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About this title: Version: In issue No. 2, for December 2018: Part 1 of the sci-fi novella Non-Retrieval. The main feature is followed by five recently written short stories, in a range of genres, with three directly inspired by notes from the Story Starters archive. Articles include the revealing How I Became My Female Characters, and for the upcoming holiday, Have A Merry, Pagan Christmas! Rating: HIGH controversy.
 
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They say that a good opening sentence has to grip the reader into reading more of the story. Here are the opening sentences from each of the stories in the magazine. Tell me, do they provoke you to want to read on?
 
Like a plague they descended, dropping into the midst of the unprepared and frightened soldiers as dozens of bouncing, pummeling cannonballs. - Roaches
 
Once I’d rotated the co-pilot’s chair by one hundred and eighty degrees, I scanned across the innards of the Unilink Space Transport, designated number One-Twenty-Six. - Non-Retrieval
 
“Unit XY, Series three dash three four three, you are ready for guest services.” - Unit Four-Three
 
Transformation must begin somewhere, that’s what I say. - Changeling
 
Once upon a time down at Old Miriam’s Well... - The Old Hag’s Tales 7
 
You ever seen a goddamned butterfly weaving its way through a flower garden? - Pickle For Hire
 
“Once, I saw a shaman suck a man’s soul out of his body, just by waving a piece of licorice in front of his face.” - Gordon’s Soul Takes A Trip
 
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A short excerpt from the leading story Non-Retrieval:
 
Once I’d rotated the co-pilot’s chair by one hundred and eighty degrees, I scanned across the innards of the Unilink Space Transport, designated number One-Twenty-Six. The Space Marines were filing in through the small vessel’s hatch, some impatient, others somber, all rarely speaking. In their usual, professional manner they filled in the seats starting from the furthest back and moving forward. The seating consisted of two short, gray metal benches running along either side of the transport, with heavy-duty black nylon seat straps for each occupant, and an overhead spot for them to snap their weapons into.

Dutifully, each of the hard-nosed soldiers secured the weapons into their spots, in this case the newer Spitfire v7 plasma rifles, before removing their helmets and laying them on their laps. They reached to their sides, bringing up the adjustable ends of their security belts. With a loud snap, they clicked their belts locked.

Space Infantry, Space Marines, their cammies and weapons I’d seen many times before, perhaps too many times already, during the ongoing campaign against the nefarious Roaches. On this particular mission, however, it was the bizarre coloration of their uniforms that held my attention. The squad of twelve, plus their fearsome and well-known commanding officer, were all wearing standard issue, camouflage pattern fatigues. In contrast to the tan or green shades I was used to seeing, however, the articles of clothing before me had been dyed in an uncommon combination of gray and black.

The outside of our vessel had undergone a similar metamorphosis, with the addition of an even more bizarre color, dark purple. The lower parts of the ship were painted in an irregular black pattern to represent grass, the middle and top half in various shades of the same gray and black as the soldier’s cammies, and the very top had purple streaks on the roof and upper edges to mimic hanging leaves. Even with the quick-dry techniques the Space Corps contractors had used, we’d still been waiting a few hours for the paint to dry.

Upon viewing the odd hues for the first time, the ship’s Senior Spaceman, Royce Tennard, immediately and affectionately nicknamed the vessel the ‘Purple Haze.’ He said he’d named it after some obscure twentieth century rock music, but I’d never heard of the song personally. Who the hell was Jimmy Hendricks, anyway?

With both the Marines and the Unilink Transport so curiously disguised, I thought that the landscape of our target planet, Lesenia, must be a very strange one indeed.

“I hope we run into some o’ them black devils.” One young ebony soldier beamed. I immediately thought of the term B.A.M., or Broad Ass Marine, that I’d heard somewhere or other. The woman aimed an invisible weapon across the transport and slowly squeezed its trigger. “Boo-yeah!”

On the opposite bench, a freckled blond man pretended he’d been shot. He grabbed at his heart, closed his eyes and lolled his head to one side. As a final gesture of his fatality, he stuck his tongue out. This man’s name was Finn, I would come to find out very shortly.

“I hear that.” The heavy shouldered Marine sitting next to the black woman nodded. “Some filthy Roaches are about to get themselves served!”

“Are you finished sightseeing, Douglas?” An impatient voice grated at my ears. I swiveled my seat around to face the front of the ship. I turned my head toward the Senior Spaceman’s chair, where the pudgy pilot was seated and giving me an irritated look.

Tennard leaned in close, since the cockpit was of open design and sound carried well against the mainly metal interior of the transport. He was near enough for me to get a good look at his balding brown hair, thick brown mustache and fleshy jowls. “Just listen to those turkeys. They actually think we’re going to see some action on this trip. So Lesenia hasn’t communicated with CP-1 (Command Post One) in thirty-six Earth hours, big fucking deal. Things like that happen all the time at these new outposts.

“CP-1 panics every time and they send in the cavalry, and all for what? We go halfway across the universe to an outpost in butt-fuck Egypt, only to find that some relay burned out or that they need to realign their satellites one more time. Then we get to stand by and watch as the outpost reboots its computer system and voila! The problem is solved. Try explaining that scenario to Renquist’s lynch mob. You’d think they all jerk off to their rifles, except for that dark-skinned woman. I bet she uses her rifle as a dildo.”

As if on cue, the stern voice of Staff Sergeant James Renquist cracked through the vessel’s bowels like a hard whip. “Davis, Knotts, secure your traps.”

“Yes, Staff Sergeant.” The two Marines complied. “Oorah!”

The grim-looking man slammed the transport’s hatch shut, hard enough that I winced even though I saw it coming. Next, he pressed the small control pad that would secure the hatch and give it an airtight seal.

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About this title: In issue No. 1, for November 2018: Three short stories from the recently released science fiction collection Variant Worlds 2, and an excerpt of over 30 pages from upcoming release Rothschild Apocalypse. Articles include the candid How I Became My Male Characters, and Space-Based Starships And Colonies to give budding writers a good grounding on the basics. Rating: EXTREME controversy.
 
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They say that a good opening sentence has to grip the reader into reading more of the story. Here are the opening sentences from each of the stories in the magazine. Tell me, do they provoke you to want to read on?
 
There are places that not even god can reach. - Asteroid QQ37, Part 1
 
Harry Paxton had tits. - The Anomaly Of Object AA
 
Things were going well in Hydroponics Division, Lender thought. - Asteroid QQ37, Part 2
 
Every story has a beginning. - Rothschild Apocalypse
 
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A short excerpt from the leading story Asteroid QQ37, Part 1:
 
There are places that not even god can reach.

Asteroid QQ37 was one of those places. Men with severe prison sentences were taken there to mine, because capital punishment had long since been abolished on the civilized worlds. That’s what they said, anyway, but everyone knew it wasn’t true. The elites that ran the Federation Of Planets used every excuse they could think of to murder their constituents. The elites killed the masses through the food they consumed, the water they drank and with the radiation they sprayed into the skies. Autism, cancer and other induced maladies were running rampant all over the colonized worlds. The masses were too stupid, as always, to comprehend how they were being systematically weakened.

Lender wasn’t among the stupid ones. Lender figured things out and he was vocal about it. That’s how he got his prison sentence. After appearing in one too many protests and posting one too many links to real evidence online, the elite cleansing program targeted him. A hit squad broke into his home to murder his wife and two children, and to plant incriminating files onto his computer. The operatives branded him a murderer and a conspirator. They made up their ‘official story’ that he was trying to overthrow the government. They invented that he was part of a plot to assassinate the president, who was on her third clone by then after previous successful attempts on her life. Nobody knew that, by the way, except for those like Lender that used advanced facial recognition programs to study down to the pores of the president’s face. That bitch had been killed twice and reproduced by the elites, while the public couldn’t be bothered to see that her irises had a synthetic pattern in them. It was obvious to anyone who cared to look.

Len hated religion, as he knew how religious leaders manipulated belief and faith to control the masses. If someone had told him a few years ago that he would one day turn into a religious man, Len would have laughed in their faces. He’d been indoctrinated into Chrislam, of course, like so many others before him, and been taught to bow toward the rising sun of the east every morning. That had only lasted as far as Len’s teenage years, until he discovered that the leaders of the colonized worlds had years before conspired to merge the great religions into one, and that many other diverse religions had existed before the advent of Chrislam.

A new religion, a secret religion, was spreading among the many miners like him whom had lost their hope. Their new god had a name, but the deity’s worshippers kept that name out of their minds as much as they could. The new god had horns and carried a flaming sword in one hand and a book of law in the other. This was a god of vengeance first, of strict holy cleansing and the wiping out of corruption. He would become a god of purity and light only after the cancer of the galactic elite was excised and burned away. In the interim, the god’s flaming sword would swing with fury. The reason Len and others who followed this deity kept their religion out of their brains was because the wardens continually ran mind scans on their prisoners. Too many restricted thoughts would get a miner taken to Interrogation, and that was not a good place for any man to end up. Many times, those men would not come back.

Before the mining sentence, Len had not been a religious man. He hadn’t been a homosexual man either. After getting raped in dark places one time too many by roving bands of desperate men, he had no choice but to adapt to his new circumstances. Len searched out who the political dissidents in the mining colony were, the Truthers like him. He found an Asian man who was nearly as tall as he was, another loner being abused in the same way, and just as strong. He beat that man and raped him, and he made the man watch over Len’s cot as he slept, and to follow him around when he had to go into dark places.

The man’s name was Kyu. He was from New Korea, some new country that was established on one of Saturn’s moons, but Len always forgot which moon. After having enough of being raped, Kyu waited until Len was fast asleep. He beat Len senseless with his shoe and returned the favor. When Kyu was done, he demanded to be treated like a man and not like a slave. By then, both men had gotten accustomed to being near one another. Neither wanted to walk dark corridors alone where bands of men might find them. They become lovers. Kyu no longer sat on the floor while Len slept; now they slept on the same cot. If violence came their way, they stood by each other’s side and faced it together.