This issue features fiction from Chile, Argentina, Israel, Madagascar, Brazil, and China.
We live in a science-fictional world. We may not have the flying cars or moon bases promised to us by the writers of yesteryear, but our reality is different in ways those same writers couldn’t have possibly imagined.
The cover art of this month’s issue wasn’t painstakingly drawn by a human artist....
Manuela was an astronaut; Alyosha, a cosmonaut. She was too headstrong; he, too cautious. She routinely dismissed all of his worries. He always mansplained her every opinion. She had stolen his position as Mission Commander; he’d stolen the love of her life....
“Hey!” says Mom. “It’s seven o’clock already. You’re going to be late!”
“Just another minute,” I mutter, and turn onto my other side.
“Get up, this instant! The pancakes are getting cold.”
Meanwhile, the bed begins to deflate and sag under me....
“Let’s hope it lasts!”
Wide eyes unblinking, she quotes Napoleon’s mother, her, as though everything is fine. As though we’re in a palace of some kind, where everyone is laughing, and everyone is eating, and everyone is connected to Zuckerbook, and everyone has everything they desire, and everyone is making love, and everyone is even singing, and no one has to trek tens of thousands of kilometers to find even one ounce of hope, to survive....
At first I averted my eyes. With more decades than I care to think about in the graphic arts behind me I knew what was coming. I didn’t want to be one of those people. The disgruntled types I’ve spun by in the revolving door, leaving the graphic design world as I entered it....
As I lifted my eyes from the tracking app, I saw my next customer. She was just outside, near a group of rowdy people with colorful umbrellas, and still holding a briefcase that must have been important at that final moment....
One: A Maze of Associations
How do you measure creativity?
The founder of the associative theory of creativity believed that creativity is the ability to connect disparate elements which are distantly related. “The greater the distance of association between the newly connected elements, the more creative the thought that joins them or the solution to the problem.”...
What gets you about the enormous Space Station is the design. It’s built by and for the thousands of different alien species—yes, I know, we’re not supposed to call them aliens, we’re the real aliens, blah, blah—that shamble, flit, and ooze all around you....
This issue features fiction from Chile, Argentina, Israel, Madagascar, Brazil, and China.
Table of contents
We live in a science-fictional world. We may not have the flying cars or moon bases promised to us by the writers of yesteryear, but our reality is different in ways those same writers couldn’t have possibly imagined.
The cover art of this month’s issue wasn’t painstakingly drawn by a human artist....
Manuela was an astronaut; Alyosha, a cosmonaut. She was too headstrong; he, too cautious. She routinely dismissed all of his worries. He always mansplained her every opinion. She had stolen his position as Mission Commander; he’d stolen the love of her life....
“Hey!” says Mom. “It’s seven o’clock already. You’re going to be late!”
“Just another minute,” I mutter, and turn onto my other side.
“Get up, this instant! The pancakes are getting cold.”
Meanwhile, the bed begins to deflate and sag under me....
“Let’s hope it lasts!”
Wide eyes unblinking, she quotes Napoleon’s mother, her, as though everything is fine. As though we’re in a palace of some kind, where everyone is laughing, and everyone is eating, and everyone is connected to Zuckerbook, and everyone has everything they desire, and everyone is making love, and everyone is even singing, and no one has to trek tens of thousands of kilometers to find even one ounce of hope, to survive....
At first I averted my eyes. With more decades than I care to think about in the graphic arts behind me I knew what was coming. I didn’t want to be one of those people. The disgruntled types I’ve spun by in the revolving door, leaving the graphic design world as I entered it....
As I lifted my eyes from the tracking app, I saw my next customer. She was just outside, near a group of rowdy people with colorful umbrellas, and still holding a briefcase that must have been important at that final moment....
One: A Maze of Associations
How do you measure creativity?
The founder of the associative theory of creativity believed that creativity is the ability to connect disparate elements which are distantly related. “The greater the distance of association between the newly connected elements, the more creative the thought that joins them or the solution to the problem.”...
What gets you about the enormous Space Station is the design. It’s built by and for the thousands of different alien species—yes, I know, we’re not supposed to call them aliens, we’re the real aliens, blah, blah—that shamble, flit, and ooze all around you....
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