Hugo the Uncanny Cat has become extra cuddly, so it’s clearly autumn. Finally, the air is crisp, pumpkin spice laces everything, and skeletons and Christmas lights battle for boxstore shelf supremacy. This is our favorite time of year. Except for our leaf-mold allergies. Those are fucking terrible. In other November traditions, here’s the first issue […]
So here we are, Space Unicorns. After five years, 31 issues, and countless essays, my time as part of Uncanny’s editorial staff has come to an end. The previous issue, Issue 30/Disabled People Destroy Fantasy!, was my last issue as Managing Editor, and this issue in your hands contains the last five essays I had […]
I’m honored to have been your nonfiction editor for Disabled People Destroy Fantasy. Ridiculously honored. Honored and gobsmacked. Honor-smacked. The Destroy series has come to mean something deeply important and deeply specific to our community of storytellers and story-appreciators. For many of us, the success of Destroy represents a kind of fulcrum. It’s the smash […]
We begin with an injunction, an order: “Resist / feeding serpents your stories.” Serpents expect the performative, we are warned; they prize shiny illusions over truth. But we are survivors, and we have not survived by accepting limits. So, sly, we speak aslant. We speak of whales and horses. We seduce would-be censors with “world-tree […]
The Thomases are on a busman’s holiday, but this should be short and sweet. In an undisclosed home in the woods, it’s a gorgeous summer morning. Birdsong and insects provide a score to a lush green morning after a rainfall. Caitlin is watching us work after spending a day playing with animals and friends. All […]
Transformation is at the heart of the fantasy genre. Unassuming shire-dwellers become heroes; humans turn into animals, or animals into humans; ordinary elements become the materials for magic, and ordinary words the ingredients for powerful spells. Transformation, too, is often at the core of the disabled experience. All bodies are in flux, all of the […]
Resilience. Last February, the Thomas family took their first true vacation in nine years. We spent a lovely week at Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood with dear friends before attending the Gallifrey One Doctor Who/Babylon 5 convention as fans. (We started as fans, and it is always good to reconnect with that.) The last time […]
As we write this, Lynne and I are celebrating the 20th anniversary of us becoming a couple. Our beginning is a ridiculous and tumultuous tale of two overwrought 20-somethings filled with passion and dreams, falling in love with each other when they probably should have known better. It started right here in Urbana, Illinois, with […]
We are writing this on the fifth anniversary of our daughter Caitlin dying and being resuscitated during surgery. Winds howl, making it feel well below zero. A sheet of ice covers Central Illinois. Spring feels a million years away. We opened our first editorial of our new magazine, Uncanny, talking about how Caitlin’s frightening surgery […]
Happy New Year! We made it to 2019! Somebody shook the Champaign-Urbana snowglobe. Wet whiteness drapes the campus trees as we write this in Espresso Royale—the coffeehouse where we’ve been writing things since Nirvana and REM ruled the radio charts. And people listened to radio. And knew what charts were. The Thomases have been taking […]