The Literary-Speculative Issue

The beauty of speculative writing, when it’s done right, is that it begins with what we know about the world, makes a logical projection forward, and then takes that one extra step—taking its readers beyond what couldn’t be and into what might be, what could very well be, and sometimes what has to be. Our literary-speculative issue this time is filled with such stories. They don’t just offer conjecture about technology and events, they also speak to what it would be like to live in those situations, without forgetting to look at them through human eyes, with the empitions and desires that make us who we are.

Our contributors imagine love, friendships, gender relationships, and pregnancy. Some of our stories even drill down to specific subjects such as the future of marketing, and of real estate, and one even imagines a world in which people’s inner selves are projected into speech bubbles.

We hope you enjoy the look into these possibilities.

– Joe, Zac, Renee, Marci, David, Ronak, K.A., Jacob, Liz, and Noah

Table of Contents (click the links for stories and excerpts)

About the Cover Artist
Fragment(s); Ancestral, Liza Olson
The Second Fifth, Roger Topp
Atomic Visions, Jennifer Lee
Butterfly, Ryan Price
Title IX, Katelyn Pike
When You’re Expecting, Kristie Redfield
Horny Blonde, Up for Anything, J. R. Chapple
Ursula the Monster, Chelsea Sutton
Operation Empathy, Mindy Friddle
Leaving Loathsome Cave, Gregory Wolos
Leisure World, Jessica Powell
The Last Real Estate Agent in California, Colby Devitt
Love in the Land of Speech Bubbles, Ah-reum Han
Contributors

Please consider purchasing a copy of the full issue using the sidebar to the right. A pdf is a mere $4, and a print copy is $11.99.

Editor’s Note: We have not Americanized spellings and grammar native to other English-speaking countries, but have left them in their original form in order to fully convey the voices of our authors.