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Korean Ratsnake, Cat snake, Short-tailed viper snake, a snake, snake…. is creeping up your house wall that protects you from the outside.

We know a priori its uncanny wriggle, and

uncanny wriggle is Entelechy wrapped in scales of life and death....

So, do not turn away from the snake for you feel it is gross!

A snake who eats its tail again and again endlessly, being resurrected forever, this being who

swallows itself so, giving birth to the universe and holding the universe in its body is eternity

and universe itself without beginning and end.

Today the universe whose scales shine brilliantly dances in a state of beatitude.

 

One spring day,

My grandfather caught the universe that just revived.

The universe soon was hung, as its dead body, on a branch of a persimmon tree in the backyard of our house.

Drooping universe......

The universe was dead, its soul vaporized.

 

My grandfather and I are looking at the dead universe.

I’m so sad!

Today our next-door child also caught and killed the universe, another universe.

The corpse of the universe casts an ominous question to me,

If the seeds of the universe dry up,

If the universe disappears forever,

What will happen to our destiny!

 

In early summer, my grandmother catches and kills gross snakes,

and puts them in a damp place under an eaves.

Then, nasty flies smell the bodies of the universes and gather in them in swarms.

Two days later, the rotten fleshes of the dead universes are swarming with maggots, as if they were destined to devour the flesh of the dead universe.

When the maggots are plump, my grandmother feeds them to a hungry chicken.

As the chicken devours a lot of maggots nourished with the universes without their souls, it become fleshy as the days go by.

One day,

my grandmother cuts the chicken, makes boiled chicken with rice and gives it to weakly me for my birthday food.

Should I eat a chicken who ate maggots eating the rotten fleshes of universes?

Today the universes are sad, I am also sad!

 

In the distant future, all universes die, all human beings disappear,

Artificial flowers bloom in the dead bodies of universes,

on human graves.



Jong-Ki Lim (임종기) is a writer and translator from South Korea. He has published various translated books of literature, humanities, social science, and natural science, and his book The New Literary Revolutionof SF Tribes: The Birth and Soaring of Science Fiction that is SF literary criticism. He is currently writing the most uncanny, creative, compelling speculative fiction and fantastic poems in Seoul. You can read his interesting Korean writings on his blog, https://blog.naver.com/tumorism.
Current Issue
31 Mar 2025

We are delighted to present to you our second special issue of the year. This one is devoted to ageing and SFF, a theme that is ever-present (including in its absence) in the genre.
Gladys was approaching her first heat when she shed her fur and lost her tail. The transformation was unintentional, and unwanted. When she awoke in her new form, smelling of skin and sweat, she wailed for her pack in a voice that scraped her throat raw.
does the comb understand the vocabulary of hair. Or the not-so-close-pixels of desires even unjoined shape up to become a boat
The birds have flown long ago. But the body, the body is like this: it has swallowed the smaller moon and now it wants to keep it.
now, be-barked / I am finally enough
how you gazed on our red land beside me / then how you traveled it, your eyes gone silver
Grannies Against Oppression 
Here, I examine the roles of the crones of the Expanse space in Persepolis Rising, Tiamat’s Wrath, and Leviathan Falls as leaders and combatants in a fight for freedom that is always to some extent mediated by their reduced physical and mental capacity as older people. I consider how the Expanse foregrounds the value of their long lives and experience as they configure the resistance for their own and future generations’ freedom, as well as their mentorship of younger generations whose inexperience often puts the whole mission in danger.
In the second audio episode of Writing While Disabled, hosts Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston welcome Farah Mendelsohn, acclaimed SFF scholar and conrunner, to talk all things hearing, dyslexia, and more ADHD adjustments, as well as what fandom could and should be doing better for accessibility at conventions, for both volunteers and attendees.
Wednesday: Under the Eye of The Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Asa Yoneda 
Friday: The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon 
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By: Holli Mintzer
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
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Issue 10 Feb 2025
By: Alexandra Munck
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
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Issue 20 Jan 2025
Strange Horizons
By: Michelle Kulwicki
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 13 Jan 2025
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