This is a very long article.
If you’re interested, we’re laying bare the juicy gossip, true delights, embarrassing truths, and the often painful realities of running a small magazine. It’s also about what we did right, and what we learned from Reflection’s Edge. It’s the result of my having asked my staff to tell me about what it was like here at RE, with little or no direction from me on how they should frame their thoughts. Not everyone chose to write something, but those who did[...]
In deciding to end Reflection’s Edge, there were a few things we agreed to do. One of the most important was to leave a list of our favorite works: the “best of” collection we never got in print. In an act of questionable sanity, the Editor-in-Chief read through every story since the first publication, and followed this up with a request to all staff to name their favorites. What resulted is a highly biased but time-tested list; while many of these stories were features, some were pieces we just never stopped hearing about or found ourselves recommending over and over to new readers. If you haven’t read these already, we’re rather jealous and hope you will; and if you have seen them before, we’re sure you’ll enjoy[...]
I’d overslept that morning and had run from the house with wet hair and an outfit only one oatmeal-colored cardigan away from being everyone’s mental image of librarian-chic. My mad dash screeched to a halt only a few miles down the highway. And now I sat, trying not to let my frustration at the stalled hover-carts bobbing all around get the best of me. Somewhere up ahead, the dwarves had…
PLAINSFIELD—This tiny upper Midwest farming community is forty miles from its nearest neighbor, so remote along the old, weather-battered county road that cartographers routinely forget to include it on their [...]
Madge leaned against a large elm, facing the blue ridge of the Shenandoahs. A flash of fiery red caught her eye and took her breath; a pair of cardinals fluttered [...]
Marching into a bad town was the only time the Emperor wanted Feru to rampage like a giant, but he was thirsty and didn’t feel like breaking trees or throwing [...]
They were waiting for Haji on the platform. He squinted at them through the window grime. They were the only whites waiting for the train. The woman’s golden hair spilled [...]
“Three days?” McMurphy squeezed his cigar into pulp between his molars.
“Yessir. Could’ve been much longer.” The engineer jerked his head toward the whitewashed shack at the end of the tracks. [...]
The ruin has history. No, histories. A Roman Villa cannibalized by the Britons; a Saxon Castle besieged by the Normans; a Catholic Monastery sacked on Henry VIII’s order.
In the present, [...]
I was born in darkness, in a cool, shadowed spring lined by smooth rocks, and that’s why I didn’t know. I grew up to the sound of my sisters, Madlenka [...]
Why, with everything prime, would I answer the goddamn phone? In the Ten it’s just me and my restaurant. A narrow world of one-way streets and alleyways, black hot concrete and steel. Not much room for the natural things. Hell, there’s barely air that’s fit to breathe. Roses live in tacky plastic pots, vegetables come wrapped in neon gumbands stamped with smiling company mascots. But I like…
West London was, as always, abuzz. Even at 4:00 AM on a chilly November Tuesday, electric motorcars whirred down Kings Road, zipping people along, early to work or late from [...]
In the time when the world was still forming, there were a few animals, some people, and many, many gods. At this time, there was a dry valley that had [...]
The stars were becoming transparent as light crept over the horizon. Greg hissed in frustration. If he didn’t get the fans on this part of the atmospheric controller fixed before [...]
All the omens meant it was a good morning for a hunt. Legends of the Bronze-Backed Bear have said that one drop of his blood dripped, into eyes, would cure [...]