The inspirations and origins for our stories.
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 …
B. Morris Allen’s story “Adaptations to Coastal Erosion” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 24 June 2016. This story started with literary theft. I was reading Jonathan Carroll’s After Silence, which includes a brief story-within-a-story about a woman who gets skinnier and skinnier, and eventually floats away from her husband. Carroll doesn’t do much more with it, but the idea intrigued me – the sudden and unexplained negation of physical laws for just one person. …
Phil Berry’s story “Sheer” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 10 June 2016. Sheer – the eponymous and seemingly limitless vertical tower of rock, came from a desire to create a distinct ‘secondary’ world. I wanted to show how men and women would adapt to conditions that seem unbearable. Imagine never being able to sit or rest on a solid, horizontal structure. ‘Flat’ becomes myth, and those who tire of life spent on hessian ropes …
