the Parameters in Flux

 

Looking forward standing guard televising to those behind them the Future Mother the twins will bear 

    It must've appeared in a flash-like lightning effect where the image imprinted on our eyes brightly starts to fade, inexorably as time once again tells the same old story.  It's when the new guise itself takes on an original life of its own that things begin to get interesting. 

    The nature of the technological singularity reflects the aspect of the only possible singularity itself.  When the map's depictions threaten to drop you in between the curved and constantly unsheathing barbed teeth of the fractal dragon leering forward in an endless Cheshire smile, it's always nice to remember that even real shadow-beasts cannot actually cause harm in and of themselves. Just nevermind which is the map and which the territory anymore. Seems to me it's our correspondence with the creatures that dwell in between the pages of the narratives we've been led to imbibe that we should be concerned about. Not their empirical existence mind you but rather their ineffable impact on the lives and decisions of growing persons the world over.   Think of it what ye will.  

   After all, what else got us here besides our will power?  Our ability to navigate our way into and out of a shoe, for one thing.  No one's here to cheer us on.  We're all gathered here alone together. It's up to each one of us when to get out of bed, brush our own teeth, when to drink a glass of water, and when to be conscious of taking in a breath.   With only each other to guide us, it's a small wonder we so often are led in circles. Who else are we going to turn to in our times of need?   

   The arch-nemeses of a host of individuals today remain attached to their peripheries like shadows in the way of their path intruding in the bright glare of day and withdrawing through the portals of twilight to disappear into the murkiness of night. At the end of the day you have to live with yourself.   

re:Update | post-Pandemic

by  Shaun Lawton      

  I don't have a library  of books, I have an ecosystem of books.  They are like living things, some being newly introduced to my domain, others undergoing a sort of slow demise as they yellow and collect dust. Some are borrowed while others are born into this teeming underground world via self publishing, for example the line of books under my imprint 𝕻𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖒𝖆 𝕻𝖗𝖊𝖘𝖘 were midwifed into my home courtesy of print-on-demand sites such as lulu.com and amazon.com (the two I've used thus far).  

   In my paperback jungle I've stacked multiple towers of Moorcock, Farmer, Ellison, and Dick.   An exhibit of Ace doubles draws much attention and careful scrutiny reveals many wonders in the post-literary veins of Delany, Brunner, and Koontz.  The King of the jungle dominates my finest bookshelf with the many paperback editions and even more hardcovers collected over the years.  It stands like a totem with a 55-inch plasma screen placed upon it like a crown.  Emanating a baleful presence, echoing the Crimson King.  When dining on the flesh of the long left over Ouroboros embedded within our dna itself, let it come as no surprise that many of us are still here, entertaining what the definition of infinity might be.  

    I've geared up my Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to produce an issue every month, and managed to succeed at this endeavor with the singular exception of last month, August 2022, where the fluid and streaming webzine is currently bookmark'd with a three-parts serialization of Franz Kafka's The Transformation, presented as such for the edification of a newly wide-eyed potential audience of younger readers. Old man Winter's done about to run out of snow, don'tcha know. He's been squarely caught in between the bright head beams of cross running traffic. Engines revving hungrily in front of him while other metallic beasts lined up behind honk out loud and the doppler effect of sirens approaching confounds the moment in paralyzed terror.  

     We're free flowing in the rapidly speeding up current of the Singularity now since its riptide increased by several magnitudes of order. There's no escaping this post-gravitational force guiding us along on a course resembling that of white water rapids, the heated debate between analog vs. digital artists drowned out in the impending downpour of this apocalypse.  And such an apocalypse it's turned out to be! We're being ushered into and through multiply evolving eras as if through a gauntlet packed with unexpected intrusions and accessories.  To say its confusing for the majority of us would be to place an understatement of absurd proportion for our consideration.  This place is a madhouse! 

   And it's as thrilling as the surefire thrumming of the latest carnival attraction's engine warming up, about to take those who strapped into its contoured bucket seats and foam padded safety shoulder harness bars on the wildest ride of their lives.  At the same time I foresee certain stages of advanced equilibrium grounding maximal chunks of the proceedings into super long-lived epochs of stability.  It's as if all the contrasting elements which have always balanced each other out before have been upgraded into much more super symmetrical and denser elemental particles, as if someone mixed in heaping teaspoons of neutron star material into the flux.  

   The stark and arresting beauty of this current situation maintains that while certain fundamental aspects of our reality remain as unfathomably complex as they were before, certain other embellishments to the old tropes have evolved so fantastically as to render those old complications into elementary simplicities that any child could take for granted.  In other words you're damn straight it's a brand new world, Aldous Huxley would be somewhat aroused while I'm afraid George Orwell would hang his head in shame.  Ray Bradbury would certainly be cautioning us against the very brand name chosen for our most popular eReader and Isaac Asimov would certainly shake his head sadly for lack of a way to convey the idealism of his definition of an old fashioned book.   

     In a world where anything goes, how could one possessed of an adventurous spirit and has survived the pandemic not be thrilled with our glorious present moment in time to the point of undergoing possible cardiac arrest? That's my primary concern, I've not got the time nor inclination to bicker and complain about a world that's gone to Hell in a handbasket when I've been here long enough to have not only contributed to the weaving of the basket, but have long ago figured out we make our own Hells of the bits and pieces of paradise which broke off the glacier of Eden so many generations ago we're no longer capable of being certain if we've translated the meanings of old fossilized writings accurately.  

    On a planet caught spinning as it revolves around our central star beheld in a vast suspension network of celestial bodies critically linked to time and gravity itself, I've been around the block enough times to know that the present moment we are all currently caught up in provides the totality of our needs insofar as the alternative prospect of what the so-called "future" and "past" happen to hold in store for us. Perhaps that's the one difference between those whose goals aim for a future that never comes and the ones who manage to figure out a way to live in the moment and remain happy.