Note from the Editors



Welcome to the end of the world.

It is difficult to write of this issue from where and when I am: on the warmest day of an autumn that has seen, by now, three frosts and a flurry of snow. Everything today is golden, bright, lit from many angles in the way of a miracle, as the sun blasts through falling leaves that look like nothing so much as an impossibly slow shower of coins. But even as I write this — and perhaps it is the apocalypse magic of this issue, staining its way outward from my fingertips — all is darkening; the wind grows teeth; the year is harvested down. By the time this note is done, whatever mellow fruitfulness the season claims will be swallowed whole into its mists.

Here you will find grey cities with foxes for hearts; hungry dolls and desolate wastes; unburied mothers, wives, and devils with pale blue eyes. These are grimdark end-days where the light's been spent, but folk still rage against its absence and fight to call it back. So step warily between these streets and deserts, and should you feel a gaze upon you as you gaze upon them, keep very, very still.

We are tremendously grateful to Elisabeth Heller for this issue's wonderful art; to Dmitri Zagidulin for the patient tending of our ones and zeroes; to our fantastic contributors; and, as ever, to you, dear readers, without whom our fields would be ever fallow.

Enjoy the fall.