Samples

The Rag #2: No Control

Winter 2012
The Rag Winter 2012

The Rag, Winter 2012 Issue

Power & control. Who has it, who wants it, and who wants to lose it? This is the focus of many of the Winter 2012 selections. This is an era where our society’s innovations and technology, rather than imparting to us increasing freedom and control over our lives, instead exert increasing control over us. This theme is perhaps visualized the fullest in Garth von Buchholz’ sci-fi story “Make Mad the Roaring Winds,” which follows Darcy Lim, a human resources officer who’s wrapping up a very long commute–a 3-year journey to a colony on one of Jupiter’s moons. Trapped in his solitary space capsule on an immoveable trajectory towards its destination, Darcy’s fighting to gain a modicum of control over his life and destiny, and suicide or insanity have come to look like decent options.

“They can watch me, they can listen to me, they can read my writing and they can even monitor my bio functions, but they can’t read my thoughts. It’s the last dominion of human privacy, the limitless playground where anything can be formulated and anything can be materialized. And if your thoughts are wise enough, and strong enough, well, they can even begin to give you powers that no one knows you have.” — from “Make Mad the Roaring Winds” by Garth von Buchholz

With so many literary publications coming and going in today’s market, it’s hard to know which ones are worth your time, let alone your money. That’s why we’ve made available an entire issue of our magazine free of charge in an easy-to-download PDF. We stand by the quality of the work we publish, and we believe that most of the readers who will take the time to check out our sample issue will likely subscribe. So your first issue is on us.

Check out some video readings from the winter stories on YouTube. We have a video of Lynn Levin reading from You Take Care Now, Mary Jones and Dan Reilly reading from Timothy Ghorkin’s D-Gen.

Short Fiction

Zombie Night by Justin Reed
Make Mad the Roaring Winds by Garth von Buchholz
Kill Whitey by Wes Trexler
A Clash by Melissa Ragsly
Into the Light by C.R. Penn
D-Gen by Timothy Ghorkin
You Take Care Now, Mary Jones by Lynn Levin
The Leaves are Falling by Tony Zito

Poetry

Elkhart, Indiana and Coney Island in Limbo by Lisette Eileen Cheresson
Elegy for the Skid Row Men of Old Portland by Nathaniel Hunt
What to Expect by Sarah Bridgins

Featuring original art from Alex Eckman-Lawn and Veronica Chen. Cover art by David Rankin.

You may also like...