There are many worlds out there. Some are shining examples of science, allowing us to travel between the stars and meet new sentient species. Some worlds are pure magic, and the swords and sorcery of mankind constantly battle monsters that have long gone extinct in the worlds of science. Finally we have worlds almost exactly like yours, except they may hold...
Z'mbutu's World: A Brief Primer of the world of Etlaus My interest in the Sword and Sorcery genre began in college, back before people started calling it Fantasy, or even worse, Magical Realism. But, I digress. It began with Robert E. Howard, that flaming racist and ultimately tragic mama's boy, from East Texas. Although a frightened and small-minded man i...
When the Cubs win the World Series, a wave of incredulous joy will sweep the land. All the people who have ever been underdogs or experienced self-doubt, or low self-esteem, which is everybody who ever lived, and for many, this is a lot of their living, and for a lucky few, this has only been a small part of their lives, will suddenly perceive themselves as...
A warm midday sun beats down, bathing the resort and its occupant in an unnatural but comforting January heat. Tender wisps of white cloud float over the giant silhouettes of the Hotels and Apartments, providing them with a stark yet ominous background. Within the grounds of the Carina Hotel, amongst the trees, parasols and German Towels, the Swimming Pool t...
In 2102, a crack team of scientists aboard the I.S.S. Experimenting with a new space-based atom smasher finally managed to tear a hole in space-time while searching for some method of teleportation to make intergalactic travel easier after the world’s over-population became disastrous. This hole did not pave a way for teleportation or intergalactic travel, h...
Well, maybe if I put the chord in second inversion, it then... no, wait, that'll screw up the phrasing in the basses... okay, but then I can just raise their harmony by a fifth here, but... no, damnit! Screw it, I'm getting nowhere. Move on to something else. And with that, another twelve bars of Calvin's Sonata for Sahndra were reduced to empty staves. Her...
The world was dark and eerily silent. All around her rose massive buildings of stark grey steel, stone, and glass. There were no lights, there was no sound. The usual bustle of the city, the cars, the people, the birds, even the wind had no place here. It was as if they never were here, as if they had never existed. In spite of the stark and hard world aroun...
I had never looked at it this way before, but after reading an article at NPR's website it suddenly became very clear to me. Glen Weldon, in an article titled "Otherworldly: The Year's Most Transporting Books" detailed that what makes alternate reality come alive "—is how deftly their authors let us know their rules." Suddenly, a light flashed before...
World Peace Initiative Back on the Poseidon and ready to return to Earth, Mark could tell something was bothering Rayven. Figuring it was because he had left her on the ship today, he apologized for not taking her to the surface. Rayven just hugged him and said that wasn't what was upsetting her, as she started describing the call she just had with Annabel...
For all intents and purposes within this story, my name is Arnold Pierrot. In the eyes of the world, I'm a six-foot-four, broad-shouldered and muscular Black man in his mid-twenties. I'm a Criminal Justice student at Howard University in Washington D.C. Just another guy at one of America's most prestigious institutions. And yet, I am much more than that. For...