The inspirations and origins for our stories.
Benjamin C. Kinney’s story “Shiplight” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 9 September 2016. Shiplight grew out of a different story, written but long-abandoned. A story about humanity’s first and only interstellar vessel, shuttling back and forth between worlds called Earth and Sea. But on its sixth outbound trip, the Ship was full of marines, and a crew cut off from both worlds by decades of time dilation. First, I wrote about the crew, fighting …
B. Morris Allen’s story “Dragons I Have Slain” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 2 September 2016. I’m a big fan of Deep Purple, and of many of its component members, including the late Jon Lord (keyboards). I was listening to his album Pictured Within early one morning after dropping my wife off at the airport. The title song is beautiful, but it includes the line “There are dragons I have slain”. It works in …
Jeremy Packert Burke’s story “So, You’re In an Alternate Universe” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 26 August 2016. Of course alternate universes are an old trope in scifi, but usually we see someone we know leave a situation we know and end up somewhere . . . different. Probably much worse. This is the case in anything from It’s A Wonderful Life to Rick and Morty. There’s an episode of Buffy, “The Wish,” in …
Santiago Belluco’s story “The Bonesetter” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 19 August 2016. Most of my stories start out with a scientific concept that I feel is not often explored in speculative fiction, or at least not in the way I would like to read. “The Bonesetter” began in this way, from the idea of how divergent biological strategies can arise in the face of conflict, one being the establishment of an adversarial, predator-prey …
Chanel Earl’s story “Duet for Unaccompanied Cello” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 5 August 2016. The Kirkwood Observatory at Indiana University is actually made of limestone. Next to it are Dunn’s woods, which are beautiful year round. The first draft of this story was written after I visited the observatory to do a bit of stargazing. Then, after it was finished, it sat for over a year because it I just didn’t think it …
Matt Thompson’s story “Luminaria” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 29 July 2016. My original plan for this story was for a kind of Borgesian pirate yarn – magic realism meets boys-own adventure, or something along those lines. I’m not sure I succeeded, but the concept of a metaphysical shipboard mutiny I’d finally arrived at stayed with me. I adapted a shorter, abandoned story I had lurking in the ‘trunk’ and it turned out to …
