Release date: March 5, 2019
Sub-genre: Cyberpunk, Dystopian SF
About SYNTH #1:
SYNTH is a new anthology series of dark SF published quarterly, with each issue containing eight thought-provoking visions of the future . . . tales of utopia and dystopia, of inner and outer space; tales that are bleak, tales that are bold . . .
Issue #1 features the dark visions of Dan Stintzi, Steve Toase, Virginie Sélavy, Charles Wilkinson, Farah Rose Smith, Jeffrey Thomas, Christopher K. Miller, and Joanna Koch.
If you are a fan of Black Mirror, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, Alphaville, and the like, then SYNTH may well be your next literary fix
Excerpt from Surrogate by Dan Stintzi:
Out in the city, the snow was so thick Emmons was practically swimming. He followed back roads between the rubble of the old hospital, beside toppled smokestacks, weaving past homes reduced to steel and foundation. The route through the outskirts was impassable. The river had not frozen fully and the bridge was out again. That left the path through the city. He would have to pass the settlement, and possibly engage with and possibly maim or murder at least some of its inhabitants. He brought with him a hunting rifle he believed could still fire and a revolver he was sure could not. He had not seen the locals in years. He had heard the noises they made, but he had not seen them. The noises were difficult to classify. They came to him at night, in half-dreams, bounced off the city’s ruins, carried over the empty fields, over the snow. The sound was human—labored and sundry—rising up in unison like a chorus, but it was rigid too, mechanical, the noise an engine might make if it had a mouth and the desire to sing.
Emmons saw the settlement in the distance. The walls were made of wood; sharpened spears, aimed out at the road, jutted from the stockades. The settlement was built in the carcass of some ruined structure. Smoke rose in black plumes from the settlement’s center. The afternoon sky looked flat and hollow. It was a gray piece of paper that could be torn through. The smoke had a flavor that made Emmons’s stomach bubble.
He followed the old road through the ruins, through the snow, until he came along a cleared path. He followed the path, climbing over concrete and metal, winding through the burnt out car frames, the piles of frozen garbage. He saw a purple hand in one of the piles, an unblinking eye in another. The ice never melted so the bodies never broke down. He sent his mind searching for memories of the days when bodies were piled up on street corners, when cars were left to rust on highways and sidewalks, but he came back empty. His brain had been strip-mined long ago, those old nightmares replaced with white space.
He arrived outside the settlement where a man in a camouflage jacket sat hunched on a metal folding chair beside the settlement’s gate. Across from the gate was a series of wooden sawhorses placed in a line blocking the path forward. The man looked up and gripped the shotgun in his lap. Metal rivers ran in crisscross stitches across his face skin. The rivers were mercury colored, they flowed and rippled as if windblown. The man’s eyes were black orbs. His left leg was made of metal.
Emmons wondered if this was a normal way for people to look. He could not remember. He stuck the rifle in the crook of his shoulder and took shuffling steps, walking parallel to the settlement’s gate, moving toward the barricade.
Excerpt from The Object of Your Desire Comes Closer by Joanna Koch:
Fay-Lin swathed my body with black hair and nervous energy. Barely sated by the last half hour, she spun a thread of hair around her index finger, a spider considering her mate. Happily trapped, sexually inexpert, I waited for the spider to strike. Instead of feeding me poison, she fought to keep me by her side.
I said, “You’re the most fearless person I’ve ever met.”
The forerunner of a wrinkle marked her brow. “What you did for us, alone for thirty years, that’s true courage, real strength.”
I smoothed Fay-Lin’s impatient frown with my rough hands, clumsy worship. “Send someone else. You’ve proved yourself before.” Around us, the evidence hummed. Our ill-equipped vessel sailed through the vacuum, eating up space. The unlikely survival of our ship was the last miracle I still believed in: the miracle of Fay-Lin.
“This is different. Damage, some sort of external growth. I don’t know what I’m dealing with until I get out on the hull and sample it. Too many unknowns. I need to make decisions in the moment, not manage from a distance.”
“Don’t go. For me.”
Fay-Lin twirled a black lock around her finger. I’d first witnessed this gesture of steeping ire when she was eight. It was our practice as teachers to let the children experience the full consequences of their actions. We stopped short of irreversible damage, but many suffered injuries. They had to learn there were no second chances on an orphaned vessel. At twenty-three, I was an old man to Fay-Lin and a double father figure, both teacher and chaplain. I didn’t intervene when her team failed the exercise. She spun a black lock and glared at me as she marched to her simulated death.
My stasis rotation came up soon after. I didn’t see Fay-Lin again until we were the same age. I missed watching her grow up. Age twenty-one, ascended to the rank of commander, Fay-Lin woke me to render aid as Minister of the Earth. We were adrift. Food supply ran low. The horror of waking from stasis made me useless to her at first. Some vital part of my soul seemed lost in that long void.
Fay-Lin roused me with her bold touch. How was I to resist? She was my first and only earthly love, though she wasn’t born on the earth. Let me say she was my first and only fleshly love.
Our love grew with the crops in the greenhouse. When she revived me, she bade me build a farm from nothing in space. For Fay-Lin, my answer is always yes.
Equal in passion, younger than I am now, I was immune to the mortifications of time. After months of mutual labor and love, I begged her not to send me back to stasis.
“The ship needs me. We can have a life together.”
About CM Muller:
CM Muller lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is
the editor and publisher of the award-winning anthology series Nightscript,
and his own stories have appeared in venues such as Shadows & Tall Trees,
Supernatural Tales, Vastarien, and Weirdbook. His debut
story collection, Hidden Folk, was released in late 2018.
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