Unreal Magazine: Vol. 1

By Daniel Scott White

Featuring Martha Wells, Yoon Ha Lee, Emily Devenport, Adithi Rao, J.D. Astra, Tais Teng, Jessica Needham, Joe Taylor, George Salis, and Liz Kellebrew. Nonfiction by David R. Grigg and Eric Del Carlo. Edited by Daniel Scott White.

This magazine is about fiction that isn't made for this world. So let go. Get unreal for a moment. Let the magic take you away!

- In "Adaptation" by Martha Wells, we find a shapeshifter struggling to cope with being transformed into a shape he's not comfortable with.
- "In Her Fingerless Hands She Holds the Ice and All the Oceans" by Tais Teng is based on Inuit mythology, a story about a fingerless queen who rules the lives of kings from other kingdoms as she is attended by her dubious servants.
- "Shadow's Weave" by Yoon Ha Lee reveals a man who has lost his shadow and a woman determined to get it back for him.
- "Immortal" by Adithi Rao is about a man who will be remembered forever, but not in a way that he wants it to be.
- "The Drifter" by Jessica Needham tells the story of wind people and earth people and a drifter come to town.
- "Lawrencium" by Liz Kellebrew is about a small town's attempts to rid its street of gigantic jellyfish that have come to occupy it.
- "Lure" by George Salis details one man's descent to the bottom of the ocean and the ultimate surprise he finds there.
- "Midnight Murmurs" by J.D. Astra involves a young king trying to pick a bride to be his queen and the discovery of his true bloodline.
- "A Most Practical Imperative" by Joe Taylor is a fabulist work about a Peter Rabowski that is meant to make you giggle.
- The story "Destry" by Emily Devenport provides a curious account of creatures hiding on Earth as they battle for control.
- "The Possessed" by David R. Grigg is a humorous look at a writing workshop he attended under the guidance of Ursula K. Le Guin.
- "The Myth and the Phule" by Eric Del Carlo is a profound account of his experience co-authoring books with Robert Asprin.

Thanks for reading. I hope you walk away filled with the curiosity and wonder of what makes life so special.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel Scott White
• Release date: May 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781970134056

Book preview

UNREAL MAGAZINE

VOL. 1

EDITED BY

DANIEL SCOTT WHITE

LONGSHOT PRESS

Copyright

Published by Longshot Press

ISBN-13: 978-1-970134-05-6

Unreal Magazine Vol. 1 © 2019

by Daniel Scott White

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without the written permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

Smashwords Ebook Edition

Unreal Magazine is an imprint

of Longshot Press.

unrealmag.com

longshotpress.com

Compass

Overture

- FICTION -

Adaptation

by Martha Wells

In Her Fingerless Hands She Holds the Ice and All the Oceans

by Tais Teng

Shadow’s Weave

by Yoon Ha Lee

Immortal

by Adithi Rao

The Drifter

by Jessica Needham

Lure

by George Salis

Midnight Murmurs

by J.D. Astra

Lawrencium

by Liz Kellebrew

A Most Practical Imperative

by Joe Taylor

Destry

by Emily Devenport

- NONFICTION -

The Possessed

by David R. Grigg

The Myth and the Phule

by Eric Del Carlo

Your Turn

About the Editor

More from Longshot Press

Acknowledgments

All stories used by permission of the authors.

Thanks to Oscar Baechler for his contribution to the cover artwork.

Overture

Martha Wells had just won a Hugo Award for her novella All Systems Red. A day later she sent me a story about a shapeshifter that had shifted into the wrong shape and was having trouble coping. Now that’s a novel idea, I thought. It was the prequel to her novel The Cloud Roads, the first in the Books of the Raksura series. Unfit Magazine was just being born at that time with stories by David Brin and Jerry Oltion. But Martha’s story didn’t seem to work with the rest of the collection. It was a great story, but it put me in a conundrum. How could I make it fit in a collection called Unfit? You’d think it would be obvious.

I like to put things into compartments in my mind because it reduces the chaos. Sometimes, I’ve discovered, the process of attempting to compartmentalize things actually creates more chaos than it’s worth, just trying to find a place for everything. Martha, being a patient soul, was willing to wait for Vol. 2 of Unfit Magazine, but again that one filled up quickly with stories by people like Ken Liu and Yoon Ha Lee and hers didn’t seem to have a connection to the others. Currently, Vol. 3 is filling up with stories from Orson Scott Card and Philip K. Dick. I really didn’t want to let Martha’s story go. What could I tell her, because it seemed like there would never be a place for her story in the series?

I was left with another option, which was to create an entirely different series for Martha’s story, which I call Unreal Magazine.

So here I am writing the first ‘overture’ as I like to call them. And I have all the thanks in the world to give to Martha Wells for her part in this. Because of her, this magazine series was born. And Yoon Ha Lee is in it and Emily Devenport and many others. As always, I have included work by authors you may never have heard of, because together they make a great combination. It’s the way the stories work together that fascinates me, like I’m doing a puzzle and maybe it’s nearly driving me crazy in the process but I am satisfied in the end. In the end, I’ve come to realize that all these authors are really fun people to work with.

Unreal Magazine is more about the rules of magic just as Unfit Magazine is more about the rules of science. Aren’t these authors all really just philosophers, though? Therein, I believe, lies the power of writing, a way of showing us something that we may not have understood before about the real world we live in as seen through the unreal.

When I was reading the plenitude of stories coming in, I was struck by how many of them were very medieval, some even including royalty. But unreal by a very loose definition could including anything fictitious and so I also added stories with magical realism to the collection.

Then I had an interesting breakthrough. What would be the equivalent of magical realism in science-based fiction writing? Couldn’t we call it scientific realism? Then I thought, better look up scientific realism and see what happens. And that’s when my mind snapped. Things turned really philosophical.

There is a kind of scientific realism which is based on proving non-observable things exist through ontological argument. Not what I had expected. But isn’t that what most fiction attempts to do, to convince us that the unreal is real through the use of words on the page? And in contrast to that I found instrumentalism which says real things exist regardless of how we observe them, because it’s scientifically provable (using instruments).

So how would the rules of magic play into all of that? Well, I kept searching and came across antirealism and nonrealism. Could there be antirealism fiction and nonrealism fiction? Does that even make sense? Magical antirealism? My mind nearly broke when I read the sentence: Instrumentalism is a variety of scientific antirealism. I chuckled as I stood at the edge and looked down into the abyss of chaos. Clearly they’d gone too far! This was absurd. The compartments in my head were nearly splitting open. I had to find a way to bring back some balance to what I was looking for in this magazine series.

Included with the fantasy pieces, the magical realism and the horror, I added some nonfiction. David R. Grigg shares a humorous story of the time he attended a writing workshop held by Ursula K. Le Guin. And Eric Del Carlo gives us a profound look into co-authoring books with Robert Asprin. These pieces tell us how the magic happens as the words appear on the page. They are the folklore that reveal what being an author is really like. Plus they are a lot of fun to read! I sure wish I’d been there.

This magazine is about fiction that isn’t made for this world. So let go. Get unreal for a moment. Let the magic take you away.

- In Adaptation by Martha Wells, we find a shapeshifter struggling to cope with being transformed into a shape he’s not comfortable with.

- In Her Fingerless Hands She Holds the Ice and All the Oceans by Tais Teng is based on Inuit mythology, a story about a fingerless queen who rules the lives of kings from other kingdoms as she is attended by her dubious servants.

- Shadow’s Weave by Yoon Ha Lee reveals a man who has lost his shadow and a woman determined to get it back for him.

- Immortal by Adithi Rao is about a man who will be remembered forever, but not in a way that he wants it to be.

- The Drifter by Jessica Needham tells the story of wind people and earth people and a drifter come to town.

- Lure by George Salis details one man’s descent to the bottom of the ocean and the ultimate surprise he finds there.

- Midnight Murmurs by J.D. Astra involves a young king trying to pick a bride to be his queen and the discovery of his true bloodline.

- Lawrencium by Liz Kellebrew is about a small town’s attempts to rid its street of gigantic jellyfish that have come to occupy it.

- A Most Practical Imperative by Joe Taylor is a fabulist work about a Peter Rabowski that is meant to make you giggle.

- The story Destry by Emily Devenport provides a curious account of creatures hiding on Earth as they battle for control.

- The Possessed by David R. Grigg is a humorous look at a writing workshop he attended under the guidance of Ursula K. Le Guin.

- The Myth and the Phule by Eric Del Carlo is a profound account of his experience co-authoring books with Robert Asprin.

Thanks for reading these pages. I hope you walk away filled with the curiosity and wonder of what makes life so special. See you next time in Vol. 2!

Daniel Scott White

March 2019

Adaptation

Martha Wells

This is prequel to The Cloud Roads, the first novel in the Books of the Raksura series.

Chime woke to dim dawn light falling through the air shaft high above his bower. He wanted to sleep more, but his curved basket bed was too hot and crowded. Rill was cuddled against his chest, and she had been here when he went to sleep. But he didn’t remember inviting the third occupant. Squinting back over his shoulder, he identified Braid. Grumpy and still half-asleep, Chime nudged the hunter with an elbow. What are you doing here?

Braid yawned. Oh, is this your bed? he said. I thought it was Blossom’s.

That was annoying. If someone was going to invade Chime’s bower, it could at least be for sex with him. He elbowed Braid again. Get out.

Rill poked him in the chest. If you’re getting up, tell Petal I’m working in the gardens today.

I’m not—all right, all right. Giving up, Chime pushed himself up and clambered over Rill to drop down out of the basket bed.

He pulled on his clothes, then picked his way through the stray belongings littering the floor to the doorway. His bower was at the top of the long open hall of the teachers’ level of the colony. A faint breeze came down the air shafts, carrying the green scents of the jungle and the cool damp of the shallow river beyond the heavy stone walls. The groundlings who had originally built this structure turns and turns ago might have meant it to be a palace or temple, but it made a fine Raksuran colony, with lots of long passages and plenty of nooks and crannies for bowers. This hall had many tall doorways, opening to narrow stairways and bowers curtained off with long drapes of fabric, and there was a shallow pool of water down the center for drinking and washing.

Chime splashed water on his face to wake himself up, and made his way out of the hall and through the passages to the center well. It was a big airy chamber with a shaft open to the floors above and below, dawn light falling down it from openings in the upper part of the structure. Hanging beds with fruit vines hung down from the three levels above, their sweet scent lacing the cool morning air.

Chime was about to shift and climb down to the work areas below, when six warriors dropped down the shaft, their wings partially spread, spines flared, tails whipping around. Chime stumbled back as they flashed by, their bright scales blending into a rainbow of colors. Watch it! he shouted. This was just more confirmation for his private theory that wings made people stupid.

The only response was a laugh, echoing up from below.

Raksura were divided into winged Aeriat and wingless Arbora, and sometimes they were divided in more ways than that one. The four Arbora castes of teachers, hunters, soldiers, and mentors cared for the colony and took care of its children, and produced everything it needed. The Aeriat, warriors and the queens and consorts, protected and guided the court. Or that was the idea, anyway. In Indigo Cloud, the queens did the protecting and guiding and the warriors, especially the young male ones, mostly caused trouble.

Stupid warriors, he muttered. Oh, sorry, Balm. She was just climbing down from the open platform on the level above and dropped to land on the floor beside him. Balm was a warrior too, but a cut above the others; she was clutchmate to Jade, the court’s daughter queen.

She waved away the comment with a distracted expression, and shifted to her groundling form. Like all the warriors she was tall and slim, with sharp features. She had the dark bronze-brown skin common to the main Indigo Cloud bloodline, but her curly hair was a lighter color, reminiscent of the gold scales she wore in