Size / / /

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

Reader Comments


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.
Current Issue
20 Jan 2025

Strange Horizons
Surveillance technology looms large in our lives, sold to us as tools for safety, justice, and convenience. Yet the reality is far more sinister.
Vans and campers, sizeable mobile cabins and some that were barely more than tents. Each one a home, a storefront, and a statement of identity, from the colorful translucent windows and domes that harvested sunlight to the stickers and graffiti that attested to places travelled.
“Don’t ask me how, but I found out this big account on queer Threads is some kind of super Watcher.” Charlii spins her laptop around so the others can see. “They call them Keepers, and they watch the people that the state’s apparatus has tagged as terrorists. Not just the ones the FBI created. The big fish. And people like us, I guess.”
It's 9 a.m., she still hasn't eaten her portion of tofu eggs with seaweed, and Amaia wants the day to be over.
Nadjea always knew her last night in the Clave would get wild: they’re the only sector of the city where drink and drug and dance are unrestricted, and since one of the main Clavist tenets is the pursuit of corporeal joy in all its forms, they’ve more or less refined partying to an art.
surviving / while black / is our superpower / we lift broken down / cars / over our heads / and that’s just a tuesday
After a few deft movements, she tossed the cube back to James, perfectly solved. “We’re going to break into the Seattle Police Department’s database. And you’re going to help me do it.”
there are things that are toxic to a bo(d)y
By: Michelle Kulwicki
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
  In this episode of the Strange Horizons Fiction podcast, Michael Ireland presents Michelle Kulwicki's 'Bee Season' read by Emmie Christie Subscribe to the Strange Horizons podcast on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify.
Wednesday: Motheater by Linda H. Codega 
Friday: Revising Reality: How Sequels, Remakes, Retcons, and Rejects Explain The World by Chris Gavaler and Nat Goldberg 
Issue 13 Jan 2025
Issue 6 Jan 2025
By: Samantha Murray
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 23 Dec 2024
Issue 16 Dec 2024
Issue 9 Dec 2024
Issue 2 Dec 2024
By: E.M. Linden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 25 Nov 2024
Issue 18 Nov 2024
By: Susannah Rand
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Issue 11 Nov 2024
Issue 4 Nov 2024
Load More