Cover: Allegory ca. 1500, Piero di Cosimo National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Editor: F.J. Bergmann
Layout: F.J. Bergmann
Production Manager: F.J. Bergmann
Mailing: Brian Garrison
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Wyrms & Wormholes: Greetings, fellow Earthlings!
Feelings are fizzy here on the vast Wisconsin prairie, what with the Rhysling Long Poem win and all. Given that a disproportionate number of SFPA award nominations come from Star*Line, from which we exclude ourself whilst Editor, we are especially delighted!
We are lately returned from Convergence, present there thanks to the kindness of Bryan Thao Worra and Ruth Berman, and are now burning the black and glutinous atrament gushing from long-after-midnight wells, although we periodically step out on the aft deck to breathe the stars hovering over the glorious realm of Summer.
Our estival cover art is a late-medieval classic depicting a charming islet that is the minuscule home of a ludicrously deformed horse—or is it instead … AN ALIEN HORROR—juxtaposed with a perfectly ordinary angel and an admiring mermaid. We have noted before that a number of medieval artists seem to depict horses far less realistically than supposedly fabulous creatures for which they are presumed not to have had actual models, for instance unicorns and dragons. Perhaps such implicit bestiaries indicate that evolutionary history as we know it is not as reliable as we suppose.…
some doors lead to cathedrals
arching up overhead like stormy skies
and some to sumptuous auditoriums
and some to caves of nuclear monsters—Marge Piercy, “Doors opening, closing on us”
Let us further the imaginary.
—F.J. Bergmann, Star*Line Editor
Editor's Choice Poems
"Etsy Keeps Her in Black Stockings and Poppies," by Jennifer Schomburg Kanke
Fifteen winged monkeys
cross-stitching in the back room:
There’s no place like home.
"On the eve of the great danger," by Jane Røken
we crossed three frontiers and a muddy brook. Looking skyward, we dangled darkly close to the outer limits, our range of vision curtained by a flotilla of silent barrage balloons. (Black stingrays viewed from below. We at the bottom of the sea.) We ventured to take cover, if only briefly, in the crossing-keeper’s shack by the railway bridge. It was abandoned but unlocked, no one there but a handful of would-be survivors like ourselves. The floors were littered with blue seedpods and dry shrivelled orange peels. (Spent cartridges. Spent condoms.) On one of the walls someone had scrawled a message: Recall Everything Exactly As It’s Going To Happen. Our fellow fugitives were submerged in a discussion of methods for conjuring up the clickhand ninjas. (To ‘put things right’. A horribly misconceived delusion.) So we figured that, regardless of the outcome, this place would be in for noxious company. The balloons upstairs had already gone into shapeshifting mode. The late-night train never came. We left as soon as the lights went out.
"It Came to Pass," by Mark Mansfield
In memory of Edward O. Knowlton
Psychics, predictably, became about as common as enchanted oaks
in Elf Town.
From Stonehenge to Roswell,
epiphanies multiplied faster than jackrabbits.
Herbalists outearned Wall Street.
Wind chimes and clearly marked runes were required by law.
Séances and crystal-gazing replaced mandatory schooling,
and soon, no one dared admit to not having lived
at least one previous life.
Constantly dogged by the intuitive goon squads,
the last few linear thinkers cast themselves out.
Forced to subsist on near-brainstorms and semivalid
syllogisms, they hid inside the vacant classrooms,
boarded-up laboratories, and condemned libraries
where sometimes late at night while reasoning in whispers,
they would hear the stag hoofs
or glimpse its silver mane, or lion’s tail
in the clear light cast down the darkened halls
from its single horn as it stood there, listening.
"Sightings," by Isaac Black
Many of you can’t tell the difference between
sparkling dots in the sky (sometimes darting
every which way like a compass needle gone
wild) from any real Armada of Starships. You
think an Alien, barely visible, has to peek into
a window (conveniently posted on Youtube).
Or dash pass your lonely room’s door like Chuckie.
You can’t explain why we need to do a probe,
putting something up you ass or in your biceps
or tendon, as if there’s something we have to
discover. In some of your old abduction stories
you babble about hypnotizing computers (wallto-
wall, sole to ceiling). You feel the non-stop
beeps, burps, can’t escape the vibrating long
myoelectric arms. The tiers of flashing dome-
shaped lights are always there. You’re one inch
from being crazy, is what most people think. You
were wired and/or put to sleep in capsules or
honey-pods (you could taste things). You saw
Orwellian images, equations, and cosmic symbols
you were able to juggle in your hands like golf
balls. You learned all the answers, if only for
a millisecond. But today a palm-sized gadget
(needing one shifting finger) is faster. Of course
this message is coded like snowflakes or egg yolks,
and you won’t be able to decipher what’s right
in front of your eyes till the next millennium,
if not longer. Sorry; you humans are the butt of
our jokes. Did it ever dawn on you that you have
brains of jelly? That maybe we have set up colonies
(thriving, multiplying) in those silly dots you now
send in every text? That “in the beginning,” before
Genesis, there was light’s velocity and deep, luminous
space? Ever-after? No, we don’t need time travel,
robots to feed quadriplegics, bypass surgery, virologists.
But you are absolutely correct. We are here.
"Rome Built (and Razed) in a Day," by Robert Borski
Although the colosseum
needs some work
and the drain on resources
is heavy,
much to everyone’s surprise,
the metroprinter works.
On the other hand,
perhaps the self-igniting Christians
were a bad idea.
Full Table of Contents
Departments
- Wyrms & Wormholes * F.J. Bergmann
- SFPA Announcements (new!)
- President’s Message • Bryan D. Dietrich
- From the Small Press • David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Denise Dumars, Joshua Gage, Deborah P Kolodji, Sandra J. Lindow, Alex Plummer Full reviews
- Stealth SF • An Audience with the Queen * Denise Dumars
- Xenopoetry • After the Visit * Ján Stacho; translator Nick McRae
Art
- Another New Arrival * Denny E. Marshall
- On the Highway of Stars * Denny E. Marshall
- They Came from the Field * Denny E. Marshall
Poetry
- Old Astronauts * Mary Soon Lee
- “incident at CERN” * Anna Sykora
- “destination reached” * Herb Kauderer
- Your People Are So Strange * Kris Rhodes
- Game of Cat and Dragon * Jenny Blackford
- It’s an Alien * Nora Weston
- Inter-dimensional Classified Ad * Sultana Raza
- Versified Big Bang Theory * Sarah Page
- “princess’s birthday” * Anna Sykora
- Mission to the Great Nebula in Orion * Steven B. Katz
- Newton’s First Law * Aimee Ogden
- Smart Footwear * William Cullen Jr.
- Potentiality * Glenn A. Meisenheimer
- A Great Grave * E.H. Brogan
- Etsy Keeps Her in Black Stockings … * Jennifer Schomburg Kanke
- “antigravity boots” * Lauren McBride
- On the eve of the great danger * Jane Røken
- Resupply * Ken Poyner
- Cold Comfort * Boyd Bauman
- “time portal wedding” * LeRoy Gorman
- No Need to Roam * Lauren McBride
- “9 MB of her memory” * Matthew Wilson
- Thumbelina’s Circumambiency * Sarah Page
- An Upgraded Summarizer Gun * James Reinebold
- “new neighbors dangle” * Anna Sykora
- “Time machines made illegal” * Zak Jones
- Opus * Mary Soon Lee
- What Atun Learned * Mary Soon Lee
- Signs that you might be artificial * Katarzyna Lisińska
- Darkness * Mary Soon Lee
- It Came to Pass * Mark Mansfield
- Jung for a New Age * William Cullen Jr.
- She Walks in Yellow to Please Her Lord * Bruce Boston
- The Witness * Alessio Zanelli
- “solar-powered time machine” * Zak Jones
- Sightings * Isaac Black
- “caged by aliens” * Denny E. Marshall
- Message from inside a black hole * Yuxing Xia
- Peddler * Scott T. Hutchison
- “the moon” * James D. Fuson
- Evolution * Ken Poyner
- Swamp, Thing * John Reinhart
- Fable * Nick McRae
- “mother used to say” * Anna Sykora
- The Time Traveler Revisits Childhood * Beth Cato
- Sally’s Allergies * J.P. Brown
- Mrs. Lazarus * Robert Borski
- Rome Built (and Razed) in a Day * Robert Borski
- Housesitting for the Lotus Eaters * Jeffrey Beck
- “bottom of the well” * Anna Sykora