Hi, you. We started this relationship on the day I was born. I was given the birthright of your skyscrapers, your bridges, your busy streets and your sleepless nights. We left you behind when I was very small, but the pull of the City that Never Sleeps just kept dragging me back, until I was […]
Urbana is yo-yoing between normal winter and the new creepy warmth of climate change. Caitlin remains home, healthy (barring a cold), and back to school, but the Uncanny Thomases remain fairly stressed out as we recover from the medical nightmares, search for a new house, and get caught up in all of the national and […]
Places are imbued with genre. The ways in which we experience space, time, geography, and adventure are influenced by what media we read and consume. For the next year at Uncanny I’ll be doing meditations on place and genre. Sometimes it will be about real places, sometimes about the places we imagine and how we […]
We didn’t expect to be writing this editorial at home. We really thought this would be composed at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. As many of you know, our daughter, Caitlin, has been very ill over the last two months. She was hospitalized for 34 out of 38 total days in that period with a […]
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 […]