Lectori salutem.
We live in interesting times, both in science fiction and the world at large. This must have weighed on the minds of our wonderful community of authors as well, who have inundated us with a record number of submissions.
Sci Phi Journal has a tradition of advocating for timeless rather than timely speculative fiction. We enjoy both famous and barely known classics of the genre that, while products of their day and age, gaze dispassionately into the distance and explore alterities to the extant reality of their writers.
That said, we feel that we should make the same allowance for the literature of the present to be a fruit of the here and now. Geopolitical upheavals cast a shadow over the zeitgeist of our era, much like they did in the Cold War of previous generations, and germinate through the stories that emerge as a result.
Thus, we elected to subdue our misgivings and exceptionally allow some of that creative current to seep into these pages. Let the collective mind of science fiction get it ‘out of our system’, as it were. The tales that follow range from deglobalizing the units of time to war machines unleashed by great powers in space and unstoppable forces of nature down below. Two essays, on the ethics of time travel and hypocrisy in philosophical scripture and fiction, respectively, complete this slightly more political issue than usual.
Whichever side of the many available fences you happen to sit on, we sincerely hope you enjoy our first edition of 2025!
Speculatively yours,
the Sci Phi co-editors & crew
~
