Myths & Delusions • Editorial • July 2017
If any of the folks reading this are heading to Helsinki in August for Worldcon 75, hopefully Anita and I will see you there.
We’ve never attended a Worldcon and thought we might as well start with one in a truly special place. Anita and I celebrated our 25th anniversary this year, and a trip to Finland in the name of all things speculative seems well suited to the brand of strangeness we’ve built for two.
It’s a bit mind-boggling to realize that over the 25-year span of our marriage, I’ve spent 19 of them editing and publishing Mythic Delirium in some form. Next year will bring the zine’s 20th anniversary. At 48 years old, my sense of time passing is such that it seems like I just started publishing Mythic Delirium yesterday, and at the same time, I feel like I’ve been doing it forever.
This year, at least in its first half, I’ve put a temporary hold on book projects and gotten reacquainted with what it’s like to be a writer. But the magazine marches on.
Another startling number: this issue begins Mythic Delirium’s fifth year as a digital magazine.
We’re pleased to welcome “Dispo and the Crow” author Rich Larson to our pages. His story “Innumerable Glimmering Lights” in Clockwork Phoenix 5 stirred up a lot of buzz, and just a week before I drafted this, he won Sci-Fest L.A.’s Roswell Award.
The end-of-the-world theme in Larson’s story carries over into up-and-coming writer Sandra Odell’s even quirkier “Resistance on a Park Bench, with Stale Bread and Ducks.” This is Odell’s first appearance in our pages, and we’re delighted to welcome her.
The motifs of art, apocalypse, and resistance resonate with “Sunrise with Sea Monsters,” our concluding story. David Sandner is a veteran of the first Clockwork Phoenix volume and the print version of Mythic Delirium. This is his first time appearing in the digital incarnation.
Our poets this time out, Jennifer Crow, Mari Ness, Sonya Taaffe, and Jane Yolen, all have long histories with the magazine. Their verses tell of gods and marriages, tragedies and descents, and contemplate the mysteries of the heavens.
My friend and frequent collaborator Paula Arwen Owen returns with this issue’s cover art, inspired by Larson’s “Dispo and the Crow,” but taken in a direction of her own wonderful invention.
As I write this, I’m still reading submissions for the remaining issues of our fourth volume, so I have no preview to offer yet, but you can be assured that we’ve got some amazing stuff in the pipeline.
—Mike Allen, Roanoke, Va., July 2017
If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read, please consider pitching in to keep us going. Your donation goes toward future content.
