Blog Archives
Edition 17: Hunting the Sky Gods by Meryl Stenhouse
It’s do or die for Endless Jones: she’s taken a last chance at finding her past and left the only home she’s ever known. This delightful piece by Meryl Stenhouse should ring a true note with any of us that ever felt that we didn’t belong. SY
Endless Jones shifted her grip on the brickwork and very carefully did not look down. The wind tugged at her woollen tunic with icy fingers and whipped dark hair into her eyes, bringing with it the sharp tang of the ocean. She glanced over her left shoulder, towards the east and the high, cold mountains where the Sky Gods came from. Moonlight shone on the bars of the cage she carried on her back.
“Can’t we discuss this in a logical manner?” said the canary from his cage. “Possibly somewhere closer to the ground?”
“No,” said Endless. The howl of marauding wolves and the frantic bleating of sheep drifted up the valley. Endless felt a pang of guilt for abandoning the sheep. But tomorrow was the first day of spring, the day when the Sky Gods would sweep over the valley on their annual cycle, as regular as the seasons. It had to be tonight.
“I mean, I’m all for someone chasing their dreams, but I’m not sure you’ve considered all the consequences—”
“I know what I’m doing, bird. I’ve got a plan.”
“Oh, well, if you’ve got a plan we’re all fine then, aren’t we?”
Edition 17: Serial Fiction: The Morland Basking Plain (Book III of III) by Arthur Davis
The final straits of the charge through the Moreland Plain are taking their toll on both the pursued and pursuer. It’s a death march to the end, and only one will come out victorious. Will Marcos Xzen and the Sartrap finally run down Logan Drewry? SY
Edition 17: Results by Denise Robarge Tanaka
Lara Clarke offers another service that stays off her business cards. Not everyone is ready to have the darkness of their past stirred up. But for those special customers, Lara has a special skill, and sometimes they come looking for her help. The touch of the seedy underside of Hollywood in this paranormal psychic adventure leaves you feeling like a dirty deal has been done. SY
“So how does it work?” the client asked, not even taking off his sunglasses.
I get that question every time. People expect lots of chanting gibberish, incense that smells like burning a hippie’s sandals, furniture thumping, lights going out…You know, all that poltergeist crap. My specialty services are not listed in my front office brochure. Lara Diane Clarke, clinical physical therapist, can get you back on the team after that sports injury or back to work after that fender bender.
Not many people know about my paranormal services. He only found me by word of mouth, and even through his sunglasses, I could tell he didn’t believe.
I told him, “You just need to sign the waiver and I’ll prick your finger with a sterile needle. That’s it.”
“That’s it?” he asked skeptically.
“Yep.”
He scanned around the room like he was searching for the hidden camera. I couldn’t blame him for being suspicious. What I do is pretty strange.
“Shouldn’t I fill out a questionnaire or tell you something about my—”
“No,” I said. “That’s what you pay me for. I don’t do interviews. I get results.”
I deliberately used that word, interview, knowing the impact it would have on an actor.
Edition 17: Riding the Tiger By Thomas Canfield
Sorcerer Jusan and servant Asrai travel to Irushtan, purporting to seek diamonds from the miners who toil in the deepest, darkest shafts. What they seek is much more important: the prevention of a war that would destroy them all. Thomas Canfield’s mythological quest is a great example of the great world building of sword and sorcery epics. SY
The mines of Irushtan were the richest ever discovered. They burrowed into the hard red clay of the Laramie outback, cut through layers of sediment and rock and opened virgin earth which no man had heretofore thought to plunder. They honeycombed the land with an elaborate array of shafts and tunnels. No one individual could attest to the full extent of the mines or profess to a complete knowledge of them. They yielded more precious stones and claimed more lives, bred more misery and incited greater greed, than any operation ever had. It was here that the sorcerer Jusan came, announcing that he wished to purchase diamonds.
For seven days the miners flocked to the cottage Jusan had rented. They waited in line, clutching knotted handkerchiefs in which they carried their hoards, eyeing one another warily. They were admitted one at a time, bid to enter by Jusan’s servant, Asrai. Asrai was a supple-limbed youth of nineteen who bore the dusky complexion and dark eyes of those who dwelt far to the East.
“Welcome,” Jusan greeted each miner in turn. “I see that you are a veteran of many years hard labor in the mines. It resides in your face and in your eyes. A difficult life by any measure, and one which none but the stout of heart dare to venture. Perhaps it is you for whom I have been searching. Come, let us see what you bring me.”
Edition 16: Internal Exile by Jim Lee
What if your worst memory or your most regretted action was replayed for you over and over again. Welcome to corrective therapy, the capital punishment under the current planetary government. Jim Lee’s science fiction world shows us that it is our ideas which can be dangerous to the powers-that-be. SY
They roused Sidi Mohamed Daoud from a very old nightmare—one he once dared imagine he’d left behind with his troubled and far-distant adolescence. Ironically enough, it was the one that had driven him into social activism in the first place. And now, with a secret and shameful certitude, he knew it would be used against him.
And the ones who were about to do this unspeakable thing to him had no idea, no conception what he faced. If they did, perhaps they would understand his attempted suicide. But would they care—even if they knew?
He looked at the Senior Attending Physician’s impassive face and doubted it.
Two brawny orderlies, one of either gender, deactivated the restraints. They slipped his naked form into one of the new ‘smart’ hospital gowns—one that would detach itself and slither away upon the Senior Attending Physician’s order.
With the SAP, the orderlies escorted Daoud from the temporary holding cell. They ushered him down one final hallway to Corrective Therapy Room D427.
“That many?” Daoud blinked, turned to the SAP. “Doctor Sayem? Each inmate does require a separate room?”
Edition 16: Running Shoes by Ken Liu
Giang works in a sweatshop in Vietnam, making running shoes on a production line. When the unthinkable happens, Giang goes on to see a different world to the one she’s known. This magical realism story by Ken Liu is one to make you stop and think about our consumeristic society and what exploitation is worth. SY
“You’re under quota again!” Foreman Vuong shouted. “Why are you so slow?”
Fourteen-year old Giang’s face flushed with shame. She stared at the angry veins on the foreman’s sweaty neck, pulsing like fat slugs on a ripe tomato. She hated Vuong even more than she hated the shoe factory’s Taiwanese owners and managers. One expected the foreigners to treat the Vietnamese badly, but Vuong was from right here in Yên Châu District.
“Sixteen hours is a long shift,” Giang mumbled. She lowered her eyes. “I get tired.”
“You’re lazy!” Vuong went on to spew a stream of curses.
Giang flinched, anticipating a flurry of strikes and blows. She tried desperately to look contrite.
Vuong considered her, his lips curling up in a cruel smile. “I’ll have to make you stronger through punishment. Run five laps around the factory, right now, and you’ll stay as long as you have to tonight to make up your quota.”
Edition 16: Serial Fiction: The Morland Basking Plain (Book II of III) by Arthur Davis
Logan Drewry flees deeper into the Morland Basking Plain followed by the irascible Marcos Xzen, leader of the deep desert command. But the desert will present its own challenges to the invading force… SY
Edition 15: To Brave the Mountains by David Bowles
When Saran’s little brother is taken as a sacrifice, she is determined to free him. The only way she can is to radically transform her life, and even then, she may be too late. SY
The night they took Saran’s little brother from the ranch was like many other nights on the High Plains: the thin, cold wind keened wildly over the meager yellow grass, herding dark storm clouds in a furious stampede westward across the sky to join the thick mist that shrouded the mountains of Chanor. Only a few fat drops of moisture spattered the stony soil of what Plainsmen called the Zuduls, the badlands, their promised country. In the thirty-five years since they had first settled on this vast altiplano, rain had never fallen. The clouds just streamed tantalizingly overhead, and the ceaseless wind moaned as if mocking the Plainsmen’s travails.
Saran had just been lulled to sleep by the banshee crying of that wind when a pounding at the door jerked her awake. Only tragedy could bring someone to our family’s parcel at this late hour, she reflected. And her heart ached with a sudden prescience. For there was a registered skinwalker in her family, one whose ability had just manifested as he reached his twelfth year.
Edition 15: Serial Fiction: The Morland Basking Plain (Book I of III) by Arthur Davis
Logan Drewry begins his escape into the desolate Morland Basking Plain in a desperate bid to outrace the troops of the Grand Satrap. His foolhardy decision may not only cost him is life, but the cause of the people he is trying to flee. Old enemies and new will attempt to take their shot at the famous warrior, but will it be the desert that finally claims victory over him? SY
Edition 14: The Bush Bride of Badgery Hollow by Angela Rega
Only at home in the bush, the bush brides are not meant to be owned, yet Midge has a yearning. But conquerers never understand that the Australian wilds are not meant to be tamed. SY
Where you see the skeletal remains of a wattle and daub cottage set against the low dry hills of Badgery Hollow, you know this is where an old colonial tried, but failed to keep, a sugar glider bush bride.
The wind whistles here; it is a desolating lament for early settlers. It sings between the branches of brittle trees, across this yellowed land. There is movement in the burnt out tree stump and inside is the remnant of her story: the sugar glider bush bride.
The changeling woman stretches out two webbed wingfolds and glides from arbor to arbor; she is a native of this Australian landscape. She is fresh like the morning dew glistening between her long eyelashes, her hair is a memory of sugar glider markings; silken and silver, except for the ebony streaks on either side that reach the tips of the hair that fall to her waist.
SQ Mag 