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Futurity wears the head of Medusa and the body of a cinema goddess.

Futurity is a clown without humor, without greasepaint, its eyes large
and sad and lined as the evening sea.

Futurity is infinite in its potential and terrifying in its command.
It bedazzles you with promise and threatens you with dark possibility.

Futurity never asks permission to be itself in mixed company.

Futurity is vivid as black light violet, cool as a retrospective on
heroin jazz. It needs no makeup to sport a Mediterranean tan.

Futurity takes your hat at the door and your shirt at the table. It
leads you down a hall where your portrait becomes ancestral.

Futurity beds you on a mattress too hard with pillows that migrate
through the night. It bestrides the lines that scroll across your
back to mark you with its legend.

Futurity claims a cast of millions. It is always over budget and often
reneges on its debts.

In isolated and remote regions Futurity sleeps for centuries only
to awaken refreshed with an accelerating appetite that can devour
generations.

Futurity burns the compact disc of your day's declensions, available
in the theatrical version or the director's cut. It wears you like
a coat into the storm.

Futurity has been known to tease the country of the blind with tales
of stereoscopic vision.

Futurity is the ghost in the machine, the fragrance and the thorn,
a dynamic rendition of the hospscotched past.

Futurity makes no excuses and arrives in its own time.

Futurity wears the head of the Minotaur and the body of Aphrodite.

 

Copyright © 2003 Bruce Boston

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Bruce Boston is the author of thirty-two books, including the novel Stained Glass Rain. His work has appeared in hundreds of publications, including Asimov's, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and the Nebula Awards Showcase, and won numerous awards, including the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Bruce's previous publications in Strange Horizons can be found in our Archive. To contact him, email bruboston@aol.com.



Bruce Boston is the author of forty-seven books and chapbooks, including the novels The Guardener's Tale and Stained Glass Rain. His writing has received the Bram Stoker Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Asimov's Readers Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. You can read more about him at www.bruceboston.com and see some of his previous work in our archives.
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16 Dec 2024

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