The Uncanny Valley
The snow swirls outside of Caitlin’s Lurie Children’s Hospital window. From 20 floors up, we watch cars slip and slide, thankful we’re not traveling home in dangerous weather while also wanting to be...
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Hugo the Cat is poised at the window, ready to fight the birds, squirrels, and bunnies. Green tulip tips are escaping from the earth. Tree pollen confuses our sinuses into filling up in the most...
View ArticleImagining Futures: Imagination, Ltd.
When we’re little, we are told that imagination has no bounds, that we are unlimited in what we can come up with. Every television show relies upon the suspension of disbelief that children are gifted...
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Today is Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-melt-your-face-off hot. Thankfully, we have air conditioning and no shortage of things to keep us occupied inside today during one of those terribly muggy Central...
View ArticleImagining Place: Reading to a Better World
As a writer, editor, activist, and community builder, my job has many components. I write essays (like these), watch movies, do media criticism, listen to other peoples’ experiences, research, do so...
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Outside is moist. Miserable and moist. The Uncanny Thomases love many things about Central Illinois, but humid August with its heat and storms is not one of them. As we huddle in the A/C with Hugo the...
View ArticleImagining Futures: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
I have been working in genre magazines since roughly 2014. It’s been one hell of a run, and I’m done now. This is my last issue at Uncanny Magazine, and it feels a bit like the end of an era. I’m not...
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We’re writing this during a stormy Central Illinois day when we always keep an ear out for a tornado siren. (Thankfully, our house has a Cold War bomb shelter, though wrangling Caitlin and Hugo the Cat...
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Welcome to the first Uncanny Magazine issue of 2022! It’s a blustery day in Central Illinois. Lynne is having Zoom meetings in the Doctor Who room, Caitlin is listening to her audio book, and Hugo the...
View ArticleThe One Body Problem
“I am not an intellectual, I write with my body.” —Clarice Lispector In all the fiction and nonfiction that I read, I am searching for the body. In fiction, I want to know how a character feels; how...
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Hello, Space Unicorns! This month, the fabulous Liz Argall created a special comic for the editorial, featuring Hugo the Cat! FABULOUS NEWS, SPACE UNICORNS! HAPPIEST OF DAYS!!! FIFTEEN Uncanny Magazine...
View ArticleThe Yearning Body Problem
“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” ― Edna St. Vincent Millay The...
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It’s a wet and cold spring as we write this in Central Illinois. We are falling asleep most nights to the rumble of our sump pumps, which hopefully will keep our house from sinking. These are anxious...
View ArticleThe Suffering Body Problem
As a millennial, what was I to do when I got COVID but announce it on the internet? I was miserably ill with the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus. I ran the typical fever, had the characteristic...
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As we write this, our daughter, Caitlin, is ill. We don’t know the severity of today’s illness. It might pass in hours, or be the first sign of a near-future hospitalization. Caitlin’s Aicardi syndrome...
View ArticleThe Pregnant Body Problem
“They forced you to have kids?” the man asked. “One of them surprised me,” she said. “It made me pregnant, then told me about it. Said it was giving me what I wanted but would never come out and ask...
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This was a rough month for the Thomases. After quite a few careful visits with friends and loved ones, Michael’s luck finally ran out, and he came down with COVID. Thanks to vaccines, boosters, and...
View ArticleThe Fat Body Problem
“I do play all the characters, when I write them, one after another. If they actually had to film me, the only one I could play would be Samwell Tarly or Hot Pie.” — George R. R. Martin “It was...
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We’re writing this editorial in room 2139 at Lurie Children’s hospital. This is day 50 of our daughter Caitlin’s current hospitalization (day 60 since July 27). She was supposed to be discharged last...
View ArticleThe Horny Body Problem
Short stories are a lot like sex. There are only so many variations of what you can do, writer tops reader, reader comes hungry to bottom. But every angle seems inventive, every person brings their own...
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