28 August 2025

From Author Dixon

We're excited to feature "Full Nova" by Phillip E. Dixon in our awesome August 2025 issue of Electric Spec. Phillip was kind enough to send us some comments.

Time travel stories often involve a character trying to change or prevent an action, choice, or situation that had a major effect on their life. For my story, I wanted to approach this time travel trope from a different angle. Here, the main character, Charlie, can't change the past or do anything to prevent his partner's death. What he does get, though, is closure and resolution courtesy of Celeste's knowledge and ability to give him what he needs: a last moment with Rebecca. The story is also set in a world where time itself is a commodity, and we see the same haves and have-nots that exist in the real world now, as well as corporate burdens that often command people's lives and expend our most precious resource, which is our time.


Interesting! Thanks, Phillip! Be sure to check out "Full Nova" and the rest of the stories on August 31!

26 August 2025

From Author Dove

We're excited to feature "Half Lives" by Alan Dove in our awesome August 2025 issue of Electric Spec. Alan was kind enough to send us some comments.

I've spent my whole career thinking about science and scientists, and one recurring theme is the gap between how most people think research works, and how it actually happens.

Most experiments fail. The controls die, the apparatus you cobbled together breaks, or the cool thing you thought you'd discovered turns out to be an artifact. Sometimes something works as intended, which is a nice change of pace. But the best thing, the moment scientists live for, isn't when an experiment works, but when it fails in an interesting way. When you're scratching your head saying "wait, that can't happen," you just might have stumbled onto something new.

This story started out with the usual sort of sci-fi musing: "wouldn't it be cool if we could ..." Then I wondered who would discover such a capability, under what circumstances, and how would they first realize it? I decided it would probably happen when they were trying to do something else. And maybe they'd think the experiment had failed.

Initially, I started with a very different cast of characters, and had trouble deciding how to shape the story. Once I hit on the idea of a graduate student making the opening discovery, everything suddenly came together. Heather finds herself confronted with something that doesn't make sense, and gets sucked into figuring it out. She learns a few other things along the way. To the extent that there is a theme, it emerged from what these characters wanted to tell me.

I hope people enjoy reading "Half Lives" as much as I enjoyed writing it.


Interesting! Thanks, Alan! Be sure to check out "Half Lives" and the rest of the stories on August 31!

19 August 2025

From Author Mattravers-Taylor

We're excited to feature "Hats" by Christopher Mattravers-Taylor in our awesome August 2025 issue of Electric Spec. Christopher was kind enough to send us some comments.

This story was written for a competition that had 'identity' as the prompt (perhaps I strayed a bit in my story!). The inspiration came when my wife was seriously ill in hospital for quite a long time, and I struggled to juggle work with looking after our young daughter. I made an offhand comment to my mother-in-law about putting on my childcare hat, and then it was only a short hop to think that there could by a physical manifestation of such hat swapping. Add a dash of corporate greed and employee frustration, and there you go!

I think the stress and helplessness I felt at the time bled into the story, which was both unexpected and cathartic, and I do think it has a kind of angry energy that my other work doesn't have.

I'd love to dedicate the piece to my wife and children, Carly, Kara and Thomas. They're the best family anyone could wish for!


Interesting! Thanks, Christopher! Be sure to check out "Hats" and the rest of the stories on August 31!

15 August 2025

August Issue TOC Preview!

August is a busy time of year! Rest assured we are hard at work on the awesome August 2025 issue of Electric Spec. I'm pleased to pass along a preview of our Table of Contents:
  • Full Nova by Phillip E. Dixon
  • Find Your Voice by Jake Stein
  • Half Lives by Alan Dove
  • Hats by Christopher Mattravers-Taylor
  • The Show Must Go On by D.A. D'Amico
  • Editor's Corner: Charles Kowalski Interview by Grayson Towler & Candi Cooper-Towler

Woo hoo! I can't wait!

03 June 2025

From Author Pae

We're excited to feature "The Sword and the Scabbard, or Which Do You Prefer?" by Evelyn Pae in our marvelous May 2025 issue of Electric Spec. Evelyn was kind enough to send us some comments.

When I was a kid I had an illustrated children's version of the Legends of King Arthur, which started my fascination with Arthurian lore. One of my favorite stories from that book was the part where Arthur gets Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake. Later, Merlin tells him that the sword's scabbard is more valuable than the sword itself, because it prevents the carrier from losing blood. What is interesting to me now as an adult is the inherent "sense" of such stories -- how as children, or fantasy readers, we're willing to accept the ring of truth in certain claims or turns of phrase, sometimes without being able to explain why.

In the past year I've been lucky to stumble upon a site run by author L. R. Tourmaline, the Arthurian Preservation Project (arthurianpreservationproject.tumblr.com) which is a highly accessible, extensively fact-checked directory of all sorts of Arthurian media, including "intro" guides for folks looking to get into reading some of the source texts for the first time.


Interesting! Thanks, Evelyn! Be sure to check out "The Sword and the Scabbard, or Which Do You Prefer?" and the rest of the stories now!

31 May 2025

Marvelous May 2025 Issue Live!

The marvelous May 2025 issue of Electric Spec is live!
Thank you, authors! Thank you to our artist!
Thank you to the whole Electric Spec team!

Thank you, readers!
We hope you enjoy this issue as much as we did.

29 May 2025

From Author Hill

We're excited to feature "Screaming Rain" by David Wesley Hill in our marvelous May 2025 issue of Electric Spec. David was kind enough to send us some comments.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been intrigued--and creeped out--by the idea of alien possession. Colin Wilson's tour de force, The Mind Parasites, scared the hell out of me, as did Heinlein's classic, The Puppet Masters. The very idea of some foreign entity feeding on your brain and thoughts was viscerally disturbing, and I mulled over adding my own fiction to the canon for many, many years, until something finally gelled in my head, and “Screaming Rain” came together into a story.

For my NOMADs, I owe inspiration to Cordwainer Smith's, “The Game of Rat and Dragon,” in which human space traffic is menaced by creatures born of the dust between the stars, which attack becalmed interstellar vessels, only to be fought off by augmented feline gunners. In “Screaming Rain” I wanted to flesh out such aliens with scientific plausibility--and to posit that their impact on humanity, rather than being malicious, might simply be a byproduct of their intrinsic strangeness, a strangeness engendering both madness and transcendence . . . the usual outcomes of any encounter with the celestial.

I also wanted to take a stab at emulating Wilson's remarkable literary feat of writing a thirty-page fight scene entirely in the head of his protagonist. Of course, “Screaming Rain” as a whole doesn't weigh in at thirty pages, but most of the story does take place in Bernie's mind. Equally, I wanted to write a story based on the trinity of classical drama: unity of action, time, and place--think of Fritz Leiber's, The Big Time--and so “Screaming Rain” is told in a rush of action, in a single location (OK, barring the introductory Po' Boy scene, mea culpa), over a span of fifteen or twenty minutes. Only you, Electric Spec readers, can decide whether I succeeded in these endeavors.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Star Wars and The Matrix, but I have a bone to pick with any fiction that depends on a savior with mystical or meta-human powers. I want my hero to be an everyman--an ordinary human who succeeds because of their wits and intelligence, not because they are anointed by the force, and whose solutions are within the reach of any reader of sufficient determination. Keep this in mind if our solar system ever enters a Big Cloud.

Finally, as to my choice of a protagonist, Bernie, well, here's some background. I am Jewish, but secular. I go to shul only on the High Holy Days, if then, and I regularly eat pork (bacon!), and I positively love oysters, especially soaked in buttermilk and dredged in flour and deep-fried until crispy. In none of my forty or so published stories have I ever given my protagonist a religion, mainly because belief was never a consideration of the plot or integral to the character, but while sketching out “Screaming Rain,” various threads came together--oysters, the name Bernie, his fascination with transcendence, his moral quandary--which made me understand Bernie was Jewish. It also made me think of my late poker buddy, Bernie Passeltiner, whose catchphrase while pondering whether to raise or to fold was “Bernie, baby, bubala.” May you rest in peace, dear friend.


Interesting! Thanks, David! Be sure to check out "Screaming Rain" and the rest of the stories May 31!