Flash Fiction Friday: Concerning Gout of the Butterfly & Other Miscellaneous Maladies

II. …Monarch butterflies can, actually, suffer from gout. This is a scientifically proven fact, attested to by numerous highly regarded if more than usually eccentric scientists[1]. The first to successfully confront the pressing question of gout in butterflies was a German medical student, Hieronymus Hegelbert, in 17th Century Hamburg. Young Mr. Hegelbert was a promising...

Flash Fiction Friday: The Case of the People vs. Pandora

I. Long, long ago in the first years of the Thirty-First Century, the great, the good, the wicked, and the terrible, all gathered from across the Seven Galaxies for the Trial. They came in their rockets and solar sails, their hyperdrives and trans-dimensional cannons, their teleporters and astral projectors. The Judicial Station show court could...

Book Review: The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

Keith Donohue's The Stolen Child is a dark, earthy reimagining of the fairy and changeling mythology. Taking its name from W.B. Yeats poem, the novel follows the parallel narratives of Henry Day, a boy stolen away from his family, and the changeling that takes his place in the human world. Henry Day is renamed Aniday...

Bathing the Lion by Jonathan Carroll — Book Review

Jonathan Carroll's Bathing the Lion is a surreal, metaphysical tale of friendship, broken marriages, and the cosmic conflict between order and chaos. In a small New England town, five people go to sleep one night and find themselves sharing the same dream. Some of them know each other, some of them are married, some of...

Cosmocopia by Paul Di Filippo

Cosmocopia is a strange twisting journey through Paul Di Filippo's fertile imagination. Originally published as a limited edition novella, Cosmocopia follows Frank Lazorg, an aging fantasy illustrator and painter who is recovering from a stroke and has lost the will and energy to paint. A mysterious package filled with a vibrant new paint and drug,...

BloodLight: The Apocalypse of Robert Goldner by Harambee K. Grey-Sun

  BloodLight opens with a warning from the publisher. This is not, we are told, a Young Adult novel or a New Adult Novel. It is a work of Metaphysical Fantasy and is for readers who enjoy “stories that are surreal, cerebral, dark, and bizarre almost beyond all description.” Clearly, someone was worried the readers...