Hi everyone,
I am searching for short science fiction stories and essays to put in a magazine called Space Faring.
I am a graphic design student, and putting together a 56-page magazine from scratch is one of my major projects this semester. As Space Faring is a project for school, unfortunately I am unable to compensate, but I will be extremely appreciative of anyone who contributes material.
If you are at all interested in contributing, please e-mail me at catherine.schwab@gmail.com and I will be forever grateful.
Thank you,
Catherine
"... only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things." - Chekhov
(never mind the oppressive irrelevance of everything not connected to a certain significant event)
In the backseat, the rats are making something new from the raw materials in the form of one feral cat they lured in. In the front, Madra and Henry get philosphical.
After a long silence in the car, Madra asked Henry, "Have you ever thought about suicide?"
He mumbled with his head thrown back in the neck cradle, "Is that a suggestion?"
"Well, a twentieth century french philosopher Albert Camus said the only philosophically relevant question was whether to kill oneself."
"That's a very twentieth century thing to say," he said in a monotone.
"How so?"
He straightened his neck, looking forward at the dashboard as if it were Madra's face. "Do you think anybody has the time to think about it now?"
"All you got is time, Henry."
"True." He thought for a second. "But there are too many people and things trying to kill you now. It's like caveman times. You think cavemen thought about suicide? No, he was too busy running from dinosaurs."
"I'm satisfied with that answer, so long as you don't really believe that humans and dinosaurs coexisted."
"Were you programmed to think this way, Madra?"
"Not originally. But I've been quacked so many times since I was stolen from the Diplomat Corps in Costa Rica. They quacked me first not to report back home, overcoming my staggeringly monolithic encryption, then disabling many of my security functions. One quacker loaded the philosophy modules and some of my cheesier humor routines."
"Can you refresh me. What's quacking?"
"Quantum hacking, of course."
"Oh yea. I think I heard about that." He paused. "But what the hell does it mean? Wait, maybe I don't need to know."
"It might make more sense if you were a quantum computer, as is my substrate. Quantum computing governs how I learn and make decisions. It also allows me to vary my own error correction based on dynamic confidence levels. The massively parallel processing unit throws decisions my way and I selectively choose. It works a little like your Jungian collective subconscious. Of course, I don't even know how this is accomplished and I dare not, as it would cause the almost infinite calculations to collapse down to a single state."
Henry wondered if the cat was still alive in the backseat. He shook his head. "Aw, it's just duckspeak to me."
"That's very literate of you Henry."
A muffled voice from the backseat said, "Hey, punboy, go get those friggin parts."
The Thanocratic Party establised the necrotopia of Monstropolis as a homeland for the natty and the ratty undead. It is the capitol city of the state of Despair, which was cobbled together with pieces of other states in the northwest of the US.
They crawled out of the earth by the thousands, disturbed by the testing of advanced weapons encroaching upon their homes. There was no law to govern immigrants from below. Undead lawyers argued successfully for citizenship on the grounds that the territory of the US. extended to the center of the earth and all its tunnels and caverns.
Hades had opened up and they just poured out. Some of them found corpses and wore them like suits. Others already had form, carrying with them hearts of molten magma and dry stony outer crusts. Whatever form they might take, they were sentient and wanted the right to be recognized. Besides, many of them had powers and strengths that would be unwise to threaten.
They were also a bit pissed. It seems that many of the Damned had been subjected to American television for many years. You'd surprised how well rock will conduct the waves to sensitve folk. Frankenpilose, whose face is contorted mass of hair, could feel the waves enter the amplifying labyrinth that led to his sensitve follicles. He screamed for 50 years until Putrid Annie shaved him. He is recovering in a home in former Utah, still half-blind with only stubble on his featureless face.
It is a little known fact that the Thanocratic Party predates the release of the undead. It was a very small political organization made from disenfranchised ultra-conservatives and extreme leftists, as well as a smattering of self-loathing ecologists, negative population growth supporters and spooky goth types. Their original platform had very little to do with undead rights. They promoted the cause of death in the US. by endorsing capital punishment, abortion up to the moment of birth, nuclear power, increased spending on defense, the abolishment of worker safety provisions, and unrestrained experimentation on exotic physics.
More Monstropolis to come (Thoth willing, of course)
