Space & Time No. 122: Fall/Winter 2014

What can still be saved when faith is broken, bodies become commodities, and the self is no longer confined to flesh?

In Space & Time No. 122, the condemned search for redemption, the oppressed discover the power to revolt, and humanity’s strangest creations begin asking whether they possess souls of their own.

This memorial issue is dedicated to beloved speculative-fiction author CJ Henderson and features “Salvation,” the final story he submitted to Space & Time. In this fusion of Weird Western and cosmic horror, a faithless outlaw confronts an ancient evil and finds one last opportunity to decide what kind of man he will be.

Douglas Cohen’s “The True Song” follows a grieving musician across the stars to a gathering of alien performers charged with protecting the music that binds existence together. Jennifer Pelland’s unsettling “The Kindest Cut” examines complicity, desire, and artificial consciousness in a future where lifelike androids are manufactured to absorb humanity’s darkest impulses. In W. K. Tucker’s “The Keeper,” a young woman sacrificed to sustain a patriarchal society discovers that the monstrous force imprisoning her may also become the instrument of revolution.

The issue also offers Keith Schaffner’s gleefully macabre collision of disco, goth culture, and undeath; Bill Mingin’s alternate-history alien comedy “Candy Saves the World”; and C. D. Regan’s exploration of identity through a newly awakened synthetic copy forced to confront what it means to be a substitute for oneself.

Also featuring speculative poetry selected by Linda D. Addison, Daniel M. Kimmel’s examination of the identity-altering science-fiction film Seconds, and an expansive interview with Todd McCaffrey about writing, collaboration, and carrying Anne McCaffrey’s legendary Dragonriders of Pern into a new generation. Edited by Hildy Silverman, this provocative collection brings together science fiction, fantasy, horror, poetry, art, and conversation from the pages of Space & Time. 



A dark, strange, and unexpectedly moving collection about what survives us: memory, music, rebellion, and the stories we leave behind.