J♢nua☈y | 2022 ☆ iSsuE ★ 31

 

Jud Roth in his VW Rüstung Jumpsuit falling off the face of the Earth (image by S. Lawton) 

     Welcome to the thirty-first issue of my blog, the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Begun nearly thirteen years ago, back in the summer of 2009, when I was a regular on the (now defunct) dark echo hosted John Shirley message board ("the Board with a Nail in It") and came up with the idea of doing a free digital fanzine, like they did back in the 60s and 70s (Cosmicology, Weirdom Illustrated, Fantastic Fanzine, Squa Tront--to name just a few), and here we are, nearly thirteen years later, going stronger than ever. 

   That's because in the beginning, I did well putting out an issue every other month, for six issues a year, for the first few years.  Things began slowing down a bit, until fewer and fewer issues were being released, until last year, while in the midst of the worldwide pandemic, I found myself beginning to push the pedal to the metal, and have since committed myself to releasing an issue every month, if at all possible, from here on out. 

   So that's exactly what I've done since last September.  Issues 27 through 31 have all come out every month, as planned, and long time faithful followers of the Freezine may have noticed that in a sense, we are now more streamlined, for one by having focused on presenting micro-fictions by long time regular contributors A. A. Attanasio and John Shirley, over the course of a few months, presented along with some of the missives I've been receiving from the mysterious benefactors from the future, that is to say the nanoFleet or bloodHost, as they've been often referred to throughout this webzine's extensive history of editorial comments, which incidentally traditionally appear on the final day of whatever month has been running an issue.  

   So here we arrive once again on the final day of the month, which happens to be January, so now we're embarking on yet another calendar year by which I and my cohorts can continue producing quality prose, poetry and artwork for our loyal cadre of followers to read and admire. In this issue, the Freezine has featured the writing of Philip K. Dick, Vincent Daemon, and Shaun Lawton accompanied by a rogue's gallery of carefully selected source images altered by our resident artist Charles Carter, along with some contributions from myself.  Thanks to Vincent for providing his entertaining story Survivor Guilt. He and I tried our best to get represented in an anthology years ago, which has yet to come out, and which never officially accepted our stories for publication, so we decided together that they should appear here and now in this, the latest issue of the Freezine.  

   Without further ado, here's this issue's  TOC [just click on the story image to read it]: 

SECOND VARIETY

by Philip K. Dick

SURVIVAL GUILT

by Vincent Daemon

SPEED DEMON

by Shaun Lawton

P.S. 

     And that's a wrap, for the 31st issue of the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  For those readers and followers who are fans of the late, great Philip K. Dick, this post-script is being written for you.   If you're wondering how we acquired the rights to publish Phil's 1953 story, the reason is because no one ever renewed the copyright and therefore it's fallen into the public domain for many years, now.  

     The good people over at Project Gutenberg have made the text available for all to read, copy & paste into their own documents, or whatever floats their boat.  I've noticed there are several fly-by-night presses which offer Second Variety (put out by CreateSpace and other independent publishing platforms crawling for the chance to make a buck from the indiscriminate browsers surfing the world wide web from every conceivable demographic direction) so it occurred to me, "This belongs in the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction." 

     Furthermore, I realized that I could curate a batch of made-to-order images, culled from the original source material (Space Science Fiction, May 1953 issue) as well as a variety of other pulp science fiction magazines that ran the story throughout the sixties and seventies, and also stills could be modified from the 1995 movie adaptation Screamers (starring Peter Weller) which many of you today may not have seen, but which a few of us did, and can assure you while it may not have been the best PKD cinematic adaptation, it wasn't too shabby in its own special way, either. (It's been long enough for me to consider a re-watch, if I can track it down on Amazon Prime or whatnot.)

    I have long considered Philip K. Dick to be not only a patron Saint for the science fiction field in general, but certainly for our fanzine here, the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. So it's with great satisfaction that I got to present one of his short stories replete with AI-assisted modified digital art for the eight part serialization.  Thanks to Charles Carter for tirelessly conjuring fantastical iterations for our viewing pleasure. I knew he'd be perfect to run those source images from Space Science Fiction and Screamers through his VQGAN + CLIP art iteration renderings and come up with something just right for our own serialized adaptation, and as always he did not disappoint. 

     I'd like to take this moment to give a shout-out to one of our own Freezine veterans, the writer and activist David Agranoff, for having made available on a regular basis over the past few years his Dickheads Podcast, which also has hyperlinks over on the YouTube platform.  Be sure to follow these links and check it out and descend deeper into the hyperkinetic reality of one of science fiction's most erudite and mind altering writers, Philip Kindred Dick.  RIP 

    

Stay tuned for more 

transmissions coming 

next month 

exclusive to

the FREEZINE of

Fantasy and Science

Fiction