Now Live - IGMS Issue 36

Ready for your reading pleasure, IGMS issue 36.

IGMS Issue 34 & 35 now on Kindle and Nook, etc.

The ebook version of the last two issues are now ready.

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IGMS Issue 36 cover teaser

Couldn't resist (not that anybody said I really ought to)...

Almost Ready: IGMS Issue 36

Coming soon: Issue 36 of IGMS, my favorite number for any issue we’ve ever published.

Our cover story this issue is "Escape from the Andromedan Empire” by Ian Creasy. “Escape” is a smart SF extrapolation of the current digital piracy landscape, projecting the theft of not just an author’s work, but of authors themselves—in a digital sort of way.

 

"The Saltwater Wife," by K.C. Norton continues the theme of very personal kinds of theft, except this time the story is dressed up in the garb of fantasy (both literally and figuratively) and explores not just the theft itself, but questions of identity.

John Murphy’s "At the Old Folks Home at the End of the World" takes a brief but deft look at the pros and cons, the light and the dark, of mortality, but turning it inside-down and upside-out.

In "Once More to Kitty Hawk," Greg Kurzawa also explores the theme of end–of–life, but in a quieter way, fading to almost nothing…

"The Light Crusader's Dark Deserts" is a rollicking adventure through the lands of many kinds of death, right up to the point where the protagonist has to sit down to dinner with his deceased wife and child, which answers several necessary but unpleasant questions.

We also have several bonuses for you this issue. First is an audio production of "At the Old Folks Home at the End of the World," read by none other than Orson Scott Card. We’re always tickled when we can get Uncle Orson reading our stories.

Second, we have an additional audio production, “The Sturdy Bookcases of Pawel Oliszewski,” written by Ferrett Steinmetz and performed by Philip Powell. “Sturdy Bookcases” is a sneaky story that repeatedly asks the simple but compelling question, “Are you interested now?” There’s only one way to know what it all means: Read the story. Or else listen to it. You decide. “Are you interested now?”

And be sure not to miss Darrell Schweitzer’s InterGalactic Interview with author John Hemry, who you may know better by his nom de plume, Jack Campbell. 

Plus the next installment of our newest feature, an article by our regular movie-reviewer, Chris Bellamy. Be sure to check out his next At The Movies, Extended Cut.

Issue 36, chock full o’ goodness, as befits the issue featuring my favorite number. ;-)

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

Tangible Progress, by Edmund R. Schubert

For several years now I’ve been turning over in my mind an idea: a mythical race of people who trace their origins back to ancient Rome and even beyond, to Rome’s founding legend of Romulus and Remus. These people are werewolf hunters, cursed by the Roman gods. Under this curse they will find their tangibility waxing and waning with the moon, until they have hunted and killed every last werewolf. That is the big idea. I think it has the potential to be a series of novels.

Of course, a series of novels will take years to write, and I wanted (needed, really) to start smaller, exploring these people and their lives, so I’ve begun writing several short stories set at different points in time. “Tangible Progress” is the first of these. I’m also working on one set in modern New York City, with some subtle but not unimportant difference. We’ll see which, if any of them, strike a chord with readers.

Regardless of the specifics, I also knew I wanted to start with the people, the Rem’n, but without the added baggage of werewolves. Werewolves are everywhere and, frankly, of limited interest to me. We’ve all seen plenty of werewolves during recent years, along with plenty of vampires and zombies. Even the first idea I had for writing about these people that was big enough to be a novel was actually set after the last werewolf had been killed. It seems odd, I know, even extreme, but I was fascinated by the idea of a werewolf-hunting people far more so that by the werewolves themselves.

As for Gabrielle and the gang in “Tangible Progress,” it took many drafts and help from several people (including but not limited to key input from Brad Beaulieu, Faith Hunter, and Scott Roberts) to get to a final draft. It was also balancing act of weaving in the necessary information about this race of werewolf hunters (that readers had never seen or heard of before), along with an actual story with a narrative arc and characters with their own agendas. Whether I’ve succeeded in that or not is up to the reader, but without Faith, Scott, and Brad’s help, this first story would only have been worse, not better.

I chose to set the story during the Great Depression because in addition to taking the werewolves out of the story, I also wanted to take the technology out of the story. I’m not sure that I can fully articulate why I wanted to do that, only that my instinct was to focus things as much as possible on people and nothing else. I suspect, however, that the time period is one I will revisit, regardless of which aspects of the mythology I am creating I choose to keep and which I choose to jettison. 1938 in particular is a year that intrigues me. So much happened that year, from the first Superman comic book and H.G. Wells radio “War of the Worlds” broadcast hoax, to Hitler’s invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II.

As for the individual characters in “Tangible Progress,” I hadn’t originally intended to revisit them after I started finished this particular short story, but having now spent time with the Rem’n children Gabrielle and Dianna and Celia, as well as her parents, tribal elders, and the some of the humans they encounter, I can easily see their story expanded and continued (though their story in IGMS is entirely self-contained). I particularly like Gabrielle’s independence of thought, even as she recognizes in the end her dependence on the Rem’n around her.

On a much broader note, I also feel compelled to mention that although I am the editor of IGMS, I have not and never have, selected my own work for inclusion in the magazine. I’m not delusional enough to claim that my role here doesn’t play a part in getting published in our digital pages, but any time I have a story that I’d like to see published, it goes first to our managing editor, who them passes it along to Uncle Orson. I’m comfortable saying that if he didn’t think that the story was good enough, he would at least send me some notes and say “Fix this up before you embarrass us all.” ;-)

So that’s the story behind my story. I’m hoping there will be many more, but first and foremost, I hope you enjoy this one all by itself. It has quite a load to carry, bearing the weight of this writer’s hopes and dreams for many future projects.

-Edmund R. Schubert