged.

To Selene, the Moon had always bled, a carmine drop slowly forming every month underneath. People held a collective breath before each plump drop fell onto their world. And then she would hear rumors of an ichorthing rampaging through the land. Once, when she was small, Selene had wished aloud to see an ichorthing, and her mother clamped her hand on her arm and shook her, shouting, “Never say that! This is why we live out here. Let the ichorthings demolish those fools, collecting in the village like so much bait.” So now, Selene kept her wishes to herself …

#

SLOW BLOW CIRCUIT
by Lisa Short

Lisa Short is a Texas-born, Kansas-bred writer of fantasy, science fiction and horror. She currently lives in Maryland with her husband, youngest child, father-in-law, two cats and a puppy. Lisa is a member of SFWA and HWA and can be found online at lisashortauthor.com and on Twitter and Instagram @Lisa_K_Short.

***

Miz Igwe kept Nolly late after class. Usually Nolly didn’t mind that, because Miz Igwe always had a lot of interesting things to say, but today it did bother her. She tried not to show it, though, smiling her best all through Miz Igwe’s speech about still haven’t heard back from your mama ’bout enrolling you in those special classes! til her cheeks were tight and sore.

Mama didn’t mind if Nolly took the special classes, not at all, but Mama wasn’t so good about returning people’s messages. As Nolly broke into a trot towards Halcyon Complex’s Main Terminal, she tried to fix it in her head to tell Mama to talk to Miz Igwe when she got home, but thoughts of Ivory kept intruding—Ivory, who had won that week’s class game for the first time ever, and the prize, too. There weren’t always prizes for winning one of the class games, and sometimes even when there were, the prizes were boring; Nolly had won enough of them herself to know all about that. But this one was Ivory’s prize, and Nolly had wanted to see it more than anything. Even then, she hadn’t managed it; the other kids had crowded too tight around Ivory, clamoring to see it themselves, and then Miz Igwe had held Nolly back when the end-of-class bell had rung …

#

SIX WAYS TO GET PAST THE SHADOW SHOGUN’S GOONS,
AND ONE THING TO DO WHEN YOU GET THERE
by Stewart C Baker

Stewart C Baker is an academic librarian and author of speculative fiction and poetry, along with the occasional piece of interactive fiction. His fiction has appeared in NatureLightspeedand Galaxy’s Edge, among other places, and his poetry has appeared in FantasyAsimov’sand numerous haiku magazines. Stewart was born in England, has lived in South Carolina, Japan, and California, and now lives within the traditional homelands of the Luckiamute Band of Kalapuya in western Oregon, along with his family—although if anyone asks, he’ll usually say he’s from the Internet.

***

1. Dust ’em

“Listen, little lady,” the guy in front of the door is saying with a sneer. “There’s two types of swordsman …”

Chiyome’s already heard enough to peg his type, so she tunes out his braggadocio and pulls out a bag of nanite dust. She’d hoped to use her status as the Shingen warlord’s only child to bluff her way in to the Shadow Shogun’s presence, but the dust works too. She blows a handful in his face and he shrieks, drops his sword, then follows it to the floor, thrashing in the station’s artificial gravity.

Behind her, Rui whistles. “What’d you give him?” The other woman asks.

“You know how my father’s always talking about unsanctioned violence and other threats to order?”

“Sure, but I always figured he only says it because he’s the one doing the sanctioning. No offense.”

“None taken. The point is, every time this guy even thinks about violence for the next 4 hours, this will happen.”

“Not bad.”

“Not bad? It’ll take you longer to beat the next one with your naginata, I bet.”

“A bet, eh?” Rui cups Chiyome’s chin in one long, slender hand and tilts her head up. “Well and good, then. We’ll bet a favor.”

“A favor and a kiss.”

#

CARRION
by Storm Humbert

Storm Humbert is a writer currently living in Michigan. He has an MFA from Temple University, where he studied with Samuel R. (Chip) Delany, Don Lee, and other awesome faculty. Storm has been published in Andromeda SpacewaysApexInterzone, and many anthologies, including Writers of the Future #36.

***

When Dibsy Parkin was twelve, walking home from school, she saw a turkey buzzard struggling in the ditch on the side of the road. It was struggling because I’d worked good and hard to get a piece of my body from the tomb in the woods out into the open, and that piece was lodged in the buzzard’s throat. Not many have gotten to smell a buzzard’s throat (and fewer still know that spirits can smell), but I was inclined to believe I was suffering more than the bird.

Dibsy rushed over, undaunted by the buzzard’s raised wings. It was too weak to hurt her, but she had no way to know that. Dibsy was good, and Dibsy was brave. Say what you want about her life choices, but she had that going for her.

She wrestled the bird’s mouth open, and there we came face-to-face for the first time. Well, face-to … sternum bone chip, let’s say. She went to work, but I’d been in there a while, and even though I’d already found a mark, I needed the bird to die. A lich can never absorb too much life energy. Plus, I could see it plain as death on her face—Dibsy cared about this bird. So, I kept my anchoring barbs in until the buzzard was beyond help, then I let Dibsy pry me free. Oh, anyone with a conscience might’ve cried if they’d heard her once I was out.

“Come on birdy,” she said. “Come on!”

#

THE WOMAN OF THE LAKE
by Marissa Tian

Marissa Tian is an Asian, first-generation immigrant. She works as a trader in the financial industry and writes in her free time for passion. Her work was a winner of Stories That Need to Be Told 2022 contest. She lives in Houston, TX with her husband and three fur babies.

***

The crickets and owl carrying on their nighttime dialogue outside and his wife’s breathing heavily in her dream next to him were Kang’s only company at midnight. He tossed and turned but couldn’t ease his mind.

Only two clay jars of rice were left. Would they last through the next harvest? Maybe he should plant more while it was still April … and add some cucumbers to the garden for pickling. They’d need much more food this year with their daughter growing up.

Kang stroked his wife’s long hair a few times and rolled gently out of bed, so the wooden bed wouldn’t squeak.

The room was roughly four times the size of their bed and contained all of their belongings—a loom, a wooden bucket, a three-foot-tall cabinet which double-functioned as a dining table, two stools, and a bamboo basket on the floor in the corner.

Kang tiptoed to the basket and squatted. His daughter was tucked in a blue blanket inside. Bright moonlight shone through the wooden window onto her smooth skin. Her eyes were closed to the world, and her tiny hands rested at her sides. In the corner of her lips, a thin line of drool dripped. Kang couldn’t help but smile. He reached out his hand to wipe it but stopped midway and pulled back. His hand was too rough for her skin …

#

YANG FENG PRESENTS—THE BLACK ZONE: MURDER IN THE LOCKED ROOM
by Fu Qiang, translation by Roy Gilham

Fu Qiang, a representative of the Chinese science fiction writers born in the 1980s, is a fan of science fiction, murder mysteries, and animation. He has a PhD in Physics from Beijing University, and his scientific research is currently focused on green energy and low-carbon management solutions. He has published the science fiction novels The Abyss of Time, Grab the Planet, and Her Secret, as well as a series of short novellas, The Loners’ Game.

This story recommended in this issue, “The Black Zone: Murder in the Locked Room,” was originally published in the 13th volume of the Chinese edition of Galaxy’s Edge. The detective partners Gao Yun and Fang Hui, however, made their first appearance in the Chinese edition’s very first volume, back in 2018. In this series of stories, this resourceful detective duo—with very different personalities—display a physicist’s understanding of advanced technology along with a deep love of science fiction, which has made them popular among readers.

Here, on a planet shielded within a black zone, in a forbidden region isolated from the outside world, what kind of cosmic mystery awaits to be solved?

Please enjoy.

***

Ai Er sat stiffly at the wooden table, shivering as the dry, cold wind blew in through the open window. If the deeds of this detective duo hadn’t been so legendary across the Internet, he wouldn’t have journeyed to such a remote asteroid to ask for help. He never imagined the famous detectives would work out of this nondescript wooden house. Looking at the room’s shabby furnishings, he wondered how they survived the winter here.

Gao Yun, a stout, muscular man with scars on his face and upper arms, was busy at the coffee machine. Ai Er guessed he was from military background. But it was the woman staring at him across the round table that made him uncomfortable, the greed in her eyes at odds with her beautiful face. Looking at Fang Hui, Ai Er felt less like a client, and more like a fat sheep thrown to the wolves.

There was a rumbling sound outside the window, and a blast of hot air rippled the curtains. Ai Er gazed out of the window. His company’s large spaceship had set sail, climbing into the sky at a slow, steady acceleration. He cleared his throat …

~~~

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GALAXY’S EDGE MAGAZINE: A LOOK BACK (CONT.) ISSUE TWO

A couple of weeks ago, we shared a look back to Issue One’s: The Editor’s Word by Mike Resnick. In that article, Mike shared some of the “colorful” history of the Science Fiction world and then promised to return in Issue Two with a story or two about the writers and editors who make up this genre.

Keep reading for a look back and a little fun.

~~~

From the end of the last Editor’s Word by Mike Resnick:

“Mike here again. Okay, now you know a bit about the magazines. Next issue I’ll tell you about some of the writers and editors who make up this colorful field.”

And now …

#

THE EDITOR’S WORD
by Mike Resnick

~May 2013~

Welcome to the second issue of Galaxy’s Edge. Like the first, and all future issues, this one is a mixture of new stories and reprints, reviews and columns. The reprints are stories you may have missed by very-well-known authors, and the new stories are by authors who we expect to join the ranks of the well-known somewhere up the road.

And while I’m on the subject of well-known authors …

We have quite a coup this issue. The magnificent C. L. Moore has been one of my two or three favorite authors for the past half century, and I assure you I’m not alone in this regard. She broke into print in her early twenties, and her very first story, “Shambleau,” which appeared in a 1933 issue of Weird Tales, is an acknowledged classic.

Well, “Shambleau” was her first professional story, but it turns out that her very first published story was “Happily Ever After,” which appeared in the November 1930 issue of The Vagabond, a student magazine published by Indiana University. It’s quite short, but it shows that she had the right stuff even then. And with this issue, Galaxy’s Edge is thrilled to be able to present—for the first time in 83 years—C. L. Moore’s very first story. Thanks to Catherine for writing it, and to Andrew Liptak for unearthing it.

And why (I hear you ask) was she “C. L.” rather than “Catherine”? The general assumption is that she was hiding her gender in what was an almost all-male field. Logical, but wrong. She was hiding her name from her employer, a bank president who viewed the pulps with total loathing.

An interesting historical tidbit?

Yes, it is—and it’s just one of many.

So many people are so interested in the giants of our field—many, alas, no longer with us—that I thought I’d share some memories of them with you before they’re all forgotten by me and others.

***

The late Robert Sheckley was my good friend, and even my collaborator the year before his death.

Bob occasionally suffered from Writer’s Block, but he had an infallible way of beating it. He set himself an absolute minimum production of 5,000 words a day. If he couldn’t think of anything else, he told me, he’d write his name 2,500 times. And on those days he was blocked, he’d sit down and force himself to start typing. And to quote him: “By the time I’d typed ‘Robert Sheckley’ 800 or 900 times, a little subconscious editor would kick in and say ‘Fuck it, as long as you’re stuck here for another 3,300 words, you might as well write a story.’”

According to Bob, it never failed.

***

E. E. “Doc” Smith was the first pro I ever met at a con, back in 1963. Sweet man, very fond of fandom, very accessible to anyone. I always thought his greatest invention (other than the Lens and the Lensmen) was the seasonal Ploorians. Doc’s daughter, Verna Trestrail, became a good friend, and I used to see her every year at Midwestcon and Rivercon. She once remarked that she helped her dad from time to time. So I asked how, and she replied that, among other things, she had invented the Ploorians.

(Verna also created the planet where Clarissa had to function in the nude. She told me that Doc bought a gorgeous painting of it—and Mrs. Doc took one look at it and consigned it to the attic for the next 25 years.)

***

I met Robert A. Heinlein only a couple of times, at the 1976 and 1977 Worldcons, so I have no personal anecdotes to tell you about him—but Theodore Sturgeon had one. There was a point in the mid-1940s where Sturgeon was played out. He couldn’t come up with any saleable stories, his creditors were after him, and he was terminally depressed…and he mentioned it to Heinlein in a letter. A week later he got a letter from Heinlein with 26 story ideas and a $100 bill to tide him over until he started selling again. And, according to Sturgeon, before the decade was over he had written and sold all 26 stories.

***

I never met Fredric Brown. I know he grew up in Cincinnati, where I have lived the past 37 years, but no one here remembers meeting him. And I know he spent a lot of time working in Chicago, where I spent my first 33 years, and I never met anyone there who knew him either. But I do know he had a habit, especially when writing his mysteries (which far outnumbered his science fiction) of getting on a Greyhound bus and riding it for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles, until he had his plot worked out to the last detail. Then he’d come home, sit down, and quickly type the book he’d already written in his head while touring the countryside.

***

Phil Klass (who wrote as “William Tenn”) told this one on a panel I moderated at Noreascon IV, the 2004 Worldcon where he was the Guest of Honor.

He was dating a new girl, and he mentioned it to Ted Sturgeon when they were both living in New York. Sturgeon urged Phil to bring the girl to his apartment for dinner. He and his wife would lay out an impressive spread, and Ted would regale the girl with tales of how talented and important Phil was. Phil happily agreed.

What he didn’t know was that Ted and his then-wife were nudists. So Phil and the girl walk up to the door of Ted’s apartment, Phil knocks, the door opens, and there are Ted and his wife, totally naked. They greet them and start leading them to the dining room.

Phil’s girl turns to him and whispers: “You didn’t tell me we had to dress for dinner!”

***

Speaking of dinners …

At our first Worldcon, Discon I in 1963—I was 21, my still-beautiful bride Carol was 20—Randall Garrett invited a bunch of new writers and their spouses out for dinner—his treat. Then, during dessert, he excused himself to say something of vital importance to his agent, who was walking past the restaurant. He left the table—and we never saw him again. The rest of us got stuck with the tab (it was an expensive restaurant, we were broke kids, and Randy himself had the most expensive dish and wine on the menu).

Move the clock ahead three years. Randy spots Carol and me at Tricon (the 1966 Worldcon in Cleveland) and offers to buy us dinner. We say sure. During dessert Carol excuses herself to go powder her nose, and I remember a phone call I have to make. We meet and walk out, leaving Randy with the tab he had promised to pay (but, according to Bob Bloch, Bob Tucker, and others I’d spoken to before going out with him, had no intention of paying).

Move the clock ahead one more year, and we’re at NYcon III, the 1967 Worldcon in New York. On opening night Randy spots me across the room, turns red in the face, and yells: “Resnick, I’m never eating dinner with you again!”

I got an ovation from every pro and fan he’d ever stuck with a dinner check.

***

And let me end with one about a living giant, just to be different—my friend, Nebula Grand Master, Worldcon Guest of Honor, and contributor to this issue, Robert Silverberg.

When Bob started submitting to Astounding, John Campbell turned down his first few stories, and Bob’s sometime collaborator Randy Garrett (they wrote as “Robert Randall”) suggested that Campbell disliked Jewish names, so Bob submitted one under the name of “Calvin M. Knox,” and Campbell bought it.

Over the years he sold to Campbell as both “Knox” and Silverberg. Some years later John Campbell asked him why he’d used the Knox name. Bob gave him an honest answer. Campbell’s reply: “Did you ever hear of Isaac Asimov?”

Then, as the conversation was drawing to a close and Bob was about to leave, Campbell asked him why of all the pseudonyms in the world he chose Calvin M. Knox. Bob replied that it was the most Protestant-sounding name he could think of.

Finally, as he’s going out the door, Campbell asks him what the “M” stands for.

Bob’s answer: “Moses.”

***

How can you not love this field?

~~~

We agree, Mike. We agree. ♥

Join us next week when we share Part 2 of some snippets of the twenty-two stories gracing Galaxy’s Edge magazine’s last issue.

~~~

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GALAXY’S EDGE MAGAZINE FINAL ISSUE: STORY TEASERS ~ PART I

#

It was Mike Resnick’s hope in starting Galaxy’s Edge magazine that: “Most of the new stories are by less-well-know (but not less talented) authors.” In keeping with that spirit, our Editor Lezli Robyn filled this final, and extra-large issue ~ Issue Sixty-Two: May 2023 ~ with twenty-two spectacular stories.

This week we’re bringing you a taste, a teaser, an amuse-bouche of the first eleven stories of those stories, and our hope? That you’ll read on and find your next favorite author! ♥

~~~

MOON AND SKY, FEATHER AND STONE
by Rebecca E. Treasure

Rebecca grew up reading in the Rockies and has lived in many places, including Japan & Germany. Rebecca’s short fiction has been published by or is forthcoming from Flame Tree, Zooscape Magazine, Galaxy’s Edge, and others. Fueled by cheese-covered starch and corgi fur, Rebecca is an editor at Apex Magazine and a writing mentor.

***

Lora never fit where she was. When the moon bells rang and everyone’s eyes turned glassy, hers stayed dull and hollow. When Mother made blackberry tea, Lora snuck warm goat milk from the bucket. When Father sang the morning song and Ella cried with faith and passion, the music jangled in Lora’s ears.

The closest she’d ever been to belonging was right here, mud squishing between her toes and her little brother’s hand in hers as they prepared to jump.

Lora looked down into Oran’s eyes. “Ready?”

He shared her grin, nodding. They scrambled up the steep granite over the swimming hole, a miniature mountain. Their breathing deepened, drawing in delicate perfume from lilacs surrounding the clearing. Three steps—Lora shortened hers so they leapt together—and they flew.

Lora knew where she’d fit, but it was in a place she’d never been, with people who were not hers …

#

THAT SUNDAY ON THE TRAIL WITH THE MEREST BREATH OF SEA
by Beth Cato

Nebula Award-nominated Beth Cato is the author of A Thousand Recipes for Revenge from 47North plus two fantasy series from Harper Voyager. She’s a Hanford, California native now residing in a far distant realm. Follow her at BethCato.com and on Twitter at @BethCato

***

Rosamund had hopes that the family reunion wouldn’t completely suck after her mom told her it’d take place in Cambria, right on the California coast, but as Mom drove up a narrow winding road flanked by squished-tight houses, Rosamund’s enthusiasm withered up like a three-year-old raisin.

“Mom! I can’t even see the ocean!” Rosamund twisted around to look, the seatbelt strap threatening to strangle her.

“You’ll be able to smell the ocean from the camp, I’m sure. Now face forward.”

Rosamund flung herself around. “This is going to be awful. They don’t even like me.”

“Stop that. My family loves you.” Mom glanced at her in the rear-view mirror.

“But they think I’m a freak.”

Mom sighed and didn’t argue. Rosamund glowered out a window that showed only pines as the road dipped and snaked through a small patch of forest. A tall wooden archway, adorned with balloons, announced their arrival at Camp Carraway …

#

THE LAND OF PERMUTATIONS
by Tatsiana Zamirovskaya
translated by Julia Meitov Hersey

Tatsiana Zamirovskaya is a writer from Belarus, who moved to Brooklyn in 2015. She writes metaphysical and socially charged fiction about memory, ghosts, hybrid identities, and borders between empires and languages. Tatsiana is the author of 3 short story collections and a novel about digital resurrection, The Deadnet, which was published in 2021 in Moscow, receiving great critical acclaim. She is also a journalist and essayist, writing about art, traumatic memories, dictatorships and dreams.

Born in Moscow, Julia Meitov Hersey moved to Boston at the age of nineteen and has been straddling the two cultures ever since. She spends her days juggling a full-time job and her beloved translation projects. Julia is a recipient of the Rosetta Science Fiction and Fantasy Award for Best Translated Work, long form (2021).

***

A terrible rumbling noise woke us up at nine in the morning.

It was the fieldour field.

We took off as soon as we heard it, obviously, because it was our field. Everything that happened there was ours, and only ours. That’s where Nielle and I met the brown earthen witch in her mushroom apothecary cap. That’s where, breathless with terror, I summoned the White Dog on the fifth moonrise, and the Dog came, and brought us ten-day-old pups in a basket, just for cuddles. Every day these pups, blind and sweetly hairless like dandelions after a storm, grew thinner, their skin more pink and transparent, until on the tenth day they morphed into a pile of quietly wiggling skin bubbles, and then the White Dog came and took them back into her womb. That’s where Nielle dug a grave for the forest devil and did such a great job that, when the forest devil died, he came and lay in his new grave because he had no other refuge, no other place to go. That’s where we searched for the meat fern flower on a July night, and eventually we found it and put it under Uncle Volodya’s pillow. The next morning he won the lottery—a three-room apartment somewhere on the outskirts of our town. He stays in that apartment drinking day and night, and now we know we should have put that flower under his ex-wife’s pillow, not his. It was our field, our feral, bloody, boggy, alive land, and our hair sat within it, and the amber half moons of our nails, our incantations, and the summer rhymes we composed for Death. (It was Nielle’s idea to write special verses for Death so She would stop by the edge of the field and listen for a moment. The verses were to have these special white spots, flickering agony, arrhythmical Cheyne-Stokes rattle, pools of cloudy morning water in lamb hooves, an attentive stare of a bewitched snipe at sundown—we couldn’t break the spell, but at least we tried.) …

#

THE INCONSTANT HEART
by Kary English

Kary English is a Hugo and Astounding finalist whose work has been published by Galaxy’s Edge, The Grantville Gazette, Wordfire Press, Writers of the Future, and Tor Nightfire.

***

Once upon a time in the spring of the world, a young man named Edwin set out to seek his fortune. Edwin’s coat was thin and threadbare, and his boots were more patches than leather. His purse held only a few small coins, but his back was strong and his heart was pure, so off he went into the wide world with a pack over one shoulder and his bow over the other. He walked for several days until the fields gave way to wilder lands, and the road dwindled to a dusty track. On the eve of the seventh day, he came across a cottage of wattle and daub nestled against the edge of a dark forest.

Night was falling. A chill wind out of the east sliced through Edwin’s coat like a scythe through wheat. His stomach rumbled, for he’d had nothing to eat or drink but water from a nearby stream. Warm firelight flickered through the cottage window, and when Edwin drew near, he could smell the cottager’s supper cooking inside. Barley stew, he thought, and bannocks baking on the hearth. If Edwin had heard even half the tales about enchanted forests and the misadventures of widow’s sons, he might have turned away from the cottage and slept on the cold ground instead …

#

THE WEREWOLF
by Jonathan Lenore Kastin

Jonathan Lenore Kastin (he/they) is a queer, trans writer with an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His short stories can be found in On Spec and Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, as well as the anthologies Ab(solutely) NormalTransmogrify! and Queer Beasties.

***

It was late April when Amelia realized that she was a werewolf. She was reading in her room one evening and as the moon came out from behind a cloud it fixed her with a pale, trembling beam of light. She froze at once, sniffed the wind, and took off her skin. Underneath grew a radiant coat of fur and one by one her senses came alive to the night.

The next day she tried to tell her mother.

“I’m a werewolf,” she said, picking leaves out of her golden hair.

Her mother patted her on the head. “That’s nice dear. Maybe Aunt Matilda will make you a costume for Halloween.”

“No,” said Amelia. “I’m a real werewolf. With fur and claws and everything.”

“Well,” said her mother. “As long as you don’t stay out in the woods too late.” She went back to her magazines …

#

FRUITING BODIES
by Xauri’EL Zwaan

Xauri’EL Zwaan is a mendicant artist in search of meaning, fame and fortune, or pie (where available). Zie lives and writes in a little hobbit hole in Saskatoon, Canada on Treaty 6 territory with zir life partner and two very lazy cats.

***

There was a strange plant in Mrs. Edgerington’s garden.

The plant looked like a tiny clamshell sprouting up out of the ground. It had a smooth surface, glistened with a dull silver sheen, and ended in a sharp knife-like ridge. It didn’t look like anything she had ever seen before. In fact, it hardly looked like a plant at all, though it certainly grew like one. Mrs. Edgerington had her grandson look on the internet to see what it was, but he couldn’t find anything matching the description. He told her she should dig it up and burn it, but Mrs. Edgerington liked weird plants, and she decided to let it grow and see what happened.

The plant slowly got bigger and bigger over the next few months. Neither water nor lack of water affected its rate of growth, nor did shade or sun. It eventually grew to about a foot in height and half a foot in width …

#

XI BOX
by T. R. Napper

T. R. Napper is a multi-award winning science fiction author, including the Australian Aurealis twice. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Interzone, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous others, and been translated into Hebrew, German, French, and Vietnamese. Before turning to writing, T. R. Napper was a diplomat and aid worker, delivering humanitarian programs in Southeast Asia for a decade. During this period, he received a commendation from the Government of Laos for his work with the poor. He also was a resident of the Old Quarter in Hanoi for several years, the setting for his debut novel, 36 Streets. These days he has returned to his home country of Australia, where he works as a Dungeon Master, running campaigns for young people with autism for a local charity.

***

The first thing Joshua Lee did was whisper his dreams into the Xi Box. Snatching up those fragments running around the plughole of his hippocampus, before they faded from view. Before they could be absorbed into the back fabric of his mind.

After his dreams, he confessed his feelings. His fears, mainly.

The little things, to start with. The Infected woman at work who’d accused Joshua of stealing her lunch. He’d told her no, even though he had; he’d eaten it all, container perched on his lap in a darkened file room. Then the slow-burning fear: he’d fail to pass probation in his new position. Corollary: the already unsustainable mortgage on their two-bedroom apartment burying them.

Then the biggest fear.

Jess would go over. That part of her wanted to become Infected. Like so many others. The simplicity of it, the relief of being able to join the Children of Heaven, though she would never admit it …

#

KRISTIN, WITH CAPRICE
by Alan Smale

Alan Smale is the double Sidewise Award-winning author of the Clash of Eagles trilogy, and his shorter fiction has appeared in Asimov’s and numerous other magazines and original anthologies. His latest novel, Hot Moon, came out last year from CAEZIK SF & Fantasy. When he is not busy creating wonderful new stories, he works as an astrophysicist and data archive manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

***

He did not ring the bell. Strange enough to have to knock on his own front door, when the key was in his pocket. He heard a strange bleating sound from within, quickly suppressed. Then footsteps, and his heart began to thump a little harder.

Kristin opened the door and stared at him. Her hair was in a bandanna and she wore an old softball tee-shirt. Around her eyes were traces of yesterday’s makeup. House-cleaning, then. Scrubbing away the last of him.

She looked so gorgeous he wanted to cry.

“I came for my things,” he said.

“If you’d called, I could have been out.” She stood aside to let him in. Reluctantly.

“That’s not necessary,” said Paul. “You don’t have to do that. You look great.”

“Yes, it is,” she replied. “Yes, I do. No, I really don’t. Your stuff’s in the spare room.” She walked into the kitchen and he heard the strange squeal again. Perhaps the sound of a sponge against the inside of the oven? …

#

THE DREADNOUGHT AGAMEMNON, ON COURSE TO CONQUER THE PEACEFUL MOON OF RE
by Dafydd McKimm

Dafydd McKimm is a speculative short fiction writer whose stories have appeared in publications such as Flash Fiction OnlineDaily Science FictionDeep Magic, The Cafe Irreal, and elsewhere. He was born and raised in Wales but now lives in Taipei, Taiwan. You can find him online at www.dafyddmckimm.com

***

As when an airship, streaming westward soon after dawn into the city, is silhouetted by the sun and dilates like a pupil as it makes its final approach with the slow, steady pace of massive things;

so the dreadnought Agamemnon, on course to conquer the peaceful moon of Re, awoke;

and as when you descend the gangway and take your first steps along the city’s arabesque of streets, not knowing where you are going, for you’ve never visited this city before and have no friends or place to stay or any idea of how to speak the language that permeates the air like the chatter of strange insects wherever you go, or what you will do now that you’re here, thinking for a moment that perhaps you should go back, back to where you came from and the safety of it, the security of its familiar pathways and customs, the blissful boredom of doing things the way you’ve been told for so long they’re second nature; but no, no, you’ll never go back to that—never—and so you walk on, wandering the city without a destination, not understanding a word, not knowing what food is good to eat or indeed how to ask for it, and even when you do manage to get something onto a plate in front of you, worrying that you might commit some awful impropriety so that those around you, those people who have known this city and the ways of this city from birth, will laugh at you and mock you as stranger, foreigner, and yet finding small comfort in knowing that at least your old life is behind you, that you have shed your past like the pale, translucent skin of a snake and can begin anew here, in this city, which is so beautiful, with its painted houses perched on forested hills and markets full of sweet temptations and patterned fabrics and parks dotted with statues of creatures from myths you’ve never heard of and noisy processions that pop and fizzle and chime with the ring and crash and keening of unfamiliar instruments and temples to so many different gods …

#

PABLOVISION
by Deborah L. Davitt

Deborah L. Davitt was raised in Nevada, but currently lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and son. Her poetry and prose have appeared in over fifty journals, including, F&SFAnalog, and Lightspeed. For more about her work, including her novels, poetry collections, and her recent chapbook, From Voyages Unending, please see www.edda-earth.com

***

The object of backpacking through Europe in your twenties is to see strange things—or at least to look at the world through new eyes. You only get so many chances to paint old walls and ruined fortresses; to capture the patina of time itself.

Drew took a bus into Spain, figuring he would hike the Pyrenes while the weather remained good; the driver woke him in the gray of dawn and turfed him in a village that Drew’s phone informed him was Santa Pau. His phone further told him that the ancient walls he saw, which captured the dawn’s light so enchantingly, had been built in the thirteenth century.

Enraptured, he set up his easel in an out-of-the-way spot. He had charcoals with him, and he wanted to capture some of the spirit of this place, before he lost this magical moment. Maybe even mix some watercolors, try to catch the evanescent colors on paper so that when he had an opportunity to work on canvas later, it would be easier for his late-dreaming mind to recall what his eyes saw now …

#

A FEAST OF MEMORIES
by R.D. Harris

R.D. Harris lives with his family of four in Arizona and works as a biomedical technician by day. He loves the Carolina Tarheels, time with his kids, and SpongeBob. His work has appeared in Little Blue MarbleTerraform[Motherboard], and Galaxy’s Edge magazine.

***

We were hidden in his garden, where he wanted to die. The garden in our hollow where he taught me about life and how to be a man.

“Dad,” I said, tears blinding me, “you know where we are?”

His fading cognition and memory broke my heart. My hero and life-long role model couldn’t remember who I was half the time.

Eyes half-open, tired, Dad said, “On the ground,” with a mustered grin.

I couldn’t help but laugh. It was bittersweet, though, as the shimmering caterpillars squirmed from their vegetable meals to my dad’s girth atop the tilled soil. They scaled his body from all sides and froze on his stomach, waiting until it was time.

I cradled his half-bald head and whispered, “We’re in the garden like you wanted.” I kissed his forehead.

“The mimics?” he uttered, eyeing the larvae that patiently waited for him to pass on. Dad’s memory was serving him well. I hoped it would serve the mimics too …

~~~

Last week we posted Mike Resnick’s very first Editor’s Word where he shared some colorful history on science fiction magazines. Now, join us next week when we hear from Mr. Resnick again as he regales us with stories about some of the writers and editors who made up our favorite fiction field.

~~~

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GALAXY’S EDGE MAGAZINE: A LOOK BACK TO ISSUE ONE

Ten years ago, Mike Resnick started Galaxy’s Edge magazine with a desire to share “some pretty good stories.” Today, we take you back to that inaugural issue for a look back on the history of science fiction magazines as told by Mr. Resnick in the very first Editor’s Word. ~Enjoy!

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THE EDITOR’S WORD
by Mike Resnick

~ March 2013 ~

Welcome to the premier issue of Galaxy’s Edge. We’ll be coming around every two months with a mixture of new stories and reprints, reviews and columns. Almost all the reprints will be by very-well-known authors; most of the new stories will be by less-well-known (but not less talented) authors.

We’re very proud to be the latest addition to the pantheon of science fiction magazines, which have a pair of histories—one long and glorious, the other just as long but inglorious (and infinitely more interesting).

You think not?

Let me share some of it with you before the last of us Old Guys (and Gals) pass from the scene and there’s no one left to remember the Untold History of the Science Fiction Magazines anymore.

***

The Shaver Mystery

In 1938, Ray Palmer, an undersized hunchback with a pretty thorough understanding of his readership, took over the editorship of Amazing Stories. At the time, John Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction, featuring the best of Heinlein, Asimov, Sturgeon, Hubbard, van Vogt, de Camp, Simak, and Kuttner, ruled supreme among the magazines—but then Palmer came up with a gimmick that changed everything: the Shaver Mystery.

He ran a novel—rather generic, rather poorly written—called I Remember Lemuria! It was all about these creatures called Deros that lived hidden away from humanity but were preparing to do dire things to us. Nothing special in any way—

—except that Palmer swore to his readers, who consisted mostly of impressionable teen-aged boys, that the story was true, and that Richard Shaver was forced by the Powers That Be to present it as fiction or no one—including Ziff-Davis, Palmer’s bosses—would dare risk publishing it.

Sounds silly, doesn’t it?

Well, the really silly part came next: while Palmer was running another dozen or so “Shaver Mystery novels”—each worse than the last—from 1945 to 1948, his circulation skyrocketed. Amazing passed Astounding, spread-eagled the field, and became the top-selling science fiction magazine, not only of that era, but of any era.

I’ll tell you a little story about the Shaver Mystery. Back when I was editing men’s magazines in Chicago in the late 1960s, I used, among others, a very talented artist, slightly older than myself, named Bill Dichtl. One day we got to talking, and found out we were both science fiction fans, and Bill told me about his adventures with the Shaver Mystery.

He was a 14-year-old subscriber to Amazing in the late 1940s, living in Chicago (where Amazing was published), and one day he got a mysterious phone call, asking if he would like to help in the secret war against the Deros. Of course he said he would. He was given an address to go to that Friday night, and was warned to tell no one about this assignation.

So on Friday night, Bill sneaked out of his house and dutifully went to the address, which happened to be the building that housed the Ziff-Davis publishing empire. He took the elevator up to the appointed floor, found himself in a darkened corridor, saw a single light coming out from beneath a door at the far end of it, walked to the door, saw it was the room number he had been given, and entered. There was a long table, and maybe a dozen other earnest teen-aged boys were sitting at it.

Bill took a seat, and they all waited in silence. About ten minutes later a little hunchbacked man entered the room. It was Ray Palmer, of course. He explained that the Deros would soon be making their move against an unsuspecting humanity, and it was the duty of the boys in that room to spend the rest of the night warning as many people as possible of the coming struggle so they wouldn’t be caught unaware.

He had lists of thousands of addresses, which the boys dutifully copied onto blank envelopes. He had thousands of folded and stapled “warnings” that they stuffed into the envelopes. He had thousands of stamps that they licked and stuck onto the envelopes. They finished at sunrise, and Palmer swore them all to secrecy and thanked them for helping to save humanity.

Bill had stuffed a copy of the warning into his pocket to give to his parents, just in case they had somehow been omitted from the mailing list. On the subway home, he opened it and read it—and found out that Palmer had duped the boys into mailing out thousands of subscription renewal notices.

By 1949 Palmer was gone. He started Other Worlds, hired a gorgeous Cincinnati fan, Bea Mahaffey, to edit it for him, and even brought Shaver along. (To this day, some people think Palmer was Shaver. They were wrong; he was actually seen with Palmer by some fans and pros. Someone purporting to be Shaver wrote some letters to Richard Geis’ Hugo-winning fanzine, Science Fiction Review, in the 1970s, but no one ever saw him or followed up on it.)

Palmer’s gimmick at Other Worlds was to get readers to pressure Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. to hire his discovery, “John Bloodstone,” as the legal successor to Burroughs. (“Bloodstone” was actually Palmer’s pal, hack writer Stuart J. Byrne, who had written a copyright-infringing novel, Tarzan On Mars, that Palmer wanted to publish.) ERB Inc. refused, and that was the end of that, and pretty much the end of Other Worlds (though you can still find illegally-photocopied copies of Tarzan On Mars for sale here and there).

Palmer’s final stop was at Fate Magazine, begun in 1949, where he got rich one last time off a gullible reading public.

As for Shaver, not a single word of the million-plus that he wrote remains in print.

***

The Prediction Issue

The November 1948 issue of Astounding was typical of its era. It was not the best issue that John Campbell edited that year, nor was it the worst, and like all other issues of Astounding prior to 1950, it was far superior to its competitors.

Astounding’s letter column was (and still is) “Brass Tacks,” and in that particular issue there was a cute letter by a Richard A. Hoen who, like most fanboys, went over the most recent issue story by story, explaining in goshwowboyoboy fashion what he liked and disliked and why. Robert A. Heinlein’s “Gulf” was pretty good, though not quite up to Beyond This Horizon, opined Mr. Hoen. He ranked it second best in the issue, just ahead of A. E. van Vogt’s “Final Command,” with Lester del Rey’s “Over the Top” coming in fourth. He wasn’t much impressed with L. Sprague de Camp’s “Finished,” which was fifth, and he absolutely hated Theodore Sturgeon’s “What Dead Men Tell,” ranking it last. Mr. Hoen also had words of praise for the cover painting by Hubert Rogers.

Only one problem: he was ranking the stories in the November 1949 issue, and of course none of them existed. It was a cute conceit, everyone got a chuckle out of it, and everyone immediately forgot it.

Except Campbell, who went out of his way to make it come true.

The November 1949 issue of Astounding featured the first part of Heinlein’s serial, “Gulf”; Sturgeon’s “What Dead Men Tell”; de Camp’s “Finished”; van Vogt’s “Final Command”; and del Rey’s “Over the Top.” And of course it had a cover by Rogers.

There was only one place the prediction fell short. Mr. Hoen had ranked a story called “We Hail,” by Don A. Stuart, first. Don A. Stuart was Campbell’s pseudonym when he was writing works of ambition (such as “Twilight”) rather than space opera, and was taken from his first wife’s maiden name, Dona Stuart. Well, Campbell didn’t write a story for the issue—but in its place he ran the first part of “And Now You Don’t,” the three-part serial that formed the climax of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. I don’t imagine anyone had any serious objections to the substitution.

So when you hear writers like me say that science fiction isn’t really in the predicting business, just remind us of the November 1948 Astounding.

***

The Magazines are Officially Noticed

Science fiction tends to cry and carry on because no one pays any attention to it, that it’s a ghetto beneath the notice of the New York Literary Establishment and most of the Powers That Be in academia.

And yet science fiction has been officially Noticed (and more than once) by the United States Government, and that was long before that government started naming weapons and defense systems after rather silly science fiction movies.

Back in the Good Old Days of the pulps, more often than not the cover art showed a partially-clad (or, if you prefer, a mostly-unclad) girl, usually at the mercy of aliens who seemed more interested in ripping off the rest of her clothes than doing anything practical, like killing or communicating with her.

The thing is (and I refer you to the two introductory articles in my anthology, Girls For the Slime God), only one magazine actually delivered the salacious stories that went hand-in-glove with those cover illos, and that magazine was Marvel Science Stories. The first issue, back in August of 1938, featured Henry Kuttner’s “The Avengers of Space,” a rather pedestrian novella to which I suspect he added all the sex scenes after it had been turned down by the major markets. Then out came issue number two, and there was Kuttner with another novella of the same ilk: “The Time Trap.”

What was the result?

Well, there were two results. The first was that Kuttner was labeled a debased and perverted hack, and had to create Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O’Donnell, his two most famous pseudonyms (but far from his only ones) in order to make a living, since it would be a few years before the top editors wanted to buy from Henry Kuttner again.

The second was that the United States government, through its postal branch, gave science fiction its very first official recognition. They explained to the publisher that if the third issue of Marvel was as sexy as the first two, they were shutting him down and sending him to jail.

And with that, Marvel Science Stories became the most sedate and—let’s be honest—dull science fiction magazine on the market. It died not too long thereafter, the first prozine to be slain by the government.

But the government wasn’t quite through Noticing the prozines. Move the clock ahead five years, to March 1944, which was when Astounding, under the editorship of John Campbell, published a forgettable little story called “Deadline,” by Cleve Cartmill.

It became one of the most famous stories in the history of the prozines—not because of its quality, which was minimal, but because it brought the prozines to the official notice of the government for the second time.

We were embroiled in World War II, and in early 1944 the Manhattan Project—the project that resulted in the atomic bomb—was still our most carefully-guarded secret.

And Cartmill’s story, which used knowledge and facts that were available to anyone, concerned the construction of an atomic bomb that used U-235.

Cartmill was visited by the FBI and other select governmental agencies the week the story came out, each demanding to know how he had managed to steal the secrets of the bomb. He pointed out that his “secrets” were a matter of public record. He was nonetheless warned never to breach national security again, upon pain of truly dire consequences.

The government representatives then went to Campbell’s office, where he explained to them, as only Campbell could, that if they were not uneducated, subliterate dolts they would know exactly where Cartmill got his information, and that Astounding had been running stories about atomic power for years. They tried to threaten him into promising not to run any more stories of atomic power until the war was over. Campbell didn’t take kindly to threats, and allowed them to leave only after giving them a thorough tongue-lashing and an absolute refusal to censor his writers.

So the next time you hear a writer or editor bemoaning the fact that science fiction doesn’t get any notice, point out to him that there were actually a couple of occasions in the past when we got a little more official notice than we wanted.

***

Vietnam and the Magazines

Nothing since the War Between the States aroused more passions on both sides than did the Vietnam War. In 1968 Judith Merril and Kate Wilhelm decided to do something about it: they enlisted a large number of writers—the final total was 82—and took out ads against the war in the March issue of F&SF and the June issues of Galaxy and If. Included in their number were most of the younger New Wave writers such as Harlan Ellison, Barry Malzberg, Norman Spinrad, Robert Silverberg, Philip K. Dick, Terry Carr, and Ursula K. Le Guin, as well as a smattering of old masters like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Fritz Leiber.

Word got out—the rumor is that it was leaked by Fred Pohl, Merril’s ex-husband—and the pro-war faction also ran ads in all three magazines. (Pohl had them on facing pages in his two magazines.) Included in the ads were Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson, John W. Campbell Jr. (the only then-current editor to appear on either list), Fredric Brown, Hal Clement, Larry Niven, Jack Vance, and Jack Williamson. The pro-war ads contained only 72 names, leading the anti-war faction to claim that they had “won.”

Pohl was editing both Galaxy and If, and he offered to donate the ad revenues to the person who came up with the best “solution” to the Vietnam War. It was won by Mack Reynolds, but Pohl never published his “solution”; runners-up were Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.

***

Saving the Lensman

E. E. “Doc” Smith was clearly the most famous and most popular writer of the late 1920s and most of the 1930s as well. He broke new ground with the Skylark series, but it was the four Lensman books upon which his fame and adoration rests. (Yes, four; the first two in the six-book series were afterthoughts, Triplanetary being expanded and rewritten to become the chronological first in the series, First Lensman written last of all to fill a gap between Triplanetary and the four Kimball Kinnison books.)

Doc introduced Kimball Kinnison, the Gray Lensman, to the world in 1937, with Galactic Patrol, which ran in Astounding from September 1937 to February 1938—just about the time a young John Campbell was beginning his lifelong tenure as editor and preparing to reshape the field. This was followed in a few years by The Gray Lensman and then Second Stage Lensman.

But while Doc was slowly completing the saga of the Kinnison clan, Campbell was bringing Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, and A. E. van Vogt into the field, and finding room for Fritz Leiber, Clifford D. Simak, and L. Sprague de Camp.

Doc was many things as a writer, but graceful wasn’t one of them, and subtle wasn’t another. It didn’t matter when he was competing against the likes of Nat Schachner and Ray Cummings and Stanton A. Coblentz—but against Campbell’s stable he seemed like a dinosaur, thousands of evolutionary eons behind where Campbell had pushed, pulled and dragged the field.

So when he delivered the climactic volume of the Lensman saga, Children of the Lens, Campbell didn’t want to run it. It just didn’t belong in a magazine that had published “Nightfall” and “Sixth Column” and “Slan” years earlier.

One fan had the courage to seek Campbell out and disagree. He’s the one who told me this story, and Campbell later kind of sort of grudgingly agreed that it was pretty much the truth. Ed Wood (the fan, not the movie director), who’d been active in fandom for a few years, and would be active for another 50, cornered Campbell and explained that he owed it to Doc, who had given him the original Lensman story when Astounding badly needed it, to buy Children of the Lens. Moreover, he owed it to the field, for we were not then a book field, and if Doc’s novel didn’t run in Astounding, there was an excellent chance that it would never see the light of day. Campbell finally agreed. The novel appeared without the customary fanfare accorded to a new Doc Smith book, and was the only Lensman novel to receive just a single cover, though it ran for six issues beginning in November of 1947.

So for those of you who are Lensman fans—and tens of thousands of people still are, more than half a century later—you owe two debts of gratitude, one to Doc for writing it, and another to a motivated fan, Ed Wood, for making sure you got to find out how it all ended for Kimball Kinnison and his offspring.

***

How Unknown Was Born

Ask 20 experts (or fans; there’s not much difference) which was the greatest science fiction magazine of all time, and you’ll get some votes for the 1940s Astounding, the 1950s Galaxy, the 1960s New Worlds, the 1970s F&SF, and the 1990s Asimov’s.

Now ask that same group to name the greatest fantasy magazine, and the odds are that at least 19 will answer Unknown. It was that good, that unique, and remains that dominant in the minds of the readers.

How did it begin?

There are two versions.

The first is that John Campbell wanted to start a fantasy magazine, he convinced Street & Smith to publish it, he called it Unknown, and it ran 43 issues until the wartime paper shortage killed it off.

The other version, which has been repeated in dozens of venues, is that Campbell was sitting at his desk at Astounding, reading submissions, and he came to a novel, Sinister Barrier, by Eric Frank Russell. It was too good to turn down, but it didn’t fit into the format he had created for Astounding, and hence there was nothing to do but create a brand-new magazine, Unknown, which could run stories like Sinister Barrier and Fritz Leiber’s Gray Mouser stories, and Theodore Sturgeon’s “Yesterday Was Monday” and Robert A. Heinlein’s Magic, Inc., and that’s how Unknown came into being. A number of histories of the field have reported that this was the start of Unknown.

Which version is true?

The first one, of course—but the second one is so fascinating and evocative that I suspect it’ll never die, and if we all keep repeating it enough, why, in another 60 years or so, it’ll be History. (See my novel The Outpost to discover how these things work.)

***

Walter Who?

It all began with a radio show hosted by a mysterious male character known only as the Shadow. The show was owned by Street & Smith, the huge magazine publisher, and when it became increasingly obvious that the Shadow was far more popular than the show, they decided they’d better do something to copyright and trademark him before it was too late—so they decided to publish a one-shot pulp magazine about a crimefighter known as the Shadow.

To write the story, they hired magician and sometime pulp author Walter Gibson, and, for whatever initial reason, they decided to have him write it as “Maxwell Grant.”

The rest is history. That first issue of The Shadow sold out in record time. Street & Smith immediately ordered more novels from Gibson—who was getting $500.00 a novel, not bad pay in the depths of the depression—and in mere months The Shadow was selling more than a million copies an issue.

So Street & Smith decided the next step was to go semi-monthly. They called Gibson into their offices and asked if he was capable of turning out a Shadow novel every 15 days. Gibson said he could do it, but since it was no secret that The Shadow had, almost overnight, become the best-selling pulp magazine in America, he wanted a piece of this bonanza. He wasn’t going to be greedy or hold them up for some phenomenal sum. He’d write two novels a month, never miss a deadline, and keep the quality as high as it had been—but in exchange, he wanted a raise to $750.00 a novel.

His loving, doting publishers immediately metamorphosed into businessmen and said No.

Gibson thought he had them over a barrel. You give me $750.00 a novel, he said, or I’ll leave and take my audience with me.

Leave if you want, said Street & Smith, but next week there will be a new Maxwell Grant writing The Shadow for us, and who will know the difference?

It took Gibson ten seconds to realize that far from having Street & Smith over a barrel, they had him inside the barrel. He went back home and continued to write Shadow novels for $500.00 a shot.

This ploy worked so well that when Street & Smith began publishing Doc Savage, which was primarily written by Lester Dent, all the novels were credited to “Kenneth Robeson.”

Rivals saw the beauty in this—Street & Smith didn’t exactly have a monopoly on publishing’s notion of fair play and morality—and thus The Spider novels, written mostly by Norvell Page, bore the pseudonym of “Grant Stockbridge.”

“Kenneth Robeson,” Doc Savage’s author, was so popular that “he” also became the author of The Avenger pulp series.

And so on. Soon all the other “hero pulps”—pulps with a continuing hero and cast of characters, such as the above-mentioned—were written under house names, so that no author could either hold up the publishers for a living wage or leave and force the magazine to close down.

There was only one exception.

Edmond Hamilton wrote most of the 22 Captain Future novels under his own name.

The reason?

He was the only established science fiction writer working for Better Publications, Cap’s publisher, and his employers freely admitted that no one else in the house knew the first damned thing about writing that crazy Buck Rogers stuff.

***

The Mystery of Edson McCann

One day Horace Gold, the editor/publisher of Galaxy, got the notion of having a contest for the best novel by an unknown writer. He offered a prize of $7,000—more than the average American made in a year back then—and was immediately whelmed over by hundreds of booklength manuscripts, 99% of them dreadful and the other 1% even worse. (Ask anyone who has ever read a slush pile. This was nothing unusual or unexpected—at least, not by anyone except Horace.)

Horace had already bought Gravy Planet (later to become The Space Merchants, which eventually outsold, worldwide, just about every other science fiction novel ever written except perhaps for Dune.) When he couldn’t find an even mildly acceptable novel among the entries, he approached Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth and said he’d like Gravy Planet to be the winner. The stipulation, though, was that it had to appear under a pseudonym, since the contest had to be won by an unknown.

Pohl and Kornbluth talked it over, decided they could get $7,000 from normal serial and book rights, and opted to keep their names on it, which disqualified it from the contest.

Now Gold was getting desperate. The deadline was almost upon him, and he still hadn’t found a single publishable novel among all the entries. So he turned to Pohl again.

Pohl and his Milford neighbor, Lester del Rey (a whole passel of science fiction writers lived in Milford, Pennsylvania back in the 1950s) had decided to collaborate on a novel about the future of the insurance industry, called Preferred Risk. Gold begged them to use a pseudonym and let it be the contest winner. Lester was less concerned with receiving credit for his work than Kornbluth was—or perhaps he was more concerned with a quick profit. At any rate, he agreed, and Pohl went along with him.

They divided up the pen name. Pohl chose “Edson” for a first name, and del Rey came up with “McCann”. They invented a whole life for him (for the magazine’s bio of the contest winner), in which he was a nuclear physicist working on such a top secret hush-hush project that Galaxy couldn’t divulge any of the details of his life.

And so it was that Preferred Risk, commissioned from two top professionals by Horace Gold, won the $7,000 prize for the Best Novel By An Unknown.

And why did they choose “Edson McCann”?

Well, if you break it down to its initials, it’s “E. McC”—or E equals MC squared.

***

The No-Budget Magazines

Hugo Gernsback is considered the Father of Science Fiction. That title is more than a little at odds with the facts, since Mary Shelley, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were writing it long before Hugo came along—but Hugo named the field and was the first publisher to bring out a magazine devoted entirely to “scientifiction” (Amazing Stories in 1926).

Parenthetically, he also guaranteed that we would be inundated with bad science fiction for years to come…because by creating a market for science fiction, he gave it a place where it no longer had to compete with the best of the other categories. Science fiction writers no longer had to fight for spots in a magazine against Dashiell Hammett and James T. Cain and Frank Gruber and Max Brand; now they competed with Ray Cummings and Nat Schachner and Ross Rocklynne. The first—and for years only—science fiction magazine in the world was edited by Hugo Gernsback, an immigrant whose knowledge of the English language was minimal, and whose knowledge of story construction was nil. He felt science fiction’s sole purpose was to interest adolescent boys in becoming scientists, and that was pretty much the way he edited.

The way he published was even worse. He liked to buy stories, but he hated to pay for them. Finally Donald A. Wollheim took him to court for the $10.00 he was owed. Neither Gernsback nor Wollheim ever forgot it.

Now move the clock ahead a few years, to about 1940. Wollheim had helped form the Futurians, that incredibly talented group of youngsters that would someday dominate the field. Among its members were Cyril Kornbluth, Damon Knight, Judith Merril, Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Robert A.W. Lowndes, James Blish, and Wollheim himself (and indeed, in a year or two they’d be editing just about every magazine in the field except for John Campbell’s Astounding).

Anyway, while Pohl edited Astonishing and Super Science on a pitifully small budget, Wollheim picked up two of his own to edit: Cosmos and Stirring Science. Their pages abounded in stories by Futurians Kornbluth, Pohl, Lowndes, and Knight, with illos by the finest Futurian artist, Hannes Bok. Those magazines put many of the Futurians on the map.

And do you know why Wollheim used Futurians almost exclusively?

Because his budget was Zero—not small, not minimal, but zero—and only his fellow Futurians would work for free for the man who once sued Hugo Gernsback for $10 that was owed on a story.

***

Horace Gold Goes Out to Play

Horace Gold returned home from World War II a disabled veteran … but his disability took a most peculiar form: agoraphobia. He was literally afraid to leave the comfort and security of his New York apartment.

It didn’t stop him from selling investors on the idea of Galaxy magazine. And it didn’t stop him from editing it, and turning it into (in my opinion) the only serious rival the Astounding of the late 1930s and early 1940s had for the title of Best Science Fiction Magazine of All Time.

He turned part of his apartment into an office. He worked at home, he ate at home, he slept at home, he wrote at home, he edited at home. Any writer who wanted a face-to-face with Horace visited him at home. He hosted a regular Friday night poker game that included his stable of writers: Bob Sheckley, Phil Klass (William Tenn), Fred Pohl, and Algis Budrys. Lester del Rey occasionally sat in, as did rival editor (of F&SF) Tony Boucher.

And because they were his friends, and they thought they were doing him a favor, this coterie of card-players and writers was constantly urging Horace to go outside, to breathe in the fresh air (well, Manhattan’s approximation of it, anyway), to just take a walk around the neighborhood so that he would know there were no secret dangers lurking beyond the doors of his apartment. They urged, and they cajoled, and they implored, and finally the big day came.

Horace Gold left his apartment for the first time in years—

—and was promptly hit by a taxi.

(There is a second version of this story, in which he actually spent a few evenings wandering around Manhattan, and then got into a crash while riding home in a taxi. Either way, the result was the same. He stopped eating, stopped editing, and was eventually institutionalized.)

Conclusion: the science fiction (and related) magazines have a long and fascinating history. My fondest hope is that if they talk about Galaxy’s Edge twenty or thirty years from now, it will only be to say that we ran some pretty good stories.

***

Mike here again. Okay, now you know a bit about the magazines. Next issue I’ll tell you about some of the writers and editors who make up this colorful field.

~~~

It’s a blessing this Science Fiction/Fantasy story magazine that you started, Mr. Resnick, hung in there for ten lovely years, and we can say with confidence that you and Lezli definitely published “some pretty good stories.” ♥

Join us next week when we share some snippets of those stories gracing Galaxy’s Edge magazine’s last issue … and then, we’ll be back with more history of the magazine as shared with us ten years ago, by our friend and mentor to many, Mike Resnick.

~~~

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GALAXY’S EDGE MAGAZINE: ISSUE 62, MAY 2023—HIGHLIGHTS

Over at Galaxy’s Edge Magazine, the FINAL Issue, #62 has been released! Here are some highlights:

Head over to grab a paper copy of the very last issue of Galaxy’s Edge HERE.

~~~

THE EDITOR’S WORD
by Lezli Robyn

We’ve reached the last publication of Galaxy’s Edge in magazine format, and I have to share that it feels quite bittersweet. After ten years in print, 62 issues on our readers shelves, and a contract spreadsheet that boasts an incredible 692 drabble, flash fiction, short story, novelette, and novella entries, our bi-monthly magazine has published the breadth of science fiction and fantasy (with a generous pinch of horror!) by many of the newest and biggest names in the field.

As a gift for our readers, our last issue features double the fiction, with an impressive 22 stories—not unlike the number of stories an anthology would have! Since we’re converting this magazine into a semi-annual anthology series, I feel that coincidence is both an auspicious end and beginning!

While Jean Marie Ward usually does our interviews, for this last issue I had the pleasure of sitting down with Daniel Abraham in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and interviewing him about his solo writing career and how it diverges and intersects with his collaborative works as one half of James S A Corey, the author of The Expanse series. Our conversation evolved into the most interesting anatomy of a career, and I’ve no doubt that readers will be as drawn in as I was by how unique (and yet incredibly relatable) Daniel’s path to publication and success has been.

Richard Chwedyk lowers the curtain on his Recommended Books column with his usual keen insight and conversational flare, and Alan Smale and L. Penelope return with one last entry to their own columns. The rest of the magazine is overflowing with fiction (including one by the aforementioned Alan Smale!), with stories covering the gamut of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and humor.

This issue opens with the empowering “Moon and Sky, Feather and Stone” novelette by Rebecca E. Treasure, about a young woman who wishes she could literally fly away from the oppressions in her life and join the Sky Maidens. Does she have what it takes to prove her worth—to the Sky Matrons and herself? In Marissa Tian’s “The Woman at the Lake,” Kang is put through the most profound trial of his life when he stops to help a woman trapped by vines. This breathtakingly haunting tale shines an eerie light on historic inequality of the sexes, and the promises that bind us.

Equally evocative is Deborah L. Davitt’s “Pablovision,” about the magical consequences one man’s artistic vision has on the inhabitants of Santa Pau, Spain, and another’s desire to reverse it. Auston Habershaw’s “Planned Obsolescence” will also delight readers with its completely alien cast of characters. What is an assassin to do when his client refuses to pay for services rendered on a new frontier world where the native species are gigantic arachnids?

If a dash of humor with your dark fantasy is more your cup of (possibly poisoned) tea, then go no further than “Carrion” by Storm Humbert. To avoid spoilers, I can’t say too much, but let’s just say this story is a testament to perseverance. If you are wanting a splash of romance with your science fiction, you’ll be thoroughly enchanted by Stewart C Baker’s “Six Ways to Get Past the Shadow Shogun’s Goons, and One Thing to Do When You Get There,” which depicts the delightfully flirtatious conversation between two warriors while they’re being repeatedly attacked by the Shogun’s many goons.

While I would love to talk about the rest of the stories, this editorial can only be so long.

I can’t help but feel that saying farewell to the magazine is to finally say goodbye to Mike Resnick, my mentor, my good friend. In a way, taking over editing Galaxy’s Edge from him had kept a big part of him alive for me. (Apparently, the magazine is finding it equally difficult to part ways, because when I was finalizing this typeset it inexplicably glitched and deleted hours worth of work, clearly wanting us to spend more time together.)

Although I’m sad to see the magazine end, it’s only happening because we’re converting Galaxy’s Edge into an anthology series that will enable us to reach even more readers in brick-and-mortar bookstores. I’m happy and excited to see where this change takes us, and while I invite you all on this new journey with us, I also want to acknowledge the two most important people to have worked on this magazine: Shahid Mahmud and Mike Resnick. Without Shahid to fund and support this crazy venture, and Mike’s passion for helping new writers, this wonderful, decade-long market for authors would have never existed.

And, because of them both, I know the Galaxy’s Edge anthology series and The Mike Resnick Memorial Award will continue the legacy of “paying it forward” to the next generation of writers and readers.

Editor, signing off.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR ISSUE 62

MOON AND SKY, FEATHER AND STONE by Rebecca E. Treasure
THAT SUNDAY ON THE TRAIL WITH THE MEREST BREATH OF SEA by Beth Cato
THE LAND OF PERMUTATIONS by Tatsiana Zamirovskaya, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey
THE INCONSTANT HEART by Kary English
THE WEREWOLF by Jonathan Lenore Kastin
FRUITING BODIES by Xauri’EL Zwaan
XI BOX by T. R. Napper
KRISTIN, WITH CAPRICE by Alan Smale
THE DREADNOUGHT AGAMEMNON, ON COURSE TO CONQUER THE PEACEFUL MOON OF RE by Dafydd McKimm
PABLOVISION by Deborah L. Davitt
A FEAST OF MEMORIES by R.D. Harris
FIVE STAGES OF WHEN THE STARS WENT OUT by Samantha Murray
PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE by Auston Habershaw
PROBABLY THE MOST AMAZING KISS EVER by Robert P. Switzer
MERCY by Stephen Lawson
THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN by Mike Resnick
THE BLEEDING MOON by Monte Lin
SLOW BLOW CIRCUIT by Lisa Short
SIX WAYS TO GET PAST THE SHADOW SHOGUN’S GOONS, AND ONE THING TO DO WHEN YOU GET THERE by Stewart C Baker
CARRION by Storm Humbert
THE WOMAN OF THE LAKE by Marissa Tian
YANG FENG PRESENTS—THE BLACK ZONE: MURDER IN THE LOCKED ROOM by Fu Qiang, translation by Roy Gilham

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FROM WORKSHOP STORIES TO ROLE-PLAYING YOUR WAY INTO SUCCESS: GALAXY’S EDGE INTERVIEWS DANIEL ABRAHAM
by Lezli Robyn

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Daniel in a gorgeous casita in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to discuss his career before we headed out to dinner with friends. Not only was there a lot of laughter and warmth—and fun random side tangents to our conversation that won’t make this interview (sorry!)—but I was reminded anew how one seemingly small event can really change a person’s life. Daniel’s down-to-earth attitude about his own career really gave me a window into someone who seemingly applies himself to everything with an almost casual ease belying his boundless talent and dedication. It makes this a very inspiring conversation for new authors when they realize that many of the early steps needed to create bestselling novels and successful TV shows are both relatable and achievable—if the stars also align the right way.

Galaxy’s Edge: Your first short story publication, “Mixing Rebecca,” was in 1996.

Daniel Abraham: It was!

GE: How did your career start? What made you write that story?

DA: I had been getting rejection slips. Everyone collects their rejection slips—I was in that phase of my career. The editor of The Silver Web had turned down one of my earlier stories, but with a personalized rejection letter and some commentary, and she had mentioned that she was putting together a music episode specifically of The Silver Web. And so I was thinking, “Okay, I’ll write a weird music story,” and that was “Mixing Rebecca.” That story was done to order, with a particular audience in mind, and with the encouragement of Ann Kennedy, who has since become Ann VanderMeer. So Ann VanderMeer is the person who bought my first short story.

GE: That’s a wonderful first step in your career.

DA: It was, you know. And the weird thing about “Mixing Rebecca”: I got a very strange reaction to it from a particular person. The story is about a sound engineer who overcomes her shyness by sampling somebody and mixing the song of their life. So that’s how she’s overcoming anxiety. And the woman who she’s mixing is named Rebecca. Several months after it got published, I got this email from a guy who was a sound engineer who had just finished an album called Rebecca Remix. His name is Daniel Abraham.

GE: Are you serious?

DA: I’m completely serious …

TO READ THE REST OF THIS INTERVIEW — HEAD OVER TO GALAXY’S EDGE MAGAZINE

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RECOMMENDED BOOKS
by Richard Chwedyk

GOING OUT IN STYLE

Well, the curtain is coming down, the swan is waiting in the wings, the song is sounding. One phase in the history of GALAXY’S EDGE is coming to a close. It’s time for me to pack up my bindle and find a new train to hop.

Funny thing: I feel like I never really hopped this train in the first place. I’ve been running behind it, or alongside it at best, for most of the journey. Which is not to say that it hasn’t been informative, educational, and even fun.

I was also fortunate enough to acquire this gig at a time when the field, and the publishing world in general, was undergoing fundamental changes.

Or does it always feel that way?

Perhaps, but for some reason this feels different. “Professional” publishing, for the most part, seems to have become more “corporate” than ever, trying harder than ever to manufacture saleable product, which seems, from a corporate perspective, to necessitate more sharply defining categories and genres. Conversely, our authors are producing work that, where it doesn’t defy the old categories, confounds them. Smaller presses and independents are making their own rules, and it’s always been from them that the innovations have come.

At one level, it’s a fascinating time to be reviewing books. Which makes it a little sad to find myself turning in my last column.

And yet, the less time I spend putting together columns, the more time I have to read.

TO READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN — HEAD OVER TO GALAXY’S EDGE MAGAZINE

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TURNING POINTS
by Alan Smale

THE MONGOL HORDE

The Mongol steppe of the late twelfth and early thirteenth century was a brutal landscape, rife with violence. The young Temujin could have died in any one of a dozen ways, or a hundred. He was taken prisoner and even enslaved several times in his adolescence and young adulthood, and might well have lived out his life in quiet captivity, assuming he escaped death at the hands of his brothers or other local chieftains. Instead, Temujin grew up to become a cunning and charismatic warlord who conquered and united the disparate tribes of Mongolia, and then—as Chinggis Khan—led a series of brilliant, notorious, and bloody military campaigns abroad, conquering much of what we know today as China and lands west throughout Asia. At the time of his death in 1227 AD the Mongol Khan’s empire spanned four and a half million square miles, from the Caspian Sea to the Sea of Japan. His direct descendants continued to conquer and assimilate for the rest of the thirteenth century, doubling the size of this empire and transforming Eurasia forever.

This was surely one of the biggest turning points in Old World history. Or perhaps more accurately, a sheaf of turning points that played out differently in each of the various countries and territories affected, and in multiple ways.

It was also completely unpredictable. No one living at the turn of the thirteenth century could have had the slightest inkling of the calamities and transformations that were on their way.

All set in motion by one man …

TO READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN — HEAD OVER TO GALAXY’S EDGE MAGAZINE

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LONGHAND
by L. Penelope

USING MYTHOLOGY AND CULTURAL STUDIES IN YOUR WORLDBUILDING

Fantasy readers love nothing more than to sink, eyeballs first, into an immersive, well-crafted story world and live there for a while experiencing all the adventures and heartbreaks, the highs and lows of a fictional character. Worldbuilding is critical in bringing these imagined worlds to life. Carefully crafting an immersive setting requires considering the development and impact of everything from art to fashion, language, culture, geography, biology, and economics. Virtually every field of study or inquiry in our lives can be reflected in a fantasy world.

But even as authors allow our creativity to take us into far-flung invented lands, we still need to ensure our readers are grounded with familiar touch points. One tried and true way to do this is to base the imagined and fantastical on elements of the real world. Cultural storytelling practices such as myths and legends are significant fodder for fantasy worldbuilding.

The ability to tell stories is part of what makes us human. As we evolved, we told one another tales of magic and wonder, of gods and monsters and magical creatures, so it’s little wonder that we’re fascinated with these topics to this day. Myths are generally stories told to explain the world around us. Folklore often helps to acculturate us to our society. Legends purport to be historical accounts of inspiring or noteworthy figures or events, while fairytales make the fanciful come alive close to home. Together, they offer endless raw material for crafting intricate histories, identities, and cultures.

But how do we go about incorporating these kinds of tales from the real world into our invented ones? The first step is to carefully select your source of inspiration. Start with the stories passed down in your own family, or search your own regional folklore, religion, ethnicity, and culture …

TO READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN — HEAD OVER TO GALAXY’S EDGE MAGAZINE

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GALAXY’S EDGE MAGAZINE—THE FINAL ISSUE

Welp … after ten years in print, and a whopping 62 issues under our belt, here we are … the final issue of Galaxy’s Edge as a magazine.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing with you a history of how Galaxy’s Edge magazine began (Thank you, Mike Resnick), snippets of the final 22 stories selected for this extra-strength issue, a fantastic interview with Daniel Abraham (one half of The Expanse author), Richard Chwedyk’s last Recommended Books column, Alan Smale’s Turning Points column, and L. Penelope’s Longhand column.

We hope you’ll join us in waving farewell to this version of Galaxy’s Edge, and welcoming us with open arms as a semi-annual themed anthology series. Stay tuned for all the details, and the open call … when it comes.

Thank you. ♥

Now, for a sneak peak at our Editor’s Final Note.

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EDITOR’S NOTE

by Lezli Robyn

We’ve reached the last publication of Galaxy’s Edge in magazine format, and I have to share that it feels quite bittersweet. After ten years in print, 62 issues on our readers shelves, and a contract spreadsheet that boasts an incredible 692 drabble, flash fiction, short story, novelette, and novella entries, our bi-monthly magazine has published the breadth of science fiction and fantasy (with a generous pinch of horror!) by many of the newest and biggest names in the field.

As a gift for our readers, our last issue features double the fiction, with an impressive 22 stories—not unlike the number of stories an anthology would have! Since we’re converting this magazine into a semi-annual anthology series, I feel that coincidence is both an auspicious end and beginning!

While Jean Marie Ward usually does our interviews, for this last issue I had the pleasure of sitting down with Daniel Abraham in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and interviewing him about his solo writing career, and how it diverges and intersects with his collaborative works as one half of James S A Corey, the author of The Expanse series. Our conversation evolved into the most interesting anatomy of a career, and I’ve no doubt that readers will be as drawn in as I was by how unique (and yet incredibly relatable) Daniel’s path to publication and success has been.

Richard Chwedyk lowers the curtain on his Recommended Books column with his usual keen insight and conversational flare, and Alan Smale and L. Penelope return with one last entry to their own columns. The rest of the magazine is overflowing with fiction (including one by the aforementioned Alan Smale!), with stories that cover the gamut of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and humor …

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Head over to Galaxy’s Edge magazine to read the rest of this heartfelt farewell note, and get a sneak peak at this issues’ stories!

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