The first moon has passed its zenith. He-towers rise on all sides. Long slender Haes sail between them, skimming along the surface, their pods flared as sails. Shadows under the moon as shaes flit through the sky with pods spread to glassy thinness in crescent wings.

Vladislavas Yushkenas was born in North-Caucasus and has been living in the Lithuanian Republic since 2000. His art is not only fantasy, but musical as well.

"I am conscious of writing in a tradition that blurs the boundaries between three fantastic genres: supernatural horror, fantasy and science fiction. I have always been of the opinion that you can't make firm distinctions between those three."

Shades of gray are becoming more evident in speculative fiction, but dark monarchs and evil empires have never gone away. Some fans of "literary" or "artsy" SF have bemoaned this lack of moral complexity, which surely speaks less to our understanding of a complex, sophisticated, morally relativistic world.

I'd wanted a muse, / but had created a monster.