Category: The Future

Posing utopic, apocalyptic, dystopic, or superhero solutions to “The Future.” Writers depict futuristic alternative worlds in politics, environment, gender, religion, sexuality, or ethnography.

Poetry from The Future: “I am amputated on the edge of this black hole” by Jayme Russell

my singularityinjected wet wearmakes me robotichand flexingfeel the mechanicalbrain feedbackif I grab you tightlyI can feel youeven though I don’t have youjust like I am realyou are realrewiring to adjust for new appendagesplug into the networklearn new tasksimprove my understandinga radical alteration Jayme Russell is the author of two chapbooks: PINKification (dancing girl press, 2017)…
The Future: Two Fictions by Liza St. James

I Didn’t Get to My Rage Yet I saw the man with the kid having too much fun together to be related, or else to see each other often. The uncle or the estranged father was telling the kid about a band he knew that ate kids on stage. Do they really? For real? The…
Three Disaster Movies from The Future: Poems by Lucas Pingel

Disaster Movie At the edge of the locust storm our toes Make a quiet music a prayer for broken Wings go further than the natural cadence A new word to signal an unplanned spring We remember it as holy another way Our knuckles speak to one another Walls once smooth and white pages Once smooth…
The Future: “Anything Can Be a Weapon,” a collaborative short story by Dana Diehl & Melissa Goodrich (from The Classroom)

When the zombies overtook the Lakeshore School District, the Dads were the first to go. They were crossword Dads. Whiskery and near-sighted. They were dads with novelty bowties. Some say the zombies took the Dads first because they were the strongest, because the zombies were building an army and needed strong soldiers. But we know…
The Future: Four Illustrations by Selene dePackh

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Illuminated Passages 11-a Illuminated Passages 25 PTSD 2nd Restatement PTSD 3rd Restatement Selene dePackh creates innovative story lines that expand the science fiction genre of cyberpunk into an entirely new subcategory which she calls Neuropunk, which draws on her own autism to immerse the reader in a…
A Short Story from James Brubaker’s Black Magic Death Sphere: (Science) Fictions: “H.G. Wells and The Present Crisis in Human Affairs”

Sometime in 1935: Imagine Herbert George Wells sitting on a stack of wood in a soundstage at Worton Hall in Isleworth. He watches an army of carpenters build a façade of the future out of cheap wood while he awaits the arrival of his film’s set designer, Vincent Korda. The carpenters swarm around Wells, every…
Jacqueline Boucher Poetry: “Radioactive”

In the aftermath, the first things to grow are the horns. We fleshy ibex in threadbare sweaters clash in subcutaneous bump and grind, in hemorrhage & broken bone. I leave one eye at the foot of a gutted soda fountain, tin of ravioli clutched in my fist like pennies. Before: we got gas there, swapped…
“Puzzle-Piece Blues,” original short fiction by Selene dePackh

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. [harsh black and white comix-style cyberpunk image of feminine face repeating within itself from multiple angles] Puzzle-Piece Blues Case Study [delete]* Bear in mind that I’m a suspect witness. Everything I say is subject to erasure. I make for deaf ears, pressure-popping like plastique in an airline…
Fiction: Marleen S. Barr’s “A Feminist Extraterrestrial Special Forces Commander Causes Trump to Become Gone with the Wind”

The civilian body armor market was valued at $72.2 million in 2016 and is expected to more than double by 2024, according to Grand View Research.—Tiffany Hsu, “With Schools as Targets, Security Outfits Flourish,” The New York Times, March 5, 2018, A17. I was sitting in the eye doctor’s waiting room scared to death because I…