Last Resort—Michael Greenhut

I wouldn't call the origin of Last Resort all that special.  I'd wanted to explore the classic imaginative trait of people "hearing the ocean" when they put seashells against their ears.  What if they really were hearing some other ocean in some other dimension, and could even communicate using the shell?   Initially, I drafted a story where a husband and wife were separated, and the husband could only listen to the wife (without communicating) until the end, during a storm.  I felt some crucial tension was missing from that, so I flipped the concept around and made the man and woman enemies.   The rest of the story and back story (a corporate engineer paying the price for a catastrophe he participated in, reflecting on lost innocence, etc.) just came out of the blue.

--Michael Greenhut

Almost Ready: Issue 35 of IGMS

Coming really soon...

 Issue 35 of IGMS, which represents the 8^th anniversary of our magazine. Eight years, wow. Maybe the idea of internet-based publishing just might catch on after all…

Our cover story this issue is "Tangible Progress" by Ed Schubert. No, not me; a different Ed Schubert. Really. Well… okay, it’s by me. But you have to promise not to tell Uncle Orson. ;-) Anyway… “Tangible Progress” is the story of a young girl in the process of discovering that there is much more to life with a tribe of werewolf-hunters than merely hunting werewolves. 

In "Southside Gods," author Sarah Grey introduces us to plumbers and air-conditioning repairmen and other potent deities. (I’d tell you more but then this intro would be longer than the story.) (Further proof that great things do come in little packages…)

"Wet Work: A Tale of the Unseen" is the Halloween centerpiece for this issue. It’s a tale of the idle rich, reality show contestants, zombies, and other mindless things that populate this dark but humorous post-apocalyptic world created by regular contributor Matt Rotundo. Guest-starring the devil, this one truly has something for everybody.

"Last Resort," by Michael Greenhut, is an argument for the redeemable nature of all people (except possible teenagers), set in a parallel-reality prison-world that only looks like paradise on the surface.

And not quite last, but very far from least, is "The Sweetness of Bitter," by Beth Cato. An SF tale in a very different post-apocalyptic world, “Sweetness” shows the very human results of a mother struggling to recalibrate the failing nanites in her daughter’s simulacrum. 

As a bonus for Halloween dessert, S. Boyd Taylor brings us this issue’s Tale for the Young and Unafraid (a feature normally penned by David Lubar). Everything you need to know about “The Elder Thing and the Puddle People” comes directly from the story: “It came with the green feet that had eyes and mouths, and with the yellow, rubbery outerskin, and with the lace and the glitter -- oh, the horrible, horrible glitter.” 

And be sure not to miss our InterGalactic interview with New York Times Best-Selling author Faith Hunter, who is so busy these days with novels and compendiums and games and anthologies that I honestly don’t know where she came up with time to do the interview. 

Plus the next installment of our newest feature, an article by our regular movie-reviewer, Chris Bellamy. Be sure to check out his second piece, "Beautiful Demise: Why I Will Be More Than Happy If and When 3D Finally Goes Away.”

Edmund R. Schubert
Editor, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show