InterGalactic Medicine Show #17: Stories

IGMS returns in June with a new look, and brand new stories!

Bud Sparhawk explores the depths of space and the meaning of humanity and relationships in the context of time-dilation in Ten Winks to Forever.

In Sparrowjunk, Margit E. Schmitt reveals the power of stories. A single father courts the favor of a not-quite-human woman in order to keep his cancer-stricken son alive. He barters fairy tales for his son’s health—but the creature he’s trading with has an insatiable appetite, and trading with her might cost more than he could possibly imagine.

Duster, Florida, is a town of cheats, swindlers, petty despots, and intrepid eleven year-old Susanna Entwhistle. In Richard Wolkomir’s Frankie and Johnny and Nelly Bly, Miss Entwhistle shares her story of how the biggest cheat, swindler, and despot in town got his comeuppance at the hands of a spellslinger-for-hire. Packed into her account are romance, betrayal, ambition, death, and magic—just what a growing girl needs.

One apocalypse would have devastated the world; Sister Jasmine, in Von Carr’s Sister Jasmine Brings the Pain, has to deal with all possible apocalypses. Vampires, zombies, ninjas, robots, sentient plants, dinosaurs, telepathic mutant geeks—all seem to be gunning for Sister Jasmine and her faithful zombie-hunting robot dog.

An Early Ford Mustang arrives just in time to remind us why author Eric James Stone is a Medicine Show favorite. Brad’s inheritance—the titular mustang—is a nice ride, but underneath that hood, there’s a curse pumping through the engine.

Last but not least, we’ll be reprinting Orson Scott Card’s tale of the power of family, and the lengths one young man will go to escape it. Part 1 (of 3) of Eye for An Eye hits these electronic pages in issue #17.