GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 5

Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine #5

by Kaolin Fire (Editor), Alicia Adams, Kevin Brown

Issue 5 wraps a scientific core with GUD's most eclectic selection to date—including two mini graphic novels and a script that will have you bubbling over with mirth.

It opens with Rose Lemberg's "Imperfect Verse", a tale of poetry, deception, and warring gods; then spans the years to Andrew N. Tisbert's "Getting Yourself On", which sees mankind taken to the stars but suffering new forms of wage-slavery.

There's science fiction that stretches to the fantastic, science that once stretched the fantastic and has now become brilliantly pervasive, and dollops of science in otherwise mundane lives (see "The Prettiest Crayon in the Box").

Of course, it's got fantasy, psychological horror, humor, and drama; poetry serious, sublime, and satirical; and art that stretches from the real, to the surreal, to the violently semi-abstract.

Comprising:

Stories

Imperfect Verse by Rose Lemberg;
Nature's Children by T. F. Davenport;
Lost Lying on Your Back by Steven J Dines;
Aftermath by Isabel Cooper Kunkle;
Fletcher's Lunch by Jason Hardy;
The Tiger Man by Geordie Williams Flantz;
Getting Yourself On by Andrew N Tisbert;
Birthday Licks by Kevin Brown;
The Pearl Diver with the Gold Chain by Paul Hogan;
Liza's Home by Kenneth Schneyer;
The Prettiest Crayon in the Box by Heather Lindsley.

Poetry

Suggestions for Distributing Your Poems by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming;
Deadman on the Titanic by Alicia Adams;
The Grammar of Desire by Paul J. Kocak;
desideratum by Zac Carter;
7 Ways to Fake an Orgasm by Melissa Carroll;
Hidden Things by Taras Castle;
Internal Combustion by Lucy A. Snyder.

Report

The Prophet of Menlo Park by Paul Spinrad.

Script

Sweet Melodrama by Tristan D'Agosta.

Art

Soul Searching by MichaelO (cover);
Tangible-2 (2004) by Jerry Goins;
Infrared 2 by Richard Kadrey;
Bust by Jon Radlett.

Comics

Ada Lovelace: The Origin! by Sydney Padua;
Gunga Din by Joseph Calabrese and Harsho Mohan Chattoraj.

200 pages, Paperback

First published February 5, 2010

About the author

Kaolin Fire is a conglomeration of ideas, side projects, and experiments. He loves to program in c, php, jsp; talk in the third person; write fiction; and teach. He supports himself by way of his partnership in a web development firm, and dabbles in doing the odd e-book cover for Renaissance eBooks, and teaching at a community college. Kaolin is especially interested in trends of technology, ritual, consciousness, dreaming, artificial intelligence, the nature of intelligence, the meaning of life, reincarnation, religion, and programming (of all sorts). He's Editor-in-Chief of GUD Magazine and instigated Issue 0. He's had short fiction published in Strange Horizons, Right Hand Pointing, and Tuesday Shorts, among others. A more complete bio and publication credits can be found on his personal website.

Reviews

[Haralambi Markov · Rating 5 out of 5]

GUD delivers what it promises. In this issue I discovered stories the type of which I’m not sure I could have read in most venues, while at the same time I didn’t encounter either weak or badly written pieces. The magazine is genre ambiguous as it hosted both excellent SFF shorts as well as strong and emotional literary pieces.

Review: http://templelibraryreviews.blogspot....

[Sabrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unfortunately, my hard drive decided to devour the pdfs before I had a chance to finish reading it, but I remember liking what I had read.... GUD seems to publish stories that cross and recross the boundaries between genre and literary, which makes it one of the most engaging magazines out there. And it helps that it has some of the best cover art going.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the editorial staff, I think I have the widest range of reactions to the pieces Kaolin picks; some I love, and some I hate. Among the ones I love: Fiction by Lemberg, Davenport, Kunkle, Flantz, and Lindsley; poetry by Ho, Carter, and Snyder; Lovelace comic by Padua; and the cover is awesome.