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In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Ciro Faienza presents Soren James's "Evolution for Immortals," with commentary by the poet.

 

From the poet:

The phrase “evolution for immortals” came to me using a Dada cut-up technique, and led to my wondering what that would entail—how would an immortal evolve? But I could only think of a recoiling from the horror of eternal life—a hiding from the full force of forever—and so I came up with ideas of de-evolution, a retracting into the immediacy of the flesh, shorter time-scales, memory loss, and the distractions of war/violence. Which led me to humans, and that was the final—the missing link—in the poem. Once I had this outline, I felt it would be ironic/amusing to have an impatient narrator recounting these details of immortality.

At least, that's the idealized version of the poem's evolution, in truth there were a lot of mistakes, dead-ends and fortuitousnesses along the way—like evolution itself.



Soren James is a writer and visual artist who recreates himself on a daily basis from the materials at his disposal, continuing to do so in an upbeat manner until sumptuously throwing his drained materials aside to resume a stillness without asking why. More of his work can be seen here: https://sorenjames.wordpress.com
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18 Mar 2024

Strange Horizons
We are very happy to welcome Dante Luiz as a new fiction editor on the team! Dante is a Ignyte Award winning author, and has been with Strange Horizons working as an Art Director for the past several years. We’re stoked to bring him on to the fiction side and have him bring his wonderful insight and skill to the fiction team.
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