Issue 8 Foreword

It’s fitting that our “Dreamings” issue takes shape while its editor exists in a dreamlike state of her own, travelling abroad willy-nilly for months on end and making a personal dream come true. I may be unplugged from so-called real life at the moment, but magazines still demand launching, and strangely enough these dreamy tales have helped to anchor me to responsibility.

This is even stranger given these stories’ ability to detach mind and body from the post-and-lintel everyday, at least as far as their characters are concerned. Returning author Vajra Chandrasekera calls it “basal reality,” which gets torn apart by hallucinogenics and possibly worse in three of these tales. But seeking and longing and not fitting in can tear the fabric of basal reality, too; what most excites me about this issue is that its contents tap into “dreamings” through unexpected means. It’s not just a matter of head finding pillow.

So brace yourselves for dinosaurs, sea-creatures, psychedelic flowers, ice- frosted drones, and insectoid beings high as a kite, dancing their cares away in a hive. Worlds end, begin, and stubbornly maintain themselves even when basal reality lets go—for better or for worse. But the end result is always and forever something in the way of story, which goes hand in hand with anything even remotely resembling a dream.

Lastly, a word of thanks: this issue was helped along by three veteran readers, Layla Al-Bedawi, Renée Gibbins, and Kate Heartfield, who generously pitched in on the production side of things while this grasshopper fiddled in Europe.

Ranylt Richildis
Editor