Exangel

by Chris Farago.

There’s a lot of mental pacing going on with this science fiction business, trying to suss out the proper changes to make to this world to make it different enough to be attention-grabbing for whatever audience one presumes to present it to. There are full universes where the air is solid and men are made of jade; there is a planet quite like ours where commas and periods have been reversed, and no one seems to notice. I shot that man in Reno, but it was so I could watch him live. Charles Xavier is neither a character in a novel nor in a comic book, but instead a stillborn tortoise with the powers of invisibility, time travel, and flight. Cold fusion is a birthright, each child having a handheld generator thrust into their possession on their tenth birthday to do with as they please. An awful man is given control of powerful armies by millions of like-minded awful followers, but he is fettered by his own incompetence. A single leaf on a single oak turns red instead of yellow, and the world is set on edge.

by Brian Griffith. “Mama” Benedetta Ndolo led a village women’s group in the Iveti hills of Machakos district, in Kenya. From the top of the hill in her village you could see for miles to the northwest, over the dusty countryside stretching towards Somalia. For a whole afternoon she took me around her village, showing […]

by Chris Farago. We endure, as do the Idaho pines, as does the call from crow to crow to crow. We endure because we must, if we are to see the season out, if we are to see the season in.

by Ron Singer.                                 -1- Since Dante’s day, sinners had poured into Hell, mirroring the overcrowding above. So many misdemeanors, felonies, fell, that the nine circles, for money or love, could not hold a killer or sneak thief more (though palm-greasers and -greased worked hand-in-glove). To ferrying, Charon had added realty, but, like the rest […]

by Rose Jermusyk. Once it was known by persons all, dragons were noble and answered a call; showing each phoenix the best place to shine out, esteem as theirs should live throughout. But came a time that would not end filled with the questions that no one could rend, doubtings abounding in need of a […]

by David Selzer. When I was a boy I was often taken to the aquarium on the promenade by the Palace Pier, Brighton – a resort and commuter town on England’s south east coast. It was an hour’s train journey from London on the Pullman Brighton Belle – with its curtains and its table lamps […]

by Bruce E.R. Thompson. This essay is about Jonathan Mayhew, a New England preacher with whom few are familiar. He is important nevertheless. His sermons played an important role in fomenting the rebellion out of which the United States was born. Mayhew saw the American Revolution as a holy war: New England Congregationalism vs. the […]

by Nick LeGrand. Trevor is small like his body refuses to grow, like the air isn’t right for him. This world presses on him. He strains when he walks. I’ve asked him before if he hurts, but Trevor won’t say. “Up there everything floats,” he says and points at an airplane uncoiling ribbons of steam […]

by David D. Horowitz. “Look out! Look out!” I yelled to a man beginning to cross a downtown Seattle street as vehicles sped through the intersection. Glancing up from his smartphone he saw a car zooming towards him, and he jumped back to the crowded noontime curb. “I wasn’t looking,” he acknowledged, a bit jangled. […]