The title of H. Pueyo’s A Study in Ugliness & Outras Histórias cues the reader in immediately to its unique approach to translation by combining English and her native Brazilian Portuguese, “& Outras Histórias” being “& Other Stories.” The ten stories, translated by Pueyo herself, are presented with the Portuguese on the verso and English…
Category: Issue #11
A Secret Third Thing: a review of Exordia by Seth Dickinson from Jake Casella Brookins
In the acknowledgments to Seth Dickinson’s new science fiction novel, Exordia, he says that it was “supposed to be a fun book,” and a look at the epigraphs does an unusually good job at conveying exactly what sort of fun this is going to be. From Michael Crichton’s Sphere, we can deduce an alien contact…
All That is Solid Melts into Air: a review of How I Killed the Universal Man by Thomas Kendall from Zachary Gillan
Some leftists avoid the term “late capitalism” because of its implication that we’re nearing capitalism’s end, running against our pessimism of the intellect, even as it thrills the optimism of the will. Nonetheless, it’s a term I’ve long been fond of because of its usefulness in distinguishing our current stage of digital info-capitalist saturation from…
Dario Argento and the Curious Case of Censorship by Viviana de Cecco
Censorship brings luck. Incredible, but true. Dario Argento. His name alone conjures up terror, gore, bloodshed and chilling soundtracks. On 6 June 2023, the British Film Institute, in collaboration with Cinecittà, decided to pay tribute to the director with a screening of his films at the Southbank arthouse cinema. In the interview he gave to…
Art Lives Between the Hard Lines of Perceived Reality: an interview with Indra Das
I read Indra Das’ The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar shortly after our non-fiction editor Karlo Yeager Rodríguez commissioned Shinjini Dey’s wonderfully insightful essay we ran in Issue #8. It was one of the best fantasy books I’d read in years so I was very excited about this interview. Indra spoke to me about everything from…
“This Movie Theater Sits on a Leyline” by Maxine Sophia Wolff
I butter the popcorn. I clean the butter machine. The bag runs out, and so I stick my head into its metal belly to screw in a new one. It’s a wet mess of plastic tubes and blood vessels inside there. The stench of congealing dairy blooms as I clasp and unclasp the nozzles. Before…
“These Are His Memories” by Joe Koch
Back in your day they picked up hitchhikers, so you pick the man up. You could do with the company, even though he looks rough. Skin the muddy texture and fragrance of the dirt he must have been sleeping in, some nook in the rocks, the dirt smell a fond and clean smell, familiar to…
“A History of the Avodion Through Five Artists” by Eric Horwitz
“The avodion has existed in some form or another for millennia: both the Chinese and the Arabs can point to possible predecessors. To this day the French still insist that the device and its practice were created by Saint-Just during the reign of terror when a cannon loaded with soap suds knocked a guillotine into…
“Waystations Lost” by Andrew Kozma
Several waystations were confirmed lost, their final moments recorded by radio in a blast of static. Sometimes the loss was dramatic, broken and nigh incomprehensible voices going silent in the middle of a detailed warning. Other times the loss was quiet, an operator stepping away to refresh their coffee and simply never returning, the conversation…
“Blue Movies” by Ian Kappos
Before the whole thing with the ovum, Kekoa and I volunteered at the food kitchen. His parents back in Hawaii told him he needed a job. If it didn’t pay, they’d compensate him for hours put in. This was back when you could get OC 80s for forty dollars, OC 40s for twenty, and forty…