Marvelous May 2022 Issue Is Live!

Huzzah! The marvelous May 2022 issue of Electric Spec is live!

We need to thank our excellent cover artist and authors. Hurray for our creatives!
We need to thank our excellent editors and tech staff. Thank you for all your hard work!
And most of all, we need to thank our readers! Woo hoo! We wouldn't exist without you!
Thank you, everyone!

From Author Ramthun

We are excited to feature "The Little Hitchhiker" by Associate Editor Bonnie Ramthun in the marvelous May 2022 issue of Electric Spec. Bonnie was kind enough to send along some comments about the story.

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I grew up in Wyoming and drove many miles along the State's highways and two-lane roads, sometimes during terrible storms. If you've ever encountered a ground blizzard near Elk Mountain or driven across the Red Desert at night during a thunderstorm, you know what it's like to be driving white-knuckled at the edge of catastrophe.

One night I came across Steven Spielberg's short film, Duel. The screenplay was written by the great Richard Matheson and was the first film directed by Spielberg. In the story, a traveling salesman ends up being chased and terrorized by an unseen semi-truck driver. The 74-minute film was an ABC Movie of the Week in 1971.

Spielberg is known for hiding his villain, most famously in the movie Jaws. The near unbearable tension of this man-eating shark movie is that for most of the film, you don't see the shark at all. Rumor has it that Spielberg didn't intend to do this. He was going to feature his shark, but the mechanical creature kept malfunctioning, and he had to come up with clever ways to keep it out of the picture.

After watching Duel, I'm not so sure about this rumor. Jaws aired in 1975, four years after Duel. The way Spielberg uses the truck driver in Duel is startlingly similar to the way he uses the shark in Jaws. We never see the face of the truck driver in Duel. When the truck first menaces the traveling salesman, played with tense perfection by Dennis Weaver, he spots it reflecting from the trembling, shaking side mirror of his car.

Spielberg also used this side-mirror shot in Jurassic Park, this time for the tension-releasing humorous moment of seeing "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear" as the T-Rex chases the Jeep holding our protagonists.

In Duel, the side mirror shot is terrifying. The semi-truck roars like a predator as it attempts to run the salesman's car off the road. The windshield reflects the glaring sun, never giving a glimpse of the driver inside. The tension ratchets up with every passing moment as the truck, and its unseen driver try to hunt down and kill David Mann.

Sure enough, the next morning, I had to get up and drive to Rock Springs, Wyoming. I admire and appreciate our American trucking fleet, but that day I regarded them all with suspicion. And during that drive, I wondered if one of those trucks was driven by something other than a human driver.

The next week I wrote The Little Hitchhiker, inspired by winter driving and a short film called Duel. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you haven't seen Duel, I highly recommend giving it a try.

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Thanks, Bonnie! Very interesting!
Be sure to check out "The Little Hitchhiker" and all the rest of the stories on May 31, 2022!

From Author Allingham

We are excited to feature "A River In The Desert" by LCW Allingham in the marvelous May 2022 issue of Electric Spec. LCW was kind enough to send along some comments about the story.

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One of the most rewarding parts of writing is finding the theme through the tangle of words. It's hardly ever what I intended, but usually so much better.

Writing "A River in the Desert" was a bit like following a thread through a labyrinth. I knew the mood I was trying to convey, the awkwardness of being a girl in a body you don't quite understand. Growing up observed, objectified, completely unsure of who you are. I did not know this story would ultimately turn into a love story, a juxtaposition of what we're taught love means (protection, conformity) to what real unconditional love is. Freedom. Acceptance. Letting go. The characters seem to take over the story and decide what it needs to say.

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Thanks, LCW! Very interesting!
Be sure to check out "A River In The Desert" and all the rest of the stories on May 31, 2022!

From Author Morgan

We are excited to feature "Beyond All Known Parameters" by Mike Morgan in the marvelous May 2022 issue of Electric Spec. Mike was kind enough to send along some comments about his story.

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Where did Beyond All Known Parameters come from? It came to me in a dream. No, seriously.

Very few of my stories are based on my dreams. Most of my dreams are too fragmented or nonsensical to be worth mining for fiction ideas; this night-time product of too much cheese, though, it stuck with me for days. A man of metal in a world of high fantasy. A Cyberman from Doctor Who who suddenly finds himself in Lord of the Rings, if you will. What would he do? How would he process the reality of magic when he was, without exaggeration, a being constructed out of science? That image, of the metal giant pushing his way through a magical barrier, and winning, because he couldn't see nor accept that it was there... that is straight out of my dream. I needed to do something with that dream-tale.

Of course, sitting down to write I was faced with the reality of taking that dream-image and wrestling it into something a bit more coherent. Where was the metal giant from? What world did he find himself in? What character would make more sense as the narrator? Who were they struggling against?

Then Donald Trump became president of the USA and I saw ignorance and barbarism threatening the institutions of American democracy. Barbarism, I thought: that's what they're fighting. They're the last hope defending something precious, something irreplaceable.

There's a place in Greece called Ionnina. That's a beautiful name, Ionnina. A name to conjure with. Thinking of names is never easy for me, and I was in search for a name for the city of civilization, the city in my fantasy landscape that our heroes, including that metal man, would be defending from barbarians. Ionnia, I called it. How very Greek. Greece is, as you know, the birthplace of democracy.

So, heroes defending civilization from forces that wanted to tear it down, and a metal alien in a world of magic... those were decent ingredients. I felt I could do something with them. But why did the barbarians - I settled on trolls as the foes, echoing the modern enemy found on the internet - why did they want to destroy the results of science and thought and art? What was their motive? Well, Trump came to mind again; they felt slighted, they felt unappreciated, they felt they weren't praised enough... Yes, that seemed right. A narcissist leader who wasn't getting the praise he craved - that'd be the motive. Civilization and progress under imminent threat of annihilation because of one troll's ridiculous hurt feelings.

Now, I needed a hero. Fantasy stories often lack female characters, let alone protagonists. I don't like that in fantasy - give me a woman lead. So, a woman telling the story, I thought. Good. But not a woman in skimpy fantasy armor. No, real armor. A woman who knows how to fight. Someone competent. Someone who starts our story in a state of utter defeat and who can turn that around, who can find victory out of hopelessness, because she's smart, because she's an example of why intelligence wins over brutish hate.

Ah, but what role was the metal giant - let's call him Eldarion - playing in all this? He's an intelligence (literally a personification of intelligence) who has never seen magic before, but he needs to be more than that. He's the source of the victory. In a world of magic, he's the wellspring of the science that saves the day. No wonder the trolls don't see it coming.

The title, you ask? What's that about? A metal man in a land of magic would feel out of his depth. He would be operating well outside his programming. I think many of us know that feeling all too well. I feel it on a regular basis. I especially felt it the day I brought my first child home from the hospital. They're letting me be in charge of this unutterably precious cargo? They're trusting me to drive a car with my baby in it? It's the secret every parent, most particularly every first-time parent, shares - we have no clue what we're doing. (Apologies to everyone else on that Houston freeway that day - I was the guy driving at fifteen miles an hour, terrified of jostling mother and child.) Hopefully, some sense of that came through in the story - of a new parent not knowing how to be a parent. We figure it out, of course. Mostly.

That's the thread that ties it all together. The machine man doesn't understand magic. People in the fantasy land don't understand modern science. But they all understand that feeling of finding themselves off the edge of the map, in a place where they have no idea what to do.

I guess it's familiar territory for us all.

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Thanks, Mike! Very interesting!
Be sure to check out "Beyond All Known Parameters" and all the rest of the stories on May 31, 2022!

Boogie Pop Phantom

We had the Production Meeting for the marvelous May 31, 2022 issue of Electric Spec over the weekend--in person! It was amazing to see everyone in four dimensions. :) We had a wide-ranging discussion including family stuff, favorite books read, and of course, many topics related to Electric Spec. I'm happy to report, two of the editors have a new kitten named Boogie Pop Phantom! :)
One of the editors will be presenting in Denver in September at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers 2022 annual conference, including giving writing tips for short stories. (Registration is now open.)

We had an extensive discussion on story length. It is difficult to write a complete story in less than 1000 words. Please do make sure your story has an ending and doesn't just peter out. At the other extreme, we received at lot of stories this time over 5000 words. More words are not always better. Our submission policy does permit submissions of up to 7000 words, but that doesn't mean editors want to edit such a long tale. I'd say the sweet spot is between 2500 words and 4500 words...

Thank you authors for sending us your stories!
Folks who were rejected should have heard back from us by now. (Sorry!)
Most of the folks who were accepted have heard back from us, with a couple of exceptions. This notification will include a contract. (Yay!) Once we receive that back we'll starte editing your story.

Next time, here, I'll start bragging about the new issue!