Del Sol SFF Review

     I am Cabot. My ward is eight-year-old Benny Lanz, orphaned during the recent coastal retreat of the continents. His parents, cybernetic engineers Dr. Emilio Lanz and Dr. Patricia Bosworth, were washed away into the Atlantic Ocean after the third tsunami of 2090. They left the infant Benny in my care. As Dr. Lanz and Dr. Bosworth had no extended families — all had perished in the pandemic of 2062 — legal and administrative authorities had no choice but to relinquish care of the boy to me, as instructed in their respective wills. I was fully equipped to raise, educate, and yes, protect Benny Lanz for the duration of his life, unless he specifically — upon attaining adult status — released me from my contractual obligations, in which case I would be decommissioned, something that did not concern me one way or the other. I was not the first one tasked to raise an orphaned child. Indeed it had become all too commonplace, given the environmental and societal upheavals of t...

Griffin Jackson sat in a metal chair, at a metal table, in a metal room. That was the limit of his knowledge on the subject of location. A metal door opened and a short man in a dark suit entered. “Good morning, Mr. Jackson. I’m Smith, with the UN agency for Cygnoid affairs. How are you today?” “I’m apparently incarcerated today, Mr. Smith. How are you?” “Funny. They told me you were funny.” “Who told you?” “The Cygnoids. We’re in one of their ships, in orbit.” “Really? Is there a window?” “This is a serious situation, Mr. Jackson, there are diplomatic issues.”  “Call me Griff, everyone calls me Griff. Now, how about getting me out of here.” “That is not going to happen right now, Griff. I’m here to take your statement.” “Regarding?” “Regarding the events that led to your detention.” “You’re going to have to help me out, Mr. Smith. I don’t know why I’m here.” “I’ll start then,” said Smith. “You are the manager of the Pennock Farmers Market?” “Yes, for the past eight years.” “Tell m...

I tell myself that I've tried to be patient, and, in my defense, I've waited a full ten minutes before grabbing the remote. That's ten minutes of hearing howling, growling, and things getting knocked over in the alley while I'm just trying to unwind with some Stranger Things. The problem is that if I jack up the volume too much in the talking scenes, then as soon as the action scenes start, the neighbor on my left is going to start pounding on our shared wall. Never mind that there's two werewolves screwing in the alley behind our building, somehow my TV is the problem in his eyes. Or ears, I guess.        We all have to live with the werewolves when it's just a couple. If it was a pack of five or more then we could call the patrol, but with the cost of silver bullets and the volume of paperwork, they won't come out for just a pair of werewolves, even if the pair has been screwing loudly in a residential area. And the cops won't come because of jurisdict...

INVITE JOY TO ENTER YOU . There's a town in your mind and you can see it clearly. It has a general store seemingly cobbled from lumberyard scraps that sells old clocks and porcelain dolls alongside cooking essentials. A candle shop fills its surrounding street with sweet scents of every nature and preference. A cafe nearby has had the same reliable menu since the day it opened, although the owner is constantly being replaced with a new one. There are homes there, many of them increasingly empty, all slowly cradling into one another, and a few new condos spattered about as realty companies remotely envision glitzy ghost towns of the near tomorrow. Taken as a whole, the town feels displaced from another era, perfectly suited for the lost to find themselves. The people there are happy.      My brain is an oil spill of wooziness. A room with poor lighting fights to enter my awareness. I must force myself to shackle together some sort of linear timeline if I want thi...