After Dinner Conversation Magazine: After Dinner Conversation Magazine, #41

By Liam Kofi Bright, Mark Bessen, Michael Shainsky and 4 more

Delight in intriguing, thought-provoking conversations about ethics, philosophy, and social issues! After Dinner Conversation is a monthly literary magazine publishing short fiction. Each issue features both established writers and up-and-coming authors who contribute fascinating philosophical insights on controversial topics like marriage equality, assisted suicide, the meaning of death, animal rights and defining your "purpose." It's time to go deep in search of truth! If you love reading imaginative short stories on hot topics that make your brain think deeply but also have you laughing out loud... then this magazine is for you!

 

"After Dinner Conversation" Magazine - November 2023

• Last Rights: Death comes for a disbelieving philosopher.

• Drag Brunch: Hannah's gay friend is excluded from her bachelorette party.

• The Walnut Tree: A travel tour in Uzbekistan gets sidetracked to wonderful effect.

• Heros: Religious fundamentalists take over Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.

• The Competitive Edge: An insurance company's race-based underwriting is called into question. 

• Starstuck: The first child in 1,000 years is born to the "Great Purveyors of Reason" and confuses them with his love of emotions.

• Now The Leaves Are Falling Fast: A quaint suburban couple rob their dying neighbor to settle an old score.

 

After Dinner Conversation believes humanity is improved by ethics and morals grounded in philosophical truth. Philosophical truth is discovered through intentional reflection and respectful debate. In order to facilitate that process, we have created a growing series of short stories across genres, a monthly magazine, and two podcasts. These accessible examples of abstract ethical and philosophical ideas are intended to draw out deeper discussions with friends, family, and students.

 

★★★ If you enjoy this story, subscribe via our website to "After Dinner Conversation Magazine" and get this, and other, similar ethical and philosophical short stories delivered straight to your inbox every month. (Just search "After Dinner Conversation Magazine")★★★

• Language: English
• Publisher: After Dinner Conversation
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223384465

Book preview

After Dinner Conversation Magazine – November 2023

This magazine publishes fictional stories that explore ethical and philosophical questions in an informal manner. The purpose of these stories is to generate thoughtful discussion in an open and easily accessible manner.

Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The magazine is published monthly in print and electronic format.

All rights reserved. After Dinner Conversation Magazine is published by After Dinner Conversation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States of America. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher. Abstracts and brief quotations may be used without permission for citations, critical articles, or reviews. Contact the publisher at [e-mail].

ISSN# 2693-8359      Vol. 4, No. 11  

Copyright © 2023 After Dinner Conversation

Editor in Chief: Kolby Granville

Story Editor: R.K.H. Ndong

Acquisitions Editor: Stephen Repsys

Cover Design: Shawn Winchester

Design, layout, and discussion questions by After Dinner Conversation.

https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com

After Dinner Conversation believes humanity is improved by ethics and morals grounded in philosophical truth and that philosophical truth is discovered through intentional reflection and respectful debate. In order to facilitate that process, we have created a growing series of short stories across genres, a monthly magazine, and two podcasts. These accessible examples of abstract ethical and philosophical ideas are intended to draw out deeper discussions with friends, family, and students.

Table Of Contents

From the Editor

Last Rights

Drag Brunch

The Walnut Tree

Heroes

The Competitive Edge

Starstuck

Now The Leaves Are Falling Fast

Author Information

Additional Information

* * *

From the Editor

TOO SKINNY FOR OTHER sports, I grew up shooting and competing in archery around the US. I very quickly learned archery shops are a tough business. So many people love archery, they would run their archery shop for free. They just love the sport. So, supply and demand get skewed and, for the most part, archery shops don’t make money.

Literary magazines are the same way. There are loads of people who love reading and promoting great writers, and they are willing to do it for free. Supply and demand get skewed...

The creator of Chill Subs published a survey of literary magazines and found there are roughly 3,100 English language literary magazines in the world. Of those, only about 199 pay authors and do not charge submission fees (like us). Of those, only 56 have lasted more than 20 years. Remove those that are household names, like The New Yorker, and you are down to 44.

Of the 44 remaining, remove those not directly funded by a university, and that gets us down to 19. When you remove magazines funded by government arts grants, you are down to 2 in the US. Just 2.

Oddly enough, this data makes me feel better, not worse. I often wonder if we are doing something wrong, turns out, we are right on track. The struggle, it turns out, is both real and normal.

Kolby Granville – Editor

Last Rights

Liam Kofi Bright

THE WAVES SOUND UNIFORM to the casual ear—coming and going at their allotted moments, each at regular intervals from the last. But to the seasoned observer, a thousand minute differences can be heard. Here, the spray has gone much further than the last, dislodging an ancient shell. Now the drag has been extended by a fraction of a second more, giving the quiet roar of the sea’s return a correspondingly infinitesimal burst of fervency. Busy as he was, G would never pass on the opportunity to appreciate this subtle symphony. This was one of the joys he relished when his work took him by the coast—and it often did, for his work took him everywhere often enough. The next wave dissipated at an unusually slow speed as if the foam clung onto its coherence in stubborn defiance of G’s gaze. With a chuckle, G took this as a sign to get back to work and entered the small cottage in which his business was to be done.

There he found P, hunched over his desk as ever. His pen had fallen from his hands, and his eyes closed peacefully, presumably in satisfaction at the work just finished. Not wishing to make this any more difficult than it needed to be, G waited a moment for P to realize he was there of his own accord. Soon enough, P was aware of G.

P, after examining G for a moment, announced in a flat tone, Ah. I see. Well, this is disappointing. No offense intended, of course. G had been half afraid P would start and attempt to flee or, worse, challenge him to a game of chess—he could never remember how the horsey one moved. Mild disappointment was far from a problem! So G amiably replied, Think nothing of it. Few welcome my arrival, and it usually bodes ill when they do. But to this, P gave the rather unusual response. Your arrival is not so much what bothers me; rather it is your being anywhere at all. Your existence—this is what disappoints me.

People had feared G, lamented him, looked upon him in terror and awe. Some had, even in their own way, worshiped him. But been disappointed by him? This might just be a first. What is this? G retorted. The great philosopher surprised at mortality? Did your teachers neglect to mention my inevitability in all your classes on logic? Never was a variable bound in my name? P smiled—condescendingly, G could not help but note—and waved away the suggestion. No, no—well, I suppose that is just it; if anyone had done as much, I would have counted that a type error. That all will die? This was predictable and indeed predicted by any inductive function that responds appropriately to available data. But that death should be Death, a named individual... and pray, how should I refer to you, sir?

G introduced himself with a polite nod of the head.

...thank you, that Death should be G, an object in the domain of persons and personas. That seems altogether unlikely. In fact... Here P trailed off, and when prompted to go on by G, they said in a more thoughtful tone, speaking more to themselves than G, In fact, it occurs to me that given reasonable priors, it is more likely I am hallucinating this very conversation than I am indeed talking to the anthropomorphic representation of biological entropy’s inevitable end.

I... you... what? You do not think you are talking to me right now? Is this some philosopher’s skeptical game? G was spluttering now. Yet P just stood there without reply, placid as the autumn waters. Impatient at the silence, G raised his voice, almost thundering at P. Answer me, mortal! Remember that while you are still here, I am still your king! But even this aroused little more than a slight emulation of the earlier condescending smile before a return to a serene silence.

With P’s smirk and second refusal to answer, G’s anger dissipated. In the arrogance of his youth, G would have tormented this mortal for their impudence and reveled in the usurped dominion he had over this realm by making P regret their error in ways only G knew how. But P’s quite undue self-confidence had jolted him with a pang of recognition. Those days of imperious cruelty were from before the Chastisement, or at least before he had truly taken its lesson to heart. G now knew that for all his airs, he was but a caretaker, that P would soon be beyond his grasp. Was P’s absurdity any worse than his, any more embarrassing than the pretensions to royalty with which G had tried to extract conversation from P? With age, with acceptance of what was inevitable, he had come to be forgiving of others, if only as practice in hopes that