Mothership Zeta, Issue 2

By Mothership Zeta

The first ezine effort from the popular podcast production company, Escape Artists, Mothership Zeta offers speculative fiction that has a focus on fun. Fun is subjective, naturally, but we hope these short stories, reviews, and nonfiction pieces offer a look at the lighter side of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Stories by A. Merc Rustad, Sonja Natasha, and T. Kingfisher. Game, movie, and fiction reviews, and nonfiction.

Table of Contents:
Editorial
Fiction: You, an Accidental Astronaut by Sonja Natasha
Fiction: That Time with Bob and the Unicorn by T. Kingfisher
Nonfiction: The Story Doctor Is (In) by James Patrick Kelly
Fiction: The Android’s Prehistoric Menagerie by A. Merc Rustad
Fiction: The Elixir of the Not-So-Disgusting Death Smell by Carlie St. George
Nonfiction: Dictionary Writing Prompts by Karen Bovenmyer
Fiction: A Bird, a Broad, and a Mess of Kyodatsu by Stephen Lickman
Nonfiction: Video Game Review: Hatoful Boyfriend Is the Greatest Pigeon Dating Sim in the History of Human and/or Bird Existence by Sunil Patel
Nonfiction: Movie Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens: A New Hope by Rachael Acks
Fiction: Fire in the Belly by Rachael Acks
Nonfiction: Comics Review: New and Upcoming Graphic Novels: Skywalker Strikes, Injection, Lady Killer, Bitch Planet, Constantine the Hellblazer Vol. 1: Going Down, and Founding Father Funnies by Adam Gallardo
Fiction: Forty-One Bad Breakups and One Redemptive Reunion by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mothership Zeta
• Release date: Jan 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310197840

Mothership Zeta

Mothership Zeta is the first ezine project to come out of Escape Artists (publisher of podcast magazines Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and Podcastle). We are an ebook-only zine that focuses on new fiction with a fun understone and reprints from the EA podcasts, along with nonfiction from experts in science fiction, science, and more! Mothership Zeta's team consists of Mur Lafferty, Sunil Patel, and Karen Bovenmyer.

Book preview

/front-matter

Mothership Zeta Issue 2

January 2016

Mur Lafferty, Editor In Chief

Sunil Patel, Assistant Editor, Fiction

Karen Bovenmyer, Assistant Editor, Nonfiction

Cover art The Surrogate’s Charge

copyright Elizabeth Leggett, 2015

Mothership Zeta is a part of Escape Artists, Inc. Please visit our sister magazines,

Escape Pod (http://escapepod.org),

Podcastle (http://podcastle.org),

Pseudopod (http://pseudopod.org),

and Cast of Wonders (http://castofwonders.org)

Copyright 2016

Escape Artists, Inc.

PO Box 965609

Marietta, GA 30066

Published by Escape Artists, Inc. at Smashwords

/contents

In This Issue...

/welcome

Welcome to Issue 2 of Mothership Zeta!

/welcome

I Arranged the Menu

/fiction

You, an Accidental Astronaut

by Sonja Natasha

/fiction

That Time with Bob and the Unicorn

by T. Kingfisher

/non-fiction

The Story Doctor Is (In)

by James Patrick Kelly

/fiction

The Android’s Prehistoric Menagerie

A. Merc Rustad

/fiction

The Elixir of the Not-So-Disgusting Death Smell

by Carlie St. George

/non-fiction

Dictionary Writing Prompts

by Karen Bovenmyer

/fiction

A Bird, a Broad, and a Mess of Kyodatsu

by Stephen Lickman

/non-fiction

Hatoful Boyfriend Is the Greatest Pigeon Dating Sim in the History of Human and/or Bird Existence

by Sunil Patel

/non-fiction

A New Hope

by Rachael Acks

/fiction

Fire in the Belly

by Rachael Acks

/non-fiction

New and Upcoming Graphic Novels

by Adam Gallardo

/fiction

Forty-One Bad Breakups and One Redemptive Reunion

by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

/coming

Coming soon!

/cons

Convention Watch

/credits

Credits

/welcome

Welcome to Issue 2 of Mothership Zeta!

There are a lot of things social media has brought me in the past nine years. Some has been good. Some has been not so good. I ran screaming from Facebook—twice. I still enjoy Twitter. I still don’t get Tumblr, although I wish I did. I recently joined Peach, amused myself by rolling some dice, and then got bored.

But one thing Twitter has brought us (because that’s my platform of choice), is the ability to watch things through others’ eyes. Namely, very terrible or very weird things. If you’re thinking you don’t want to watch The Grammys or The Oscars because you don’t want to watch hours of fashion and posturing and applause to learn the results of one award, just scan Twitter. There are many souls out there who will watch these things so you don’t have to. And the coverage is almost always amusing.

I’m saying this the day after the State of the Union address, which I both watched and followed via Twitter. The constant commentary was funny and interesting, with people pointing out things I hadn’t seen, or people catching Paul Ryan or Joe Biden in a GIF and immediately uploading it to the web.

People are very fast with GIFs. It makes me tired.

But one thing that’s also enjoyable is watching someone experience something fun. If you know the work and someone else is experiencing it for the first time, then... well. Just look at the following. MZ author Sarah Gailey recently admitted she’d never seen the original Star Wars trilogy and decided to live tweet it over the holidays.

We’ve got new nicknames for R2-D2 (Space Trash Can) and Darth Vader (Space Voldemort) and—by far my favorite—Ewoks (murder bears).

Sarah is at @gaileyfrey if you want to follow her. She’s very funny.

Then there is Hatoful Boyfriend. Asst. Editor Sunil Patel has a review of it in this issue, so I won’t go too much into it. However, various responses to livetweeting Hatoful Boyfriend include, Are you sure you’re not on acid? and Grabs popcorn.

Hatoful Boyfriend is the proof that no idea you’ve had is too weird. And watching Sunil (and MZ author Ursula Vernon, aka T. Kingfisher, as well) livetweet it is a special kind of joy.

Other things to follow via social media instead of on TV live: the Super Bowl (plus commercials), annual showing of holiday movies (Wil Wheaton recently livetweeted A Christmas Story), and even some video games (like Hatoful Boyfriend, as well as the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises, are fun, although they take a lot longer than TV or movies.)

A bit of advice: Hashtags are useful to help people avoid spoilers or just mute your frequent posting. It’s a kindness and also lets people keep away from your tweets (or follow you) without actively unfollowing you. Many people freak out at losing followers. Choose a hashtag that isn’t used by other people so your coverage won’t get lost in another topic’s stream. And pay attention. Many people will be watching your media through your eyes, don’t miss the good parts.

Mothership Zeta on Twitter:

@mightymur

@ghostwritingcow

@karenbovenmyer

@EditorZeta

Mur Lafferty

Editor in Chief

/welcome

I Arranged the Menu

Thank you for buying Issue 2 of Mothership Zeta! Only you, loyal subscriber and/or patron of the arts, can read this absolutely scintillating editorial letter. This is premium content worth paying for.

Um, pretend I’m juggling puppies here. And the puppies are juggling kittens. And the kittens are juggling rainbows. Wow, it’s supercute in my imagination, I hope you feel like you got your money’s worth.

If you enjoyed the fiction offerings in Issue 1, let me tell you, the stories you’re about to read... are very different! No story in this issue is remotely similar to anything in the last issue, and we hope to keep that level of variety up. While some storytelling elements may recur, I think you’ll find that what defines a Mothership Zeta story is the feeling you get while reading it, and it can do that in any number of ways.

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, we’ve got a bit of a romance theme this time. The issue is bookended by two flash pieces: Sonja Natasha’s post-breakup space adventure, You, an Accidental Astronaut, and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro’s reality-spelunking search for The One, Forty-One Bad Breakups and One Redemptive Reunion. In the middle, Carlie St. George’s The Elixir of the Not-So-Disgusting Death Smell is the perfect Valentine’s Day story, if your boyfriend happens to be a foul-smelling zombie. And then there’s T. Kingfisher’s That Time with Bob and the Unicorn, which, thankfully, does not fit into the romance theme (the only fictional animals I approve of dating are sentient pigeons). A. Merc Rustad’s The Android’s Prehistoric Menagerie begins with the end of the world, and a breakup can feel like the end of the world—look, I said it was a bit of a romance theme. This story has a cute robot and cute baby dinosaurs; you can read it with your partner and imagine having your own cute baby dinosaurs. We can also stray from romance into other genres, like noir, with Stephen Lickman’s A Bird, a Broad, and a Mess of Kyodatsu, and Western, with Rachael Acks’s Fire in the Belly.

The rainbows are now juggling unicorns, it’s truly amazing.

I almost envy you for what you are about to experience. It is my great pleasure to bring you these stories, and I hope it is your great pleasure to read them.

Sunil Patel

Assistant Editor, Fiction

/fiction

You may not have left your girlfriend, and you may not have traveled to space, but in a thousand words Sonja Natasha paints a gorgeous picture of you doing just that.

You, an Accidental Astronaut

by Sonja Natasha

You leave Earth like you leave your girlfriend: tripping over your shoelaces because you hurried too much to tie them right. You need to be gone before she wakes up, before you have to fumble an awkward goodbye. So you hitch a ride on a rocket ship with your legs curled against your chest and with the stars shooting by, thinking about the things and people you’d left behind: the diner with the all-you-can-eat waffles every Sunday morning, the temple across the way with a smooth paved lot so good for rollerblading, and your mom who always baked her own bread, who always gave you the first steaming slice glazed with sugar and dusted with cinnamon, but who never liked your girlfriend, the same girl you left, remember, without even saying see you later.

She’ll get over you just like you’ll get over her. She’ll find another nice girl. You’ll find someone on a planet somewhere over there after the engines harness a sun flare, tearing holes in space and time to where everything’s gonna be just fine.

You fall asleep and wake up to an event horizon of faces peering down at you and asking why you aren’t back home because you’re not supposed to be here. It’s too late to turn back and you’ve bet your life there’s nothing they can do to ground you.

They put an astronaut’s fish-globe helmet over your head. They don’t offer you anything to