Aloha From Hell

Richard Kadrey gives insight into an alternate creation story, one far more raw and grity, in his Aloha from Hell, the third installment in the Sandman Slim series:

"You can’t be subtle when you’re dealing with a Kissi, even their leader. And he’s the least psychotic one of the bunch.

　　The Kissi and I have one major thing in common. We shouldn’t exist. We’re both part of God’s Misfits of Nature traveling show. When the Big Bopper created angels at the beginning of time, he fucked it all up. The blowback from conjuring all those angels created both angels and their opposite. The Kissi. They don’t live in heaven with Daddy, but way out in the boiling chaos at the edge of the universe.

　　In their true form Kissi are fish-belly white and have a faint bottom-of-the-ocean-fish glow. They look like a cross between a regular angel and a six-foot-tall grasshopper dipped in wax and left in the sun to melt. If you’ve ever seen one, that’s enough to last a lifetime, and I’ve seen a whole world of them. That was back when I destroyed their Honeycomb Hideout way out in the ass end of Chaosville. Yeah, it’s hard to justify trying to kill off a whole species, but they were collaborating with Mason in his plan to take over Hell and then the rest of the universe. So basically, fuck ’em."

Richard Kadrey ¤ Aloha From Hell

There is so much modern fiction trying to be an instant classic, Richard Kadrey nails supernatural horror right out of the gates (of Hell). He has an ability to maintain a high level of energy and momentum through the Sandman Slim series. Here, in his third in the series, Aloha from Hell, he shows the same energy and timing that makes the series so addicting:

"She gets up. I grab her arm. She twists and tries to sucker punch me. Puts her whole body into it. I don’t try to stop her. I’m faster than any civilian, so she’s moving in exquisite slo-mo. When she’s a few inches from making contact, I lean back slightly and let her fist sail past. Grab the wrist and twist so her arm bends out like a chicken wing and every muscle and tendon in her shoulder feels like it’s going to snap. Carolyn goes down face-first onto the sofa and rolls herself into a little ball, squeezing her aching shoulder. I wait. Eventually, she sits up. There’s a half-finished cigarette in an ashtray on the arm of the sofa. She takes it, puts it between her lips, and starts looking around for matches. I’m still holding the lighter. I hold the flame out to her. She leans forward. I pull the lighter back and she follows a few inches. When she realizes I’m fucking with her, she stops and gives me a dirty look."

The Persistent Optimism of Literary Science Fiction

From The Shoulders of Giamts, Robert J Sawyer posits the far-flung future of humanity, in which governments that use force to control give way to logic and reason in a voluntary society. In his story, colonists start a 1,200 year journey at 1% the speed of light toward a potentially habitable planet, only to be overtaken by subsequent colonists at near-lightspeed. Sort of reinstills the vision that Clarke offered in Childhood's End.

"When the quarantine was over, we did go down to the planet. The temperature was perhaps a little cooler than I’d have liked, and the air a bit moister—but humans adapt, of course. The architecture in Soror’s capital city of Pax was surprisingly ornate, with lots of domed roofs and intricate carvings. The term “capital city” was an anachronism, though; government was completely decentralized, with all major decisions done by plebiscite—including the decision about whether or not to give us another ship."

Published in Galaxy’s Edge Magazine: Issue 1, March 2013

Galaxy’s Edge Magazine

Welcome to the premier issue of Galaxy’s Edge. We’ll be coming around every two months with a mixture of new stories and reprints, reviews and columns. Almost all the reprints will be by very-well-known authors; most of the new stories will be by less-well-known (but not less talented) authors.

　　We’re very proud to be the latest addition to the pantheon of science fiction magazines, which have a pair of histories—one long and glorious, the other just as long but inglorious (and infinitely more interesting).

　　You think not?

　　Let me share some of it with you before the last of us Old Guys (and Gals) pass from the scene and there’s no one left to remember the Untold History of the Science Fiction Magazines anymore.

From Galaxy’s Edge Magazine: Issue 1, March 2013