Issue #5 Archives - James Gunn's Ad Astra

REPORT: Worldcon Membership Demographics, 1939-1960

by René Walling Sweeping statements and generalizations are often made about the membership of early World Science Fiction Conventions (WSFC, or Worldcon) such as “only the same people came back every year” or “the attendance was all male.” Yet rarely is more than anecdotal evidence given to support these statements. The goal of this report is to provide some hard data on the membership of early Worldcons so that such statements can be based on more than anecdotal evidence.

admin2019-10-24T15:45:19-05:00August 16th, 2016|Articles, Issue #5, Non-Fiction|

A Superlative For Goodbye

By Jude-Marie Green One rocket lumbers along to the launchpad. Earth-bound and clumsy now, gorgeous with potential. It’s yours. You’re the last. You should be proud of that.

admin2019-10-24T15:45:19-05:00August 16th, 2016|Fiction, Issue #5, Stories|

Changing Woman Gives Birth to Coyote

by Betsy James
Your two-penny face,
bright as your father's,
wrinkled tight.

admin2019-10-24T15:45:19-05:00August 16th, 2016|Fiction, Issue #5, Poetry|

Echoes of Philip K. Dick’s schizoid woman in Star Trek: Voyager’s Harry Kim

by Victor Grech Star Trek is a popular cultural phenomenon. One of the spin-offs, the Voyager series, features a naïve and lonely young human officer called Harry Kim who repeatedly falls for warm and affectionate “dark haired girls” or cold and calculating “schizoid women” as famously categorized by N. Katherine Hayles about Philip K. Dick’s oeuvre.

admin2019-10-24T15:45:20-05:00August 15th, 2016|Articles, Issue #5, Non-Fiction|

जंगली गुलाब/Jangli Gulaab (Briar Rose)

by Shveta Thakrar
So red this rose
Brambles burst from my mouth
(Stammers strangled into sterile silence)

admin2019-10-24T15:45:20-05:00August 15th, 2016|Fiction, Issue #5, Poetry|

Ink for a Verbal Contract

by Sean Monaghan Gemma felt the pain right away. She sighed, stretching, angling her limbs and hips, trying to find a more comfortable position. She blinked, looking at the Arhend side table strewn with folders.

admin2019-10-24T15:45:20-05:00August 15th, 2016|Fiction, Issue #5, Stories|

Beneath Red Regolith

by WC Roberts
Striding tall on spider legs it scans the regolith
the ping of refined metal set off
the protocols
antenna disk cocked upward

admin2019-10-24T15:45:20-05:00August 14th, 2016|Fiction, Issue #5, Poetry|

Ambiguous Utopias

by Sheila Finch Utopian or dystopian, the view of the near future adopted by an author owes much to the political and social climate of its time. Two dystopian works by Paolo Bacigalupi, out of the many that have appeared in recent years, illustrate this point:

admin2019-10-24T15:45:20-05:00August 14th, 2016|Articles, Issue #5, Non-Fiction|

Windblown

by Nancy Fulda The vase cracks against the hardened floor of our street-house, splitting into a dozen pieces. Shards fly everywhere – under the workbench, across the floor, even beneath the gears of the big mechanical clock that Grandfather brought down the hill this morning. Everyone in the room freezes.

admin2019-10-24T15:45:21-05:00August 14th, 2016|Fiction, Issue #5, Stories|

A Vision for “James Gunn’s Ad Astra”

by Jean Asselin, Editor - Our namesake, James Gunn, says that fantasy and science fiction (SF) are literatures of discontinuity—the world of the story differs from the one we live in—with one essential difference.

admin2019-10-24T15:45:21-05:00August 13th, 2016|Editorials, Issue #5, Meta-Narrative, Per Aspera|