In This Issue: Suzanne Vincent

A Fresh Start

Welcome to 2012! New year, new editor, new staff.

An old friend: Tom Crosshill, with “To Fly a Pig in the Dorseny Sky.” A new face (to us): Jennifer Linnaea, with a beautiful fantasy of compassion and sacrifice — “Sea Ink.” A fixture around these parts: Patrick Dey, with a science fiction tale about an “AI Robot.” And an old master: Anton Chekhov, with “Bliss.”

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Flash 1/2012, #1: Jennifer Linnaea

Sea Ink

When Althea opened the sorcerer’s book, a pressed leaf like a tiny green star fell out into her lap. Inside the book, words hand-written in long, loopy scrawl undulated like waves, the ink blue as the deep sea where Althea had seen a boy thrown overboard in sacrifice to the Little God of the finned fishes, when she had sailed to come live in the tutors’ academy. He had been two months younger than she.

She turned the page. In the same blue ink, a sketch of that boy, his wide, frightened eyes and his right hand clutching a blanket of felt that his mother had given him. Read more: HTML

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Flash 1/2012, #2: Tom Crosshill

To Fly A Pig In The Dorseny Sky

Oh what terror, to fly a pig in the Dorseny sky.

Fists clutching Bella’s ears, Palo chokes against the crosswind. Bella oinks, and he loosens his thighs around her flanks, but it’s hard. The ground recedes, a checkerboard of green and yellow around Dorseny Town. Five years since the war with the Heelings, and takeoff still gives him the shivers.

“Not a hog in sight,” calls Dora, Palo’s wing. Read more: HTML

Flash 1/2012, #3: Patrick Dey

AI Robot

“Why do I not have Asimov’s Three Laws?” the robot asked.

I enjoyed the quizzical frown that creased its plastiskin features. The facial modelling software we’d licensed from Pixar seemed to be earning its keep.

“Well?” It drummed its fingers on the desk between us.

Hmm. Perhaps we’d overdone the free-will package. Read more: HTML

Classic Flash #53: Anton Chekhov

Bliss

It was midnight. Suddenly Mitia Kuldaroff burst into his parents’ house, dishevelled and excited, and went flying through all the rooms. His father and mother had already gone to rest; his sister was in bed finishing the last pages of a novel, and his school-boy brothers were fast asleep.

“What brings you here?” cried his astonished parents. “What is the matter?”

“Oh, don’t ask me! I never expected anything like this! No, no, I never expected it! It is — it is absolutely incredible!” Read more: HTML