An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Apex, February 2015
I stare out over my pregnant belly, feeling awkward. Feeling irritable. “Why wouldn’t I want to know?”
“Some parents don’t want to know,” Dr. Anders says. “And we respect that.”
“It’s right there on your clipboard, right?” I point to the clipboard, and he holds it infinitesimally closer to his chest. As if he’s hiding the results from me. Continue reading “Foreknowledge”
I can’t think of anything that screams, “Making a prequel was a baaaaaad idea and we regreeeeet it!” more than giving up after two years and jumping the characters forward in time until it’s not a prequel anymore.
“If we learned anything, we learned we’re not yet ready to learn everything.”
This is such an incredibly cheap, lazy, and anti-science sentiment. Just because knowledge must be handled responsibly doesn’t mean the answer is to simply throw it away. Continue reading “Watching Star Trek Struggle”
Space Unicorn Blues by T. J. Berry is a wild ride; a really fun mash-up of space opera and fantasy. I’m looking forward to the sequel!
The LEGO Movie 2 is weirdly beautiful and mind-bending; a solid statement on toxic masculinity; and possibly the best use of Batman ever.
Also, the spaceship guy really speaks to me — “Loving spaceships is my one defining trait!”
The eleven-year-old: “They’re texting me Hamilton stickers. I ought to respond with more Hamilton stickers. That’s how conversation works.”
The game mechanics in Yoshi’s Woolly World are EXCELLENT for playing with a little kid, because when they keep dying, you can just eat them — causing the little kid to laugh hysterically — & carry them through hard parts in your mouth or else spit them at things as ammunition. Continue reading “Hamilton and Yoshi”
My eleven-year-old — who aspires to be the next Meryl Streep and has long resented that we haven’t moved to LA and gotten her a role on a TV show — watched the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend song “I Want to Be a Child Star” tonight with increasingly widening eyes. At the end, she said, “I’ve just rethought everything.”
I’ve been outlining a new sci-fi novel & came up w/a beginning today — only to realize in horror that this novel wants to be in 1st person present tense. Why?? Why??? I mean… I can figure out good reasons for it… but still. I usually only write that PoV for flash fiction.
I quite like Star Trek (‘09), but my absolute favorite part is Spock’s answer when Uhura asks what he needs, after his homeworld is destroyed. It captures so much of the heart of Trek & why it’s the future we need:
“I need everyone to continue performing admirably.”
And now it’s time to hang out watching the five-year-old’s gymnastics class with the incongruous sound of #CrazyExGirlfriend soundtracks in my earbuds. Continue reading “Admirable is Better than Amiable”
Twenty-seven years later, I suddenly wonder… shouldn’t it have been “A League of Our Own” instead of “A League of Their Own” so that the title centers on the perspective of the women it’s about?
Except of course it wasn’t, because women are always “the other”… Continue reading “Theirs vs. Ours”
Between editing, critiquing, and being in a book group, it’s getting to where reading a book for no particular reason is quite a treat.
Also, it feels weird to take a break from reading to… do some reading. But that’s what I want to do sometimes…
The 11-year-old, who has in fact seen all the Star Wars movies:
“I thought… Luke was the one who turns into Darth Vader?”
And this is why insisting kids see Star Wars in the “right” order has always seemed silly to me.