Open Your Eyes by Paul Jessup is being made available as a free PDF download for the remainder of May.

Her lover was a supernova who took worlds with him when he died, and
as a new world grows within Ekhi, savage lives rage and love on a
small ship in the outer reaches of space. A ship with an agenda of its
own.

“Open Your Eyes is surrealistic space opera in the tradition of New
Wave experimentalism, echoing the fantastic imagery of Samuel R.
Delany and the angst-ridden identity paranoia of Philip K. Dick, all
bound together in a distinctly modern vision of a post-technological
future bereft of a human core. Jessup’s bone spaceships and
resurrecting crews tumble into the core of a mystery which is
consuming the very hearts of suns. Go along for the ride, and open
your eyes.
–Jay Lake, author of Escapement and Green

“With unique imagination at work, Open Your Eyes bombards the reader
with stunning imagery, from living spaceships to mechanical
butterflies.”
–Ekaterina Sedia, author of Alchemy of Stone

Evocative, moving, elegiac, and sometimes surreal, Jessup’s Open Your
Eyes is a space opera novella that lives and breathes in the 21st
century. It blends together the best of fast-paced adventure and
intriguing characters. Open Your Eyes is truly a nova in the science
fiction universe.
–Alan DeNiro, author of Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead

Reminiscent of a Children’s Help Network commercial, Ruth Nestvold’s “On the Shadow Side of the Beast” is tale of a post apocalyptic world that offers no real explanation of what happened to ruin Berlin. It touches on a lot in a small space, children vs. adults, lack of education, the quest for survival, all set against a backdrop different from the America-centric one most often found in science fiction. It feels like only part of a story though, with a lot left up to the imagination and plenty of ends left open.

“In Memory” by James Stone is a disturbing tale of humans pushing their limits to unimaginable extremes. Kenny is a mathematician who uploaded himself into an experimental program long ago. After his mother’s funeral he notices a number of missing gaps in his memory and discovers he’s locked away parts of his memory from himself. What’s hidden is dark and terrible. Despite the tech heavy cloak on this tale at its core it’s about the struggles of the human mind trying to deal with the terrible and the tragic events in our lives. While Kenny is accused of becoming less human by locking his memories away, the action to cut out painful memories is very human, and in this tale, made possible by technological advances.

“Starter House” by Jason Palmer is quite the strange tale, where houses are giant creatures that must be chained and pained into submission for the survival of the humans living on a planet far away. What starts as a strange commentary touching on elitism and classism, quickly turns into a reflection of our current housing market and war issues. From there, as the prestige of owning a purebred house is stripped away by the struggle to survive in poverty, the story becomes one of a war between a man and his house. This tale is surreal, complex and not to be missed.

“Edison’s Dead Men” by Ed Turner is another reprint from Permuted Press’ History is Dead anthology. A bit too serious and dangerous to be a pure dark humor tale, it’s not your average zombie story. It is part science fiction, historically so, speculating on
“What if Edison’s electricity made zombies?” It’s a fun little mad scientist tale readers should be sure not to over look.

This Issue also features:

Popped Culture: This is Totally Going on the DVR by Justin Stewart

Confessions of a Book Junkie: Book Burning by Lavie Tidhar