Twenty years: that’s cause for celebration. Amazing as it is to herald two decades of this magazine, that’s not the only number we’re toasting. This issue is the 20th since Mythic Delirium became a web and ebook publication. Not to mention, the print version of Mythic Delirium encompassed 30 issues total, so that makes this issue the 50th overall.

The very first issue of Mythic Delirium appeared in spring 1998, printed in a teeny apartment on a cheap inkjet printer that wasn’t at all up to the task. Humble origins for a journal that would go on to showcase the likes of Amal El-Mohtar, Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ken Liu, Jane Yolen (and many, many more) and publish five Rhysling Award-winning poems.

This special 20th anniversary issue doubles our usual number of stories. Edith Hope Bishop returns to our pages with “The Sky Watcher,” a gentle fable for our times, while A. T. Greenblatt joins Mythic Delirium for the first time with “Graffiti Guardians,” a fearsome tale of standing up for what you love through art. Kate MacLeod’s “Sword and Tattoo” examines the courage that inspires a reckoning with the past. In “Red as Water, White as Ruin,” Benjanun Sriduangkaew offers a gorgeous blend of science fiction and horror. We’d bet that post-apocalyptic “Mothers, Watch Over Me” by Maria Haskins won’t leave a single dry eye in the house by the time its turn on the stage is finished. “Medved the Hamster” by Janna Layton observes human follies and foibles through an absurd lens.

Virginia M. Mohlere rejoins us with “Cardiad,” a wistful and mythic poem from the heart. “Libitina’s Garden” by Kyla Ward provides a trio of dark sonnets set in ancient Rome. “After Pandora” by Maya Chhabra suggests the true fate of Hope is different from what you might have expected. In “Glut of Norths: A Purgatory,” John Philip Johnson projects a haunting vision of horses and purpose. Peri Fae Blomquist’s stanzas grant us a look into the daily life of “Mother Giant,” and Davian Aw’s “This Is for the Times” finds a moment of peace in a universe of possibilities.

Our cover art, Hjalmar Wåhlin’s wistful “Heaven at Last,” has a moving story behind it, as it portrays the artist’s imagining of a reunion with his father, who died of cancer. For us it represents a joyful leave-taking, an embrace of the next phase of the journey.