Spectra Magazine - Issue 2

Paul Andrews

Description

Spectra is the new digital magazine bringing you the best in new sci-fi, horror and fantasy short fiction, news and reviews. With four new stories from established writers and rising talent every issue, Spectra Magazine delivers the cutting edge of digital fiction direct to your favourite eBook platform. Spectra Magazine is the first science fiction, fantasy and horror short fiction publication dedicated to digital reading, delivering the best in genre-based literary entertainment. Each month, four brand new short stories are curated from award-winning genre writers and new talent alike, bringing you electrifying fiction in a host of different styles. We believe that sci-fi, fantasy and short fiction should dazzle and excite even the most seasoned reader, and we only select authors who are sure to blow your mind, ignite your imagination or turn your dreams into nightmares. Written and designed specifically for the e-book generation and e-reader technology, Spectra Magazine is essential for everyone with a passion for science fiction, fantasy, horror, or anyone looking for something fresh and exciting to bring their e-Reader to life. The future of short fiction is here.

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 29 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849892155
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

EDITOR’S LETTER
THE SILVER SHAMROCK WILL SOON BE SHINING

Although it’s a little contrary to the established nature of Halloween, there’s one unique aspect of this holiday that Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving or any other public break you can think of.
People still have fun on Halloween.
Sure, there’s a significant industry built up around All Hallow’s Eve, but it’s not a celebrtaion that’s been hijacked by the corporations. We still go to work and school on Halloween, and we still get our daily stuff done, which is probably why it still feels like a reward. It’s a party for everyone, that doesn’t put its focus on any particular individual, and is celebrated just as easily by staying at home on your own and watching horror flicks as it is by going to a flashy fancy dress ball.
But it’s also a celebration of the complete human. It’s a day out of the year when we (deliberately) acknowledge the darkness in life, and the fun in darkness. We make an effort to honor the dead not with tears and flowers, but with a raucous and salacious appetite for raw fun. Mischief becomes acceptable, and children are told they look cute and wonderful when dressed as a mutilated corpse; rewarded for holding a household hostage at the threat of a lost garden gate or severe egging.
This heartfelt festivity for the spirit world invites our ancestors to return to us, to sing, and dance, and eat, and laugh and raise all merry hell. We’re freeing the fallen from the tombs we ourselves confined them to, and that makes Halloween a responsibility that everyone is obliged to acknowledge.
Of course, I’m preaching to the anti-choir here. Judging by the huge number of horror flash fiction entries we had to last month’s competition, the Spectra Magazine readership is one that holds Halloween in the highest regard, and for that, we salute you.
So let your pent-up pagan and inner-Wiccan run wild. Your Halloween begins right here in the pages of Spectra Magazine.
[e-mail]



NEWS FROM ACROSS THE SCI-FI, HORROR AND FANTASY SPECTRA
STEPHEN KING’S THE DARK TOWER SERIES MOVIES AND TV SERIES

RON HOWARD RUMORED TO BE ENTERING THE DARK TOWER
Of all the stories Stephen King has turned out, The Dark Tower series is about as complex and prolific as any. Fans of his epic fantasy Western canon have been waiting a long time for news of its potential cinematic adaptation, and it now seems the wheels are in motion.
Ron Howard is rumored to be on board for the big screen adaptation, and to help launch a subsequent TV series. Universal and NBC will be funding the projects (respectively), with three movies initially slated, and the TV series chalked up as ‘ongoing’. The official announcement was just released by the film studio through ComingSoon.net, confirming the stories have indeed been optioned.
The Dark Tower is an alternate world Western that adds magic to the blend by following an ancient order of gunslingers. This sprawling epic is still continuing in book form, too, as King recently announced the eight novel, The Wind Through The Keyhole.




NEWS FROM ACROSS THE SCI-FI, HORROR AND FANTASY SPECTRA
RESIDENT EVIL 5 FILM CONFIRMED, SAYS MILLA JOVOVICH


THE SERIES THAT JUST WON’T DIE
Whether or not the star of the Resident Evil movie series is in a position to make the official announcement, we really couldn’t say, but according to Milla Jovovich Resident Evil 5 is definitely happening.
“This new Resident Evil is the first one to ever open at No. 1 worldwide,” Jovovich told Vulture. “It’s the biggest movie in the franchise,” she said, “so we’re definitely going to make another one.”
The fourth film in the series, Resident Evil: Afterlife, just hit the box office to rip-roaring financial success and a critical ass-kicking. Poor reviews aside, the figures can’t be argued with, after the film grossed $73.2 million in its opening weekend, making it the most successful movie in the series.



NEWS FROM ACROSS THE SCI-FI, HORROR AND FANTASY SPECTRA
50 YEARS OF CYBORG CELEBRATION


THE MONTH OF THE CYBORG IS UPON US
50 years ago this September, Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline wrote a paper entitled Cyborgs and Space for issue 13 of Astronautics magazine, which has gone mostly unnoticed. Unnoticed except for the fact that it coined the word “cyborg”, which almost immediately became a household word (depending on what kind of household you live in, of course).
A collective of writers and artists are tipping their digital hats to that seminal article, celebrating its 50 year anniversary with a month of essays, fiction, comics, archives
and even songs dedicated to the cybernetic organism. These works will cover topics such as Daleks, prosthetics, video games, sports and a host of other topics focused on the improvement and alteration of mankind through technology.
To take part, check out
http://50cyborgs.tumblr.com
using your favorite pair of cybernetic eyes.



NEWS FROM ACROSS THE SCI-FI, HORROR AND FANTASY SPECTRA
THE EARTH IS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE AFTER ALL

“SCIENTISTS” CONVENE TO PROVE GALILEO WAS WRONG
The first annual Catholic scientific conference is preparing to get underway, in which a collective of “scientific” minds are being gathered together to discuss the notion that Galileo was wrong.
The findings of this scientific history-beating will suggest that “geocentrism” - the belief that the planet Earth is immobile in the center of the universe - is not only a possibility, but more likely than Galileo’s (proven) heliocentric findings.
“Scientific evidence ... shows that the Church’s position on the immobility of the Earth is not only scientifically supportable, but it is the most stable model of the universe,” says the conference’s supporting website, galileowaswrong.com.
Registration is $50 per person, although the clergy get in for free. Or you could just stay at home and use your $50 bill to light a fire and burn a few witches. Either option is as valid as the other, from a scientific perspective...




STOWAWAY
BY
HEATHER ALBANO

When we found the blind stowaways in the steward’s pantry, they were babbling on about how they’d be safe once they crossed water. Well, one of them was. The second one was babbling about the notice in the paper warning American folk against travelling on the Lusitania , because there was a state of war existing and so a British ship might get herself torpedoed by a German submarine. “Danger be damned,” the second man said - thick, like he was speaking through a sore throat - “danger be damned, more danger here since we botched the burglary. I’ll hang myself before I try stealing from a museum again.” And then he shuddered and wouldn’t say nothing more, just lay there all in a heap, rocking with the movement of the ship.
The third man wouldn’t speak at all. His eyes were milky-white, same’s the other two: a little cloudier, maybe. He didn’t respond to commands and he didn’t move when Mr. Anderson poked him. He just stared straight ahead. And he scratched his arms in turn, first one, then the other, steady rhythm, not rushing, not stopping, scratch scratch scratch, and then on to the other arm, scratch scratch scratch, and then the first arm again. The skin was coming off in huge white flakes.
The other two weren’t shedding like that, but their skin did seem to have patches where there was a sort of gray tinge - kind of like fog looks when it’s laying over water. I’d never seen anything like it, but like Mr. Anderson told me, it wasn’t my business to wonder about it. My business was to take messages and fetch things as I was ordered. The only reason I knew about the blind stowaways at all was I’d been the one Mr. Anderson sent to tell the Captain about them. The first-class passengers, the ones in what we called the regal suites, they had telephones to talk to each other, but the crew, we didn’t have nothing like that. It was all word of mouth - boys like me taking messages to and fro, up and down. Sixteen hours a day I worked, running all over that ship. The tips were good, though - and come to think of it, I suppose it was good training for marching and standing on my feet in these here trenches, though I didn’t know I’d have need of such training then. Back in 1915, we were still thinking the war’d be over by Christmas. Funny to think of that now.
None of the stowaways seemed right in the head, two not making any sense and one not making a sound, so the Captain called for the ship’s doctor to come and have a look before he had the three of them locked up. Doc McDermott was worried when I told him, said there was typhus fever abroad in New York and it would be a terrible thing to have running through the ship. But when he saw the stowaways, he said they didn’t seem feverish, other than the crazy-talk, so probably it wasn’t typhus. He also asked how in the hell they’d managed to get aboard, being as how they couldn’t see, and I’d been puzzling over that myself. There wasn’t a doubt they were really blind. Their eyes were awful to look at, even worse than the kind of blind eyes you get from being gassed - all bloodshot, and crusty round the edges, and they didn’t blink half enough to look natural. I suppose it was the not blinking that made soot and such get in them, and that’s why they ran the way they did. The tears looked kind of milky, too, same sort of color as the skin flakes. The third man was the worst, at the beginning, but the other two started peeling the same way within a couple of hours after Captain had them confined to the cells below the waterline.
After he gave the order, he said Mr. Anderson was to see to keeping this quiet, and Mr. Anderson nodded right smart and sa