Welcome to the twenty-sixth issue of the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Rolling out in the aftermath of the Year of Perfect Vision post-pandemic, we have all been directly affected by the widespread repercussions of the latest coronavirus epidemic proliferating through the human race. In times like these the turbulence of actual events remains enough, not to mention the exacerbation of viewing and processing it all through the multiple lenses behind the masks of identity on up through the massive thought-provoking hypnosis by the media feeding into the conglomerate of motifs and memes that self-identify in our view as the open market of soul possession and mass-conducted consumption of the celluloid shadow ghosts dancing on the screens of our mind's eye, the monsters of vision we love so much beckoning us to succumb to their predatory embrace in the middle of the night.
The Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has been chronicled online since the summer of two-thousand-and-nine and archived for posterity ever since, for anyone to stumble upon while surfing along the breakers and eddies of the world wide web to encounter a story they've never read by an author they may or may not have ever heard about before, accompanied by some interesting artwork by an intriguing coterie of artists sharing a strange magnetic attraction to each other's inner vibrations. This issue began upon a blank canvas, like all the issues before it, only this time the canvas has been constructed of polarized energy particles shining in quantum magnetic suspension and supplying the necessary chain of interactions to illuminate your home screen.
Without the following friends and acquaintances on FB this august issue would not be possible, which streamed in realtime throughout the month of July in the year following the Covid-19 pandemic. I owe debts of gratitude to the following cohorts in bringing madness and delirium so perfectly into focus. Callum Leckie, we met back in the squalid depths of the interwoven kingdoms of the cybernetic world. You were among the first lost souls I discovered on my own wayward journey towards oblivion. That we are collaborating now with my short experimental fiction [Broken Head] in this issue where I've interpolated some of my favorite Eno lyrics into the narrative fills me with a distant sense of satisfaction. Here's to you across the turbulent waters of the sea, mate. I look forward to more fantastic configurations upon which we might yet collaborate.
To Jason Barnett, thanks for letting me raid your stash of stark and horrifying images by which I can pilfer certain bits and shrieking niblets to crop and post up front and center over any story with which it resonates on deeper levels than perhaps humankind's eyes were meant to gaze upon for free. The vision resonating in my head that's been fed by the nanobots a-swarming in my brain have directed me by multiple strings conducting a symphony of pouring pain and beauty in the form of words and pictures arriving from the remotest depths of the human carnival of living souls we call the internet. I sure hope your band Petrification returns to SLC for another night of sonic attack and devastation. I'm quite grateful for your participation here on the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
To Drew Roulette, your paintings are one of a kind as is your generous soul which I can feel radiating all the way out here even though we've only met about ten times at each and every show your band Dredg played to which I was lucky enough to attend, from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City you guys swept through plenty of times and those will always stay among the greatest shows I've been to in a lifetime of so many concerts it's a wonder they've not all been lost in a blur of memories reeling by over the years yet somehow I can remember each one pretty clear if I stop to think about it for a moment. Back to the Future indeed, for that's where we're always aimed at and it seems like we'll never arrive but that's only because we haven't removed the blinders from our eyes which merged into a third one refracted from the rest into becoming a panopticon of panorama which puts our vision to the test. As someone once upon a time sang, "Use your illusion," and I'm thankful you've let me use yours in this webzine.
A hearty shout out to my fellows in writing J.R. Torina and Keith Graham. The Freezine featured Mr. Torina eleven-and-a-half years ago when we serialized his old school Lovecraftian pulp novel The House in the Port (two years before it appeared in print from Sutekh Productions in March of 2012). We're all too happy up here on our lofty webzine a certain fraction of the way into our exosphere that J.R. took the time to write down Anthropophagus from having had a dream about it. I'm gratified that he jotted it down as best as he could in his notebook before its grisly details could fade altogether from his mind. Good thing he sent it in because the Freezine considers itself an expert on dreams. I was able to match three snippets of Jason Barnett's illustrious virtual gallery of vivid phantasmagoria to accompany this fruiting nightmare of reversed putrefaction. These two dark artists from the extreme underground resonate with each other in my view, and I remain indebted to them both for this collaboration the Freezine brings to you.
Where would we be without Keith Graham? It turns out that from a recent nanohost missive, there's a direct correlation plainly established between his body of work online and the vectors of distribution which the transmission from the nine stranded astronauts on Ceres in the year 2045 have managed to direct toward us in their concerted effort to reach out and positively affect a percentage of the human populace into executing a program of their passion for the love of doing it rather than for monetary gain. This sequence of missives fired back in time through the heart of Sagittarius A-Star sprayed the decades like so many flying bits of rock salt blasted from a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun. It was invariable that some of that would spray laterally through temporal cross sections of electromagnetic energy and end up hitting me, when I happened to walk by a C-arm flashing blue laser light in the radiology department of a hospital I used to work at. Little did I know then that my impulse to put out the Freezine was being guided by a crew of dedicated astronauts trapped on Ceres. But I've gotten off track and almost forgot to thank Keith for sending in his story Two Annies right in the nick of time to feature it as the closer of our august, I mean July issue of this radiant zine. Thanks for being my right hand man and partner in crime, Keith. That you dare assist me in this rash endeavor has helped keep this cyberliterary vessel afloat upon the photons behind the screens of our mind for quite some time.
Thanks for reading
the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Here's the TOC for the 26th issue
dubbed MicroMystery ☇ 26
art by Drew Roulette
art from the public domain
photo by S. Lawton
And that's a wrap for yet another issue of the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Thanks to all of our readers and followers and regular contributors and those eager souls along for the ride over the years while we gather together to keep the gears turning and new stories coming with flourishing artwork that keeps outcropping along the perimeters of this seemingly randomly generated cyberzine blossoming along the virtual contours of the ever morphing world wide web. Stay tuned to this same digital bat channel for the next issue to be generated whenever I've received enough submissions that will fit the overall tone and expectations of fine quality pulp fiction providing a temporary escape from the otherwise alluring ravages of the circumstances of the world into which we are all embroiled.
If you would like your story to be featured in a future
issue of the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
by all means reach out and email the editor at
FreezineFantasyScienceFiction@gmail.com
and an agent of the MicroHorde will reach out to you
This is looking awesome, Shaun! (Chaz here with my ancient blogger account) I need to set some time aside and just read all this.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Data. The Nanochronicles \ Trapped on Ceres infodump is one step closer to coming into fruition. The latest missive from the microSwarm has been intercepted—
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