Online Issue Contents

• Wyrms & Wormholes

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • "Sailing through Flooded Cathedrals," by Daniel Ausema
  • "The Great Vegetable Saga: My Cabbage vs. Your Broccoli," by Bibhushan Khadka
  • [leaving the tavern], by Greg Fewer
  • "Messaging from Moonbase," by Lauren McBride
  • [enlightenment], by Ngô Bình Anh Khoa

• Full Table of Contents

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Wyrms & Wormholes: Familiar Soup

While I grew up on Le Guin, Heinlein, and Clarke, I often find authors I feel I should have read long since and wonder how I missed them. A few years ago I read the very short story “They’re Made out of Meat” by Terry Bisson. Terry, where were you all my life?! But then I didn’t look further, didn’t pry up the rock
to find “Bears Discover Fire” or so many of his priceless portals into other worlds.

Currently wrapping up a course called Climate Fiction/Climate Action, I found myself digging beyond Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future to find his short work “The Lucky Strike,” which reimagines the end of WWII. The PM Press edition I bought included his essay “A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions,” which anyone pondering alternate histories should explore. The series editor was none other than Terry Bisson.

The time eddies we swirl in continually amaze me. And I’m reminded that just as clickbait tantalizes our superficialities, an author’s singular story is only one point on a graph. That one point might be a sparkly star, but often one shiny star suggests a constellation. May we accept those side quests with hearts full of curiosity, adventure, and glee.

—John Reinhart, Star*Line Editor

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Editor's Choice Poems

"Sailing through Flooded Cathedrals," by Daniel Ausema

The flood is smooth today.
Sea waters have welled up,
to fill our former lands and the ruins
of the giants who lived before,
but gone are the days of chaos,
past is the fury of wild storms.
Sunlight shines
through fragments of stained glass
and open window frames
onto glassy waters,
flashes that gleam and are gone.

Come with me, love.
Let us tour those vaulted spaces,
sail through fallen walls into the sacred,
into the peace of yesterday’s faiths.
There is stillness there, in the vastness—
the mystery of a breath drawing away,
centuries of steady, escaping winds,
soft but inevitable, the sound
of the shore at a retreating tide
that never returns, the cosmic whisper
of stars fleeing into emptiness,
a red-shifted, sighing release.

What giants constructed these walls?
What truths did they place blind trust in,
and therefore fall?
We will not fish for answers within those ruins,
but look deeper into waters that have forgotten waves.

There, within those massive walls,
our ship might cut the mirror of the flood.
might disturb the reflections into eternity,
and peer beneath the stillness.
Where stained glass imprints
yet disturb the certainties.
There we will find…
something; what it will be,
I do not know, only know
that the vague hope for that unknown,
wispy wingbeats over the water,
is stronger than floods and time.

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"The Great Vegetable Saga: My Cabbage vs. Your Broccoli," by Bibhushan Khadka

My cabbage sees your broccoli—
and immediately dons a monocle,
because vision demands style.

The pumpkin rolls its eyes,
whispering to the pomegranate,
“Love is just a seed pretending to matter.”

Outside, the zucchini march,
tiny spaghetti swords in hand,
while the radishes plot rebellions
on the living room rug.

Your broccoli flaunts its florets like a crown,
my cabbage pirouettes on a kale leaf.
They exchange glances that could start wars
or end them with a wink.

The carrot sighs, “Do we rot, or do we matter?”
The onion laughs—tears streaming, of course—
and the peas gossip, hopping jar to jar.

I touch my cabbage. It purrs.
Your broccoli sighs dramatically.
Somewhere, a tomato faints into chili flakes.

Then the celery grabs a microphone—
points at the pumpkin, the zucchini, the lettuce—
and declares :
“THIS POEM IS A DISASTER!
Yet somehow, it is our masterpiece!”
The crowd of vegetables cheers… and boos.

The lettuce belts arias.
Bell peppers tango with the chandelier.
Spices rain from the sky.
The kale moon wobbles.

I hold my cabbage. You clutch your broccoli.

My cabbage sees your broccoli -
the universe sighs.

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[leaving the tavern], by Greg Fewer

leaving the tavern
a man sotted and stumbling
finds a lane to pee
Anna bites him and drinks deep
her kind of Bloody Mary

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"Messaging from Moonbase," by Lauren McBride

Might love you, my sin -
I send without proofing.

Frantically fixing the typos.
Resending across the blackgap

to Earth, hoping for only a brief 
delay before he reads:

Night - love you, my son.
You ate a good nephew. 

Arrrgggg!!! Resending: You 
are a good nephew. Thank you 

for visiting your sick aunt. 
Still going to the planetarium?

Hope the shoe is food. 
OMG  -  show is good. 

I give up! Love you
from the moon and back, Mom

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[enlightenment], by Ngô Bình Anh Khoa

enlightenment
the warmth of another hand
holding onto mine
mere moments before
the meteor strikes

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Wyrms & Wormholes * John Reinhart
• SFPA Announcements
• President’s Message * Brian U. Garrison
• From the Small Press * Angela Acosta, Denise Dumars, Art Holcomb, Herb Kauderer, David C. Kopaska-Merkel,
• Sandra J. Lindow, Lisa Timpf
• SpecPo Publishing * Interview with Linda D. Addison * Jean-Paul L. Garnier

Art

• Fusion Feather * Zahra Zoghi
• Ocean City * Denny E. Marshall
• Star Galaxy * Denny E. Marshall

Poetry

• The Clinic at Andromeda’s Edge * David Anson Lee
• Red places * Diem Okoye
• Wish upon a Star * A J Dalton
• [siliconocene] * Joshua St. Claire
• The Magic of Words * Deborah L. Davitt
• [mothership …] * Greg Schwartz
• In search of like minds * Richard Magahiz
• Big Bang STD * Robert Borski
• Imitation Stars * Martin Elster
• The Unprinted Page * Md Mujib Ullah
• Kessler Syndrome * Garrett Speller
• Baba Yaga Upgrades Her Hut * Robert Borski
• [home alone] * Sarah Cannavo
• [leaving the tavern] * Greg Fewer
• [poor diet …] * Nicholas De Marino
• Vacuous Voyage * John H. Dromey
• Mouthwatering * Patrick Marsh
• Photographs: Storms * Roger Dutcher
• How the Dragon’s Daughter Tasted * Mary Soon Lee
• [unicorn] * F. J. Bergmann
• All Created Things * Robert Frazier
• Ecocide as a Children’s Story * Marisca Pichette
• Captain’s Log: First Contact * Lauren McBride
• [zero gravity] * LeRoy Gorman
• Godzilla Speaks Before The Long Sleep * Juan M. Perez
• The Sleepers Wake * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• [a lonely life] * Anna Cates
• A Real Handful * Nicholas De Marino
• Fire in Zero Gravity * Colleen S. Harris
• [For sale …] * F. J. Bergmann
• The Void’s Red Eyes * Murray Eiland
• Pilgrimage * Joseph Poon
• [enlightenment] * Ngô Bình Anh Khoa
• Drift Pump, 2 a.m. * Art Holcomb
• Hello neighbor * Richard Magahiz
• The Existent * Yucheng Tao
• [on deep-space freighter] * Wendy Van Camp
• Non-fiction * A J Dalton
• Punctuation * Robert Frazier
• [last stage of grief ] * Nicholas De Marino
• amazon * Haeun Kim
• Baby alien * Diem Okoye
• [Clockwork calico] * Denise Dumars
• Cat Applies for Loan * Shae
• [a bowl of cat food] * Alper Ghuchlu
• Laboratory Labrador * Randall Andrews
• Tradeoff * John H. Dromey
• Messaging from Moonbase * Lauren McBride
• Streets * DJ Tyrer
• [hippopotamus] * Randall Andrews
• The Rings of Saturn, Early On * Terri Yannetti
• Disappointment * Jacob Bergstresser
• To the Stars! * Lily Lachance
• [ocean ends, fish fall] * Gina Valley
• Venerate * Grace R. Reynolds
• Unspoken * Mary Soon Lee
• [bending spacetime] * Joshua St. Claire
• The Effect of Outsiders on Previously Stable Relationships * Timons Esaias
• Half a Tiger * M. Frost
• Citrus * Jordan Hirsch
• Taboo * Beau Wilks
• Mirror People * A J Dalton
• It Was a Nice Day * Beth Cato
• Autumn Feast * Jordan Hirsch
• This Forest Is Not Alive * Julia Ember
• Super Kevlar * Robert Borski
• A Cocktail Party in Dimensional Hell * Deborah L. Davitt
• Sunset. Condensed * Yuliia Vereta
• The Great Vegetable Saga: My Cabbage vs. Your Broccoli * Bibhushan Khadka
• [best friends] * Lauren McBride
• Sailing through Flooded Cathedrals * Daniel Ausema
• The Giant Greenhouse * Matthew Wilson
• [icicles] * Greg Schwartz
• [cryoship] * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• Letting the Cat Out of the Bag * John H. Dromey
• Wear-Wolves * Nicholas De Marino
• [is a tardigrade] * Christina Sng
• a loop of silk * Wren Douglas
• Dilettante * Mary Soon Lee
• The Camel Goes Through * Dolo Diaz
• The Only Forever I Can Afford * D. G. Rosales
• Vinyl * Robert Borski
• What the cemetery knew before spring * Yuliia Vereta
• Interstellar Road Trip * Adele Gardner
• Zeno’s Flood * Brian Hugenbruch
• Fools’ Moon * Josh Pearce
• Quockerwodger * Oliver Smith
• Troy Sunk in Violet * Kelli Dianne Rule
• back Wild Blue Yonder * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• [aliens wipe out Earth] * Gary Davis
• [Missing you so much.] * Alan Ira Gordon