Spectra Magazine - Issue 1: Sci-fi, Fantasy and Horror Short Fiction

EDITOR’S LETTER

YOUR VERY OWN HEISENBERG COMPENSATOR

Heisenberg was no fun. While all the other scientists were playing with particles and making them jump around like beans on a quantum hot plate, Werner Heisenberg was stood at the back, heckling about how none of this was really happening.

According to Werner, the more you study something the more you change it, so your results are never accurate. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but I’ve been studying his principle intently and it refuses to stay the same.

Anyway, thanks to Heisenberg the transporters in Star Trek could never work, and what’s a trek to the final frontier without lots of beaming around the place (Scotty)?

Ah, but those Star Fleet engineers were too wily for old Heisenberg. Quick as a flash, they installed a device alongside the pattern buffers and annular confinement beams called the Heisenberg Compensator, which allowed them to solve those impossible subatomic calculations and convert the particles bouncing around inside the transporter stream back into a man in a jumpsuit.

Spectra Magazine is your very own Heisenberg Compensator.

Is short fiction dead? Is print dead? Are people willing to read on a tablet computer or a smartphone? Can a working writer pay their bills these days? Will LCDs ever wield the power that ink once enjoyed? Ask all the writers you want, but the more you try to measure this literary quantum puzzler, the more you’ll change it. Accurate answers to such questions are impossible.

And that’s why we created Spectra. We want to build a transporter of words, ideas, characters, worlds and imagination, break it down into electromagnetic waves, and reassemble it with perfect precision on whatever e-book reader you happen to be wielding. It’s an invisible matter stream carrying sci-fi, fantasy and horror writers on a daring away mission to the surface of planet Digital Distribution 7. But to do so, we need a way to cancel out Werner Heisenberg and his damn uncertainty principles.

Sure, there’ll be the occasional, casual sacrifice of a random ensign, the holodeck will malfunction (a lot) and we’ll crash a fleet of shuttle crafts, but Spectra is the science fiction, horror and fantasy readers’ own personal Heisenberg Compensator. With this ingenious device at your command, dreams will be fashioned into reality, you’ll travel light years without moving, and the impossible will become commonplace.

How does an unfeasible device like the Heisenberg Compensator work, you ask? Star Trek’s technical advisor (and NASA designer) Michael Okuda answered that question simply and efficiently: It works very well, thank you.

Exactly.

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NEWS FROM ACROSS THE SCI-FI, HORROR AND FANTASY SPECTRA

TERMINATOR FRANCHISE GOING CGI?

CYBORG GENERATING IMAGERY...

After the terminal schizophrenia of Terminator Salvation and TV show Chronicles, is it good news or bad that the Terminator series is ready to continue in the shape of a $70 million CGI film, Terminator 3000? Production is slated to begin in January 2011 by Hannover House, according to Comingsoon.net, and already the studio is talking about minimizing violence in order to obtain a PG-13 level of material.

However, controversy is brewing as the owner of the Terminator brand, Pacificor, claims animation rights were never sold and it still retains approval and licensing authority on any such project.

It doesn’t mean Terminator 3000 won’t happen, but another payout looks likely before anything gets the go ahead.

Now all we need is news that cockney barrow boy, Christian Bale, will provide voice-over tantrums, and Skynet’s future is well and truly doomed.

NEWS FROM ACROSS THE SCI-FI, HORROR AND FANTASY SPECTRA

DELETED RETURN OF THE JEDI SCENE SURFACES FOR BLURAY VERSION

LUKE SHOWS US HOW TO BUILD A LIGHTSABER

George Lucas isn’t just the king of space mythology. He’s the emperor of selling the same thing over and over again, and making us want it more and more every time. Recently he’s been talking up the impending Blu-Ray release of the Star War saga, and new footage has probably sealed the deal for most Skywalker fans out there.

A previously unseen deleted scene from Return of the Jedi is to be included in the Blu-Ray high-definition remastering, showing Darth Vader contacting Luke via the Force (a type of social networking used a long, long time ago) while his embittered son is busy building his new green lightsaber.

In truth, it reveals almost nothing about the saga and makes no difference to our understanding of the galaxy far, far away. It’s also the most exciting thing that’s ever happened in the history of the universe. Never underestimate the power of a deleted scene.

NEWS FROM ACROSS THE SCI-FI, HORROR AND FANTASY SPECTRA

60 OUT OF 200 NORTH KOREANS ARE SPIES

BIG BROTHER IS ALIVE AND WELL AND RUNNING NORTH KOREA

According to a senior bureaucrat who escaped from North Korea a couple of years ago, the intensely paranoid leader, Kim Jong-il, has been working hard at creating an Orwellian society in which suspicion keeps the populace in check.

About 60 out of 200 North Koreans are spies, former government executive Kim Young Cheol tells TheStar.com. Under a total lifestyle system of surveillance, people evaluate themselves as well as others, [and are] taught to be suspicious of one another.

On top of his extreme efforts to avoid public discontent and insurgency, Kim also operates a strict ideological system designed to establish himself and his family as gods in the eyes of North Koreans, turning politics into devout and intolerant faith.

There’s still nothing as strange or as terrifying as real life, eh?

NEWS FROM ACROSS THE SCI-FI, HORROR AND FANTASY SPECTRA

RARE MAGNETIC STAR FOUND

BUT WHERE’S THE BLACK HOLE?

The discovery of a rare magnetic star - or magnetar - is causing scientists to rethink what they know about black holes. Again.

Hailing from the extraordinary Westerlund 1 star cluster, 16,000 light years away in the southern constellation of Ara, this newly discovered magnetar was produced by a star that astronomers believe must have been at least 40 times larger than our own sun.

Stars that are more than 25 times bigger than our sun usually leave behind black holes when they go supernova. Only in this case, there isn’t one: just a load of confused astronomers scratching their heads and looking imploring up at the sky.

Or at least they were, until Dr Negueruela of the University of Alicante in Spain co-authored a study claiming the mystery of the missing black hole might be explained by the progenitor star having got rid of nine tenths of its mass before exploding as a supernova.

Just as well. Terrible business, misplacing a black hole. Sure the inky black of space must make them hard to spot, especially given that they feast on light like cosmic vampires - but no astronomer worth their weight in mendelevium 258 (heaviest known atomic isotope) wants to admit to that physics foible.

NEWS FROM ACROSS THE SCI-FI, HORROR AND FANTASY SPECTRA

SAW II: FLESH & BLOOD DATED FOR OCTOBER

SAW GAME SEQUEL SLATED FOR RELEASE TO COINCIDE WITH SAW 3D

The Saw movies aren’t to everyone’s taste, and not just because of the gore. The themes are something of a horror movie Marmite, and the combination of blood and sadism tends to polarize audiences.

The same is true of last year’s gaming adaptation, which received scores ranging between 40 and 85 per cent. The critical indecision has evidently been taken as a positive aspect by the game’s creator Konami, which is gearing up to release a sequel, Saw II: Flesh & Blood, alongside the box office release of Saw 3D in October.

Filled with gruesome traps and brutal machinery, Saw II casts players as the son of the first game’s character and takes place between the events of the Saw and Saw II movies. The much-maligned combat system has apparently been replaced by a series of life-threatening puzzles, which seems more in keeping with the concept.

Exact release dates seem to range from October 18th to Halloween, so watch this space for more news as we get closer.

NEWS FROM ACROSS THE SCI-FI, HORROR AND FANTASY SPECTRA

APPARENTLY, WE CAN’T CONTROL THE WEATHER AFTER ALL

NEW BOOK DEBUNKS CLIMATE GEOENGINEERING

The concept of geoengineering the earth’s climate isn’t new, but science historian James Rodger Fleming seems to think a shower of luminous pink pompoms is higher on the probability scale than mankind taking control of the earth’s weather system.

His