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I tell my friend I am writing a science fiction novel. Oh, like Star
Wars? I love that movie. No, I reply, I am writing a novel.
It has a double plot. A man’s world is ending, and so is his marriage.

I liked that in Interstellar, she says. Does your planet explode?
Are there blasters? You need guns for special effects.
My pages don’t boom, I admit. No flashing lights. Just words.

People like that? What about a soundtrack? That worked
for Guardians. Your book should have a soundtrack. Why not
put out a playlist, tell people which chapter gets which song?

I shake my head sorrowfully. No music either. Too much happens
in a vacuum. You need air for vibration. It’s not fair, she says.
No one has trouble breathing in the movies. What about

the science? Are drives warped? Can you beam anywhere?
I’m embarrassed. My science is fine. No one travels.
They can’t figure out why things don't work. Their best people

get blown up. That’s good, she says. Blown up is good.
The bigger the better, I agree. And the cat? How does it
get saved? Ahh. The cats. Yes, I have them. They eat people.

Her eyebrow lifts. I don’t think it works that way. What about
your hero? Who plays him on screen? You’ll need star power.
I think about that. The man is kind of average. Me, I guess.

You are not attractive, she says. That’s true, I say. That’s why
I’m writing a science fiction novel. A man’s world is ending.
It always is, she says. You need a better plot. I do, I say. I do.



Liam Corley has been writing a science fiction novel since 2012. He teaches American literature at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and his poems can be found in Badlands, Chautauqua, First Things, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, and War, Literature & the Arts. He can be found at www.liamcorley.com or http://www.cpp.edu/~wccorley/.
Current Issue
27 Nov 2023

you no longer have image. in photos your cheek² sharpens, vectors.
That cis-tem is now only a speck.
Mushrooms didn’t exactly sweep sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, but much like their real-world inspiration they persisted, growing in the damp, dark crevices of the creative minds of every generation. They were a template for the anxieties of each age, seasoned with the fears of the era.
Stories of extensive evil, in which the threat is not a single villain, nor even a man-made pollution monster, but systemic structures of harm in which we are all complicit, offer tools to think through real-life problems, which are rarely fixed by defeating one villain.
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My most hearty and luxurious greetings fam, hope all are doing well. Friends, I feel like I often start this column by saying I can’t remember what happened in the previous episode. Today, I honestly cannot remember a single thing that happened last time. Fam, so many things happened lately and my brain has been all over the place. I had to move! I am getting too old for this kind of lifestyle and now I’m not going to unpack anything because I will just have to repack and move again at some point. I don’t know if that is
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