Status Updates From Grimdark Magazine, Issue 40...

Lawrence’s “Jorg” story was an exciting and brutal return to the Broken Earth saga, and I’m quite digging Ben Galley’s entry so far. This is a for sure cover-to-cover read.

John Mauro’s article on material sciences in dark science fiction is excellent stuff

Rage would have steered my actions more certainly than alcohol fuels the drunkard’s choices. And that fury would have overridden any finer feelings.

Now, strangely, it’s sorrow that overwrites my emotions.

"I never got to grow old. I may have died as a father and an emperor, but I was still a child, and I hadn’t the time to understand either station. Many say that none of us have the years required to truly understand what it is to be a father, but that I would have liked to find out for myself."

I am never delighted but it feels wickedly satisfying to listen to Prince Honorous Jorg Ancarth after so many years.

I don’t say, but perhaps I should, that the price for something you want desperately, but should not have, is always red.

Grimdark survives in the hands of the reader and the writer who sees the beauty in the struggle to keep hope alive. Hope is not a clean thing; it’s hard as nails and covered in blood and wrenched from iron-hard grip of despair. And if we have to get ugly to keep hope in our grasp? So be it.
Long live the desperate hope of those of us deemed obscene.
Long live grimdark