All Worlds Wayfarer: Issue 2

by Rowan Rook (Editor), Geri Meyers (Editor), Sharon Frame Gay

Explore Evocative Imagined Realities

All Worlds Wayfarer is a quarterly literary magazine specializing in character-and-theme-driven speculative fiction. We celebrate stories that take readers on tours through wonderful and terrifying realms, evocative visions, and eye-opening new lives. When our readers come home, they should return ever so slightly changed for having made the journey. After all, the most powerful stories transcend, enlighten, and entertain at once.

“Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” -Plato

Our autumnal equinox 2019 issue includes 12 stories spanning the speculative fiction spectrum:

The Lighthouse by Sharon Frame Gay
"She returned to bed before dawn, smelling of the sea, her body slipping next to mine when the sparrows began to sing."

Not Locks but Keys by Michael Walker
"He played the poem over in his mind. In the small, floating part of his mind that still belonged to him."

The Melodic Travels of a Man Selling Lives by Dennis Mombauer
"The countdown began, the shell enveloped Marcus—and all of a sudden, softly and without warning, he heard the music again, the exact same melody, in the exact same moment before the entry into foldspace."

Muzi's Boon by Drema Deòraich
"The sight of villagers crowding her at every Flowering to beg selfish boons turned my stomach."

Players by Astra Crompton
"The itch in my code is excruciating now; a punishment for my disobedience but a price I am willing to pay."

I Wanted You to be Happy by Alexandra Grunberg
"The reason for the end of the world, was me."

A Fitting End by Tom Howard
"It would have been nice to have friends who existed outside of books, her only companions during her battle with DIPG."

The Waves by Lara Alonso Corona
"But you get used to all sorts of things. Like having the Old Town underwater."

Stowaway by John Visclosky
"She knew that Venus was not like Earth. On Venus, there was still work. It was a planet with a future, where even a girl from a dusty village could be whatever she wanted."

Reflections by Hugh McStay
"It was through the mirrors that the nightmares came."

A Cure for Spring by Larina Warnock
"'I wanted…' Carmyne gasped between every word. 'I wanted it to feel like the end of everything.'"

The Linear Concept of Time by C. S. Lytal
"'But maybe they can’t come back to us. Maybe we have to go to them,'” I say, thinking of the tunnel of darkness and stars."

Venture beyond the mundane with the best of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and magical realism.

Genres: Fiction

111 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 20, 2019

About the author

Rowan is an agender, asexual, and aromantic speculative fiction author and freelance editor. As a child, they dreamily dictated stories to adults and sat at their family's old typewriter, pounding at the keys to enjoy the sensation of them beneath their fingers. They've never lost that sense of wonder. Rowan aims to craft stories that evoke ideas, create experiences, and leave behind lingering emotions.

Aside from writing, they find joy in game design, heavy music, fiction podcasts, technology, and animals. They currently room with three cats and a collie dog, who keep them company during their daily battles with the blank page. As a night person, the majority of their novels emerge under moonlight. They write from a big, lakeside house on a rural island while dreaming of the city.

Reviews

[Chrystopher’s Archive]

I have a story in this!

[VT Dorchester · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am extremely slowly working my way through the All Worlds Wayfarer back catalogue.

I like the cover art on this issue!

There were two stories here which I found to be quite well done, while promoting ideas that on reflection (and in one case perhaps unintentionally) I find very negative.
Also, there was one content advisory that completely baffled me, suggesting I missed the subtext of a story completely.
And I just didn't "get" another story at all.

There was a story which was interesting, clever, a nice idea, but unfortunately with something just missing in it's execution for me, and another that got me craving zucchini bars for dessert.

Muzi's Boon by Dreama Deoraich stood out as an allegory done right, and although I don't want all my stories to be about cli-fi doom, Lara Alosno Corona's The Waves skirts along nicely between sorrow and hope in the space of catastrophe.
Hugh McStay's Reflections is imaginative, fascinating, well-paced... and unfortunately discards all subtlety part way through with the introduction of a one-dimensional neighbour character. Still, I'd be interested in reading more from this author.

(Perhaps the character's one-dimensionality has something to do with mirrors and reflections? Hmmm.)

I might save a few lines from a few stories to admire and perhaps recycle in my own work sometime.

Overall, this is a strongly written, if sometimes not-so-great themed collection. Perhaps by September I will have read volume 3 of AWW!