A Webzine of Astonishing Tales
Issue #6, Fall-Winter, 2008
Ashby, Blumlein, Byrne, de Vries, Garrison, Rucker, Platt, and Sterling!
Issue #6 Contents:
Rudy Rucker
Qlone
Madeline Ashby
Fitting a New Suit
Michael Blumlein
The Big One
Brian Garrison
3 SF Poems
Charles Platt
The Gnirut Test
Brendan Byrne
The Loa and the Gaping Jaw
Jetse de Vries
Random Acts of Cosmic Whimsy
Bruce Sterling
Computer Entertainment Thirty-Five Years From Today
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From the Editor
September 16, 2008
The lead-off story, "Qlone" is my notion of a traditional SF tale. I'm always glad to mention the Higgs particle, which I visualize as plump, pig-eared, and with a big mouth, just like the mug by Rudy Rucker, Jr., which graces this issue's cover. Wheenk!
I was really pleased to receive Madeline Ashby's "Fitting a New Suit," in my email. It's a great SF story which captures something essential about the way a lot of us live: cooped up at home with our electronic toys, imagining that we're doing something positive for the world.
Michael Blumlein's "The Big One" is a subtle, moody piece of magic realism with a powerful fish at its core. I keep thinking about that fish---so much so that I was driven to paint it as an illustration for Michael's wonderful tale.
Brian Garrison has a remarkable gift for knocking out short poems that rebound from SF themes to bounce around inside your head for quite some time, in the manner of true literature. These kinds of poems look easy, but they're not, no more than is calligraphy.
It was a pleasure to get a piece from my old friend and sometime mentor, Charles Platt, a satirical jab at the decaying sacred cow of artificial intelligence.
Brendan Byrne, author of the Flatland-like "Donald Asshole and Los Elementos de Rock" in Flurb #5, returns with a funky voodoo bio-holocaust tale that has a kind of Graham Greene feel.
Jetse de Vries, who used to be found manning the Interzone table at cons, presents a Pynchonesque jape, "Random Acts of Cosmic Whimsy," with crunchy nuggets of hard science at its core.
Anchoring the line-up, we have ascended master Bruce Sterling with a transsurreal speech---or is it a story?---about the future of games. He delivered this rant to a crowd of game designers today, and lived to tell the tale.
If you enjoy this issue, please favor us with a friendly note at the comments link, which lives on Rudy's Blog.
Flurb #7 is scheduled for spring, 2009, and I'll be reading for the issue in March, 2009. Check the comments link for further details.
---Rudy Rucker
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