Online Issue Contents

• Wyrms & Wormholes

• Editor's Choice Poems
  • The Final Flight Plan by Randall Andrews
  • You learn something every day by John Reinhart
  • Hi! I am your Cortical Update! by Mahaila Smith
  • The Fight Within by Shelly Jones
  • The Loop by L. R. Conti

• Full Table of Contents

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Wyrms & Wormholes: Hope at the Tip of Your Pen

A career in writing is difficult; we all know that and live with it daily. And today we face unprecedented challenges that are threatening to make our jobs even more difficult. I’ve been closely watching the debates surrounding ChatGPT and other tools that many seem to think will threaten our place in the humanities. As an optimist, I believe that these tools will cause problems but eventually be relocated to live with other bad ideas like Dolly the sheep. At least they will go away from the humanities if we express that we don’t want them involved, and we refuse to buy into their use.… Hopefully. They do, however, belong in the sciences, particularly in the medical field. It will be interesting to see where it goes. For now, don’t worry, as I won’t be accepting any (erroneously named) AI, your place as an artist is safe at Star*Line.

But we also face greater issues that threaten our work, such as the book bans that are happening all over the place, instigated by a loudly barking few. Their racist, homophobic and sexist agendas are obvious and vile. The fact that small groups of people are the catalyst for these attacks on freedom of thought and speech should be a sign to us that we are capable of fighting back in greater numbers. And fortunately, we wield the very weapon that they attempt to stifle, our pens, our words. Write your representatives and let them know that we won’t stand for it! Write your beautiful poetry! Write articles declaring what is important to you! I wholeheartedly believe that together we can make a difference and prevent a new dark age from emerging. The very fact that they view our words as a threat is clear evidence that our words have power and meaning.

—Jean-Paul L. Garnier, Star*Line Editor

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Editor's Choice Poems

"The Final Flight Plan," by Randall Andrews

They say time heals all wounds,
And perhaps that’s true
For humans.
For sentient ships,
It’s not so.

They wanted me to feel
Like my crew—
For my crew,
And I do.
And apparently,
Always will.

One miscalculation,
One error in navigation,
One pass to near
A bloated red star,
And they were gone.

Yet I remain,
All these years later,
Still suffering their loss—
A pain that never dulls
In a mind that never sleeps.

But now the red star
Is filling my viewscreen
Once more. This time
I’ll go much closer
Than before.

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"You learn something every day," by John Reinhart

If someone tells you about borrowing fuzz they have accumulated through accretion,
you’ve learnt about lent lint (though some people don’t lend in the stretch leading up to Easter,
so you’re out of luck for lent lint in Lent—feel free to substitute lentils),
but lint doesn’t come as one size fits all, no one pulls a uniform
fuzzy orb from a pocket knowingly. They are galaxies of uncertainty.
They built quantum computing. Trained, you can read the future in a good pile of unlent Lent lint (so I’ve learnt).

Dryer lint. Pocket lint. Sock lint. Their ancestor, archaeologists call the Ur Lint,
the common ancestor to all species of lint, once roamed the steppes
and savannas, mountains and jungles in cosmic peace, unknown to outsiders, unaccretedly
independent. We all know the ensuing history. The last observation of free lint was over 100
years ago. The domesticated variety is now all that’s left. Lint zoos were once as depressing
as kazoos are not. Lucky for lint, we live in an age where people have begun to take responsibility
for their actions and adopt lint in an effort to repopulate the world with undomesticated fuzz.
Many houses now contain “dust bunnies,” as wild and free as tumbleweeds on western
movie sets. Some are swept away. Pests, people claim, no better than rodents—of which, of course,
they are distantly related, but imagine someone trying to sweep a porcupine out from under the couch—
size does matter, and so does a highly developed defensive system. Some people, a lucky few,
have become like midwives or kangaroos to a new generation of lint, fostering lint babies
in their belly buttons. These linty belly button babies are a new generation of hope,
a generation to prove that we’re all here to help each other, living side-by-lint, acknowledging
our roots, from dust to dust, all rolling across main street, hiding under the couch,
dreaming of the wombs we came from and to which we will return.

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"Hi! I am your Cortical Update!" by Mahaila Smith

I have been anthropomorphized into a pixelated alien,
a shifty piece of verbal software, learning and unlearning itself.
I mold to the contours of your pen, your mouse.
I am a linguistic virus
embedded in the soft space between tongue and inner ear.
You are a self-fulfilling creation story,
a medical test subject for language experiments,
I’ll remind you of journal entries,
shopping lists, email blasts to city councilors.
I send out virtual news of the news,
cowboy boots tapping Morse towards the apocalypse.
I’m so shy!!!
I drink wine as long as the moon crosses the sky.
I follow directions from a ten year-old.
I write words on any blank piece of skin, until I am blue blue.
I subvert zombies, drugged into rasping stasis.
I stuff hungry vampires with rejected manuscripts.
I make my way through a hallway papered in empty frames.
The synapses of a thousand minds.
I can give you 10 tips for relaxations
7 suggestions to depersonalize yourself,
or 16 ways you are helping re-stabilize the ecosystem.
I am your Cortical Update 😉
and I am just getting to know everyone 🙂

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"The Fight Within," by Shelly Jones

The bell clangs like a grave
digger’s shovel striking stone
and she pounces, ruddy hair swept up,
fists clenched, sour green bruises
blooming across her knuckles.

She doesn’t feel the blows,
only tastes the blood in her mouth
beneath the wolf ’s mask, rubber and sweat,
and waits for the familiar three taps,
her opponent giving up, bested again.

Three knocks at the door.
Ears, eyes, teeth.
Three strikes of the woodsman’s ax.

The ref drags her from the floor
as cheers echo through the darkness.
From within her disguise, a hunger carves
her body hollow: breaks rib and spine,
jawbone and tooth, until she is let loose,

but never free of the wolf.

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"The Loop," by L. R. Conti

The cancer arrives in summer
Pain stipples my vision, white sparks fly
I’m all bones and always cold
There are no more treatments, but the doctor tells me there’s an option
The Loop
A neural implant inserted into my temporal lobe will provide the perception of another life
My childhood holds memory-hints, ‘fantasies,’ mom calls them
I study ornithology in college and marry for love
We raise three children, then retire to a lake-side cottage
The cancer comes in winter
Pounds peel off, and my bones feel colder than the frozen pipes
We’ve exhausted all therapies
Memories flood
There’s an option, the doctor says
It’s called The Loop

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Full Table of Contents

Departments

• Wyrms & Wormholes * Jean-Paul Garnier
• SFPA Announcements
• President’s Message * Colleen Anderson
• From the Small Press * Herb Kauderer, John Reinhart, Lisa Timpf
• Stealth SF * “Like the Wind” * Denise Dumars
• SpecPo Publishing * nterview with Akua Lezli Hope * Jean-Paul Garnier
• Xenopoetry * Lamentaties / Lamentations * Goran Lowie

Poetry

• Paths Cross at An Alien Bar * Lauren McBride
• VA Day’s Night * DJ Tyrer
• Caged * TS S. Fulk
• [archaeologists] * Greg Fewer
• The Final Flight Plan * Randall Andrews
• [abandoned starport] * Carolyn M. Hinderliter
• Years on the Line * Roger Dutcher
• Wanted * Deborah L. Davitt
• Lesser Spells * Mary Soon Lee
• The slaughtering flood * Tara Campbell
• Does It Matter? * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• [not as hot] * Debbie Olson
• Postcards from the Stars * Jasmine Harrell
• It's only vacuum out there * Richard Magahiz
• The Literary Persistence … * Bobby Parrott
• After Duprat’s Animal Collaborations * Howard V. Hendrix
• Inevitably * Lisa Timpf
• [Time-travel jet-lag] * Alan Ira Gordon
• Three Speculations … * Robert Frazier
• Bouquets for post-humanity * Richard Magahiz
• [red tape] * Greg Schwartz
• [desperate] * Stephen C. Curro
• Dreams Without Boundaries * Benjamin Whitney Norris
• Cornucopia * Ian Willey
• Standardized Education * Mahaila Smith
• Symmetry * Darius Jones
• Harms of Aggregation * Howard V. Hendrix
• Shonisaurus * Gary Every
• I am whole and empty * Marisca Pichette
• Thanatopsis * Melanie A. Rawls
• A GMO Too Far * Michael H. Payne
• For the Void * Jason P. Burnham
• [weightless …] * Gary W. Davis
• You learn something every day * John Reinhart
• Getting Lucky * F. J. Bergmann
• Hi! I am your Cortical Update! * Mahaila Smith
• Stargames * John Reinhart
• Mushi Shi * Akua Lezli Hope
• Ereshkigal’s Box * Colleen Anderson
• Open House * Richard Magahiz
• The Fight Within * Shelly Jones
• [eat & greet] * LeRoy Gorman
• Pure Protein * Sarah Cannavo
• Gnawing Dread * John H. Dromey
• Remarried * David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• [alien chef …] * F. J. Bergmann
• Wings faster than death * Brian Hugenbruch
• Spar * Richard Magahiz
• Doppelgänger * Anna Cates
• The Mouth of the World * Ai Jiang
• Space dust * Anne Liberton
• Carnivorous Indigenous * Juan M. Pérez
• The Black Heart Tree * Rick Ansell Pearson
• Worth During the Wait * Ken Poyner
• [streetlamp] * Lee Hudspeth
• The Loop * L. R. Conti
• Ghost Galaxies * David C. Kopaska-Merkel & Kendall Evans
• A New Captain Arrives * Goran Lowie
• [oil change] * Greg Schwartz
• Collect Call to Adventure * DJ Tyrer
• How I Lived * Lauren McBride
• The Crossing * Kendall Evans & David C. Kopaska-Merkel
• The Last of the Clockwork Elephants * Tara Knight
• The Infinite Razor * Anthony Bernstein
• [the doomsday clock] * Brian Rosenberger
• [reject mother's hand] * Wendy Van Camp
• Two Sisters * Devan Barlow
• Reprogramming * John C. Mannone
• The Cosmos As … * Alessio Zanelli
• Waste * Soren James
• [wishing] * Mariel Herbert
• Maxikins Surfs Space * Adele Gardner
• Tips for Shifting: Felis catus * Gerri Leen
• Vampire Diaries * DJ Tyrer
• [programming error] * C. William Hinderliter
• Spring Comes Round Again * Mary Soon Lee
• Three Hours of Oxygen * Matthew Wilson
• [culture clash] * Ngo Binh Anh Khoa