A Shameless Plug Before I Hit The Road

The latest issue of what I consider to be one of the best literary journals/anthologies, Conjunctions: 53:  Not Even Past:  Hybrid Histories, arrived in the mail this morning.  I've been looking forward to this issue for six months now.  Bradford Morrow, who's edited this journal since its inception almost 30 years ago, tends to have some really good themed stories and this one is promising.  Very promising.  So promising for me that they put translations of stories/poems by Thomas Bernhard and Roberto Bolaño in here.  Oh, and that Bolaño is from an upcoming book, Antwerp.  Read it already, very good, if not at the height of his abilities to invoke an emotional response from the reader.  Can't wait until it's released in the near future in both Spanish and English translation.

The other stories hold promise.  Some of the authors have a history of their own with "speculative fiction."  Others are more firmly grounded in "mimetic fiction."  This journal doesn't tend to shy away from mixing the two together.  Curious to see if this issue will be as good as the more heavily-speculative 52:  Betwixt the Between.  That one will get more feature time in my year-end recaps.  Haven't decided if I ought to place it in the Anthology category or if I should create a new Magazine category for these two issues, Weird Tales, and Electric Velocipede.  Regardless, if this issue can live up to the last issue's goodness, I will have more than gotten my money's worth for it.

Now to get ready to go.  It's the Vols' Homecoming game against Memphis.  Starts at 6 PM CST and I live 3.5 hours away from Knoxville and have to buy scalped tickets.  So I'm outta here until Sunday.  Ciao!