INTRODUCTION by Bridget McKenna and Marti McKenna
When Aeon Speculative Fiction ceased publication, we still had two issues’ worth of wonderful stories and poems in inventory. We offer them to you in this book, and hope you get as much pleasure from them as we have.
We published Aeon from 2004 until 2008. In all, we published fourteen issues consisting of ninety-three pieces of fiction, twenty-six poems, and thirty columns and other works of nonfiction. Plus we’re adding the stories in this anthology to the Aeon legacy. We think it was a wonderful thing. We couldn’t have done it without the invaluable help of our associate editors L. Blunt Jackson and Stacey Janssen. And we’d like to spend the rest of this foreword showing you in the best way we know exactly what — or more correctly who — made it wonderful. Thank you, thank you so much, all of you.
Dev Agarwal
“Angels of War” —Aeon Three; “Toys” —Aeon Twelve
Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette
“The Ile of Dogges” —Aeon Seven
Greg Beatty
Poems “Seeking the Lovetrino” —Aeon Six; “The Dolls of Mother Ceres” —Aeon Seven;”Unnatural Poetry Workshop” —Aeon Nine; “Two Cairns for Apollo” —Aeon Eleven; “What Do We Pay the Moon?”
—Aeon Thirteen; “Making Aliens” “The Cries of Upward Straining Corpses” “Why Are You There” —End of an Aeon
S. Hutson Blount
“One Avatar, Hold the Anchovies” —Aeon Thirteen
Bruce Boston
Poems “Puppet People” “Knife People” “Sun People” —Aeon Four; “Cat People” “Fox and Chicken People” —Aeon Twelve
Mark Bourne
“The Nature of the Beast” —Aeon Five; “The Case of the Detective’s Smile” —Aeon Ten
Steven R. Boyett
“Emerald City Blues” —Aeon One
Mark Budz
“The War Inside” —Aeon Ten
Stephanie Burgis
“Foxwoman” —Aeon Eight
Daphne Charette
“Eat the Rich” —Aeon Nine
D.J. Cockburn
“Virulence” —Aeon Six
Tina Connolly
“Silverfin Harbor” —End of an Aeon
Stephen Couch
“N+1” —Aeon Seven
Jeff Crook
“The Last Jar of Mayo at the H&P” —End of an Aeon
Amanda Downum
Poem “And in the Living Rock, Still She Sings” —Aeon Eight;
“Blue Valentine” —End of an Aeon
Tom Doyle
“The Garuda Bird” —Aeon Three
David Dumitru
“Little Moon, Too, Goes Round” —Aeon Thirteen
T D Edge
“Repairs” —End of an Aeon
Sarah L. Edwards
“The Butterfly Man” —Aeon Twelve; “Wild Among Hares” —Aeon Fourteen; “If We Shadows Have Offended” —End of an Aeon
Craig English
“Tribes” —Aeon Five
Jaine Fenn
“Twilight at the Change House” —End of an Aeon
Marina Fitch
“The Scarecrow’s Bride” —Aeon Ten
Eugie Foster
“Black Swan, White Swan” —End of an Aeon
Dr. Rob Furey
Article: “Space Invaders” —Aeon Three, “Here There Be Spiders”
—Aeon Four; “Parallax” column —Aeon 5-14
Laura Ann Gilman
“End of Day” —Aeon Four
Scott E. Green
Poem “Corvus Nation” —Aeon Five
Gordon Gross
“Little House on the Accretion Disk” —Aeon One
Kelly Hale
“Blood Pith Crux” —Aeon Four
Joseph P. Haines
“Copper Angels” —Aeon Four
Terry Hayman
“The Girl Who Left” —Aeon Nine
Howard V. Hendrix
“The Self-Healing Sky” —Aeon One; “Waiting for Citizen Gödel” —Aeon Five; “The Art of Memory” —Aeon Ten
Liz Holliday
“All of Me” —Aeon Eight
Robert J. Howe
“Life Sentences” —Aeon Nine
Rob Hunter
“The Song of the Rice Barge Coolie” —Aeon Eleven
Davin Ireland
“The March Wind” —Aeon Fourteen
Michael Jasper
“The Brotherhood of Trees” —Aeon Six
Kij Johnson
“The Knife Birds” —Aeon Four; “Dia Chjermern’s Tale” —Aeon Ten
Jeffe Kennedy
“Pearl” —Aeon Thirteen
John Kratman
“Harry the Crow” —Aeon Twelve
Jay Lake
“A Mythic Fear of the Sea” —Aeon One; Article: Genre is Dead, Long Live Genre” —Aeon Two; “You Will Go On” —Aeon Three; “Green”
—Aeon Five; “White Boyz” —Aeon Seven; “A Very Old Man With No Wings at All” —Aeon Eleven; “Sweet Rocket” —Aeon Fourteen
David D. Levine
“Moonlight on the Carpet” —Aeon Twelve; “The True Story of Merganther’s Run” —End of an Aeon
Marissa K. Lingen
“Things We Sell to Tourists” —Aeon Six; Michael Banks, Home From the War” —Aeon Nine; “Swimming Back From Hell by Moonlight”
—Aeon Thirteen
Michael Lohr
“Language and Music in the City of Trees: an Interview With Bruce Boston” —Aeon Four; “California Daydreaming: An Interview With Bruce McAllister” —Aeon Seven
Patricia MacEwen
“Sex Change—A Few Simple Rules” —Aeon One, “A Voice for the Goddess of Mercy” —Aeon Two
Will MacIntosh
“Oxy” —Aeon Eight
Lisa Mantchev
“Mirror Bound” —Aeon Nine; “Her Box of Secrets” —Aeon Twelve
Daniel Marcus
“Echo Beach” —Aeon Eight; “The Dam” —Aeon Thirteen
Holly Wade Matter
“The Russian Winter” —Aeon One
Bruce McAllister
“The Passion: a Western” —Aeon Seven; “Hit” —Aeon Thirteen
Martin McGrath
“Palaces of Force” —Aeon Eight
John Meaney
“Blood and Verse” —Aeon One
Jeremy Minton
“The Wrong End of the Stick” —Aeon Three
Edward Morris
“Rejection Letter” —End of an Aeon
January Mortimer
“Brighton Bay” —Aeon Eleven
Jaime Lee Moyer
Poem “Asha” —Aeon Five; “Asp” —Aeon Seven; “There is a Story”
—Aeon Nine
Joe Murphy
“The Doom That Came to Smallmouth” —Aeon Seven
Ryan Neal Myers
“The Underthing” —Aeon Eleven; “The Diesel Mnemonic” —Aeon Fourteen
Rita Oakes
“Lupercalia” —Aeon Seven”
Richard Parks
“Another Kind of Glamour” —Aeon Six
Craig D.B. Patton
“Misery Loves” —Aeon Thirteen
Dana William Paxson
“The Buddha Lectures on Cosmology” —Aeon Two; “Appeal” “Adrift on the Mare Commutatio” “The Visitors on the Fourth” —Aeon Five; “Ex Muro” —Aeon Ten
Marshall Payne
“Bullet” —End of an Aeon
John A. Pitts
“The Hanging of the Greens” —Aeon Eleven
Ken Rand
“The Henry and the Martha” —Aeon Three; “Here There be Humans”
—Aeon Seven
Carrie Richerson
“A Game of Cards” —Aeon Four; Poem “STAR-Crossed Lovers”
—Aeon Six; “The City in Morning” —Aeon Ten
Bruce Holland Rogers
“Vocabulary Items” —Aeon Two
Josh Rountree
“Remember” —Aeon Nine
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“Signals”column —Aeon One-Fourteen
Ron Savage
“Playing Dice” —Aeon Eight
Lawrence M. Schoen
“The Game of Leaf and Smile” —Aeon Four; “Thinking” —Aeon Eight; “Fitzwell’s Oracle” —Aeon Twelve
Ken Scholes
“East of Eden and Just a Bit South” —Aeon Six; “One Small Step”
—Aeon Nine
Jennifer Schwabach
“Tinman” —Aeon Six
E. Sedia
“Just Chutney” —Aeon Three
Lorelei Shannon
“Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go” —Aeon Two; “Another Saturday Night in Georgia” —Aeon Ten
Nisi Shawl
“Wallamelon” —Aeon Three
Gary W. Schockley
“Dali, at Age 26, Believing Himself to be Heavyweight Champion of the World” —Aeon Two
Gaie Sebold
“Inspection Day” —End of an Aeon
Marge Simon
Poems “Yours or Mine?” —Aeon Two; “The Gate” —Aeon Eleven
Amy Sisson
“Patriot Girls” —End of an Aeon
Katharine Sparrow
“Welcome to Oceanopia!” —Aeon Twelve
Justin Stanchfield
“Gypsy Wings” —Aeon Five
Vaughan Stanger
“The Eye Patch Protocol” —End of an Aeon
Renee Stern
“Fire and Ice” —Aeon Five
P.R.A. Stillman
“Eyes the Color of Earth as Seen From Above” —Aeon Two
Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
Poems “But you Don’t Remember” —Aeon Six; “This Girl on a Train”
—Aeon Eight; “Passing Beneath Stars” —Aeon Eleven; “Holiday”
—Aeon Thirteen; “Your Fairy Goth Mother” —Aeon Fourteen; “The Promise” —End of an Aeon
M. Thomas
“The Tinker’s Child” —Aeon Four
Lavie Tidhar
“Midnight Folk” —Aeon Six; “Angels Over Israel” —Aeon Ten; “Hard Rain at the Fortean Cafe” —Aeon Fourteen; The River Came; Fragmented Recall” —End of an Aeon
Mikal Trimm
“The Diadem” —Aeon Fourteen; Poems “Lost on the Shores of Avalon” —Aeon Six; “The Cathedral of the Never-Was” —Aeon Eleven; “Evening in the Land of Dreams” “Pygmalion Redux” —End of an Aeon
Melissa Tyler
“The Sky Spider” —Aeon Eleven
Lori Ann White
“Silver Land” —Aeon One
Walter Jon Williams
“Logs” —Aeon One
Gene Wolfe
“Talk of Mandrakes” —Aeon One