If you haven’t already submitted your stories of imaginary acquaintances for consideration for I Didn’t Break the Lamp: Historical Accounts of Imaginary Acquaintances, time is running out! Our submission period ends at midnight Pacific time on Sunday, March 31st, which is just 10 days from now.
You can find out how and what to submit here!
The Traveling Triple-C Incorporeal Circus (Atthis Arts, LLC, 2019) by Alanna McFall is the story of a road trip unlike any other road trip you’ve ever experienced. As two ghosts and a mute woman who can communicate with ghosts travel from New York City to San Francisco, they learn about each other and themselves, all while dealing with other ghosts and the darker side of the spirit realm.
Chelsea was looking forward to her brother’s wedding before she died, and her desire to see him married continues with her into the afterlife. Since she can’t take conventional transportation as a ghost (which is cleverly explained within the novel), she decided to walk across the country to be there, even if her brother and her family won’t realize she’s there. Her friends, Carmen and Cyndricka, don’t want her to go alone, so they make the walk with her–Carmen as her mentor, and Cyndricka so she can visit family in Reno.
What follows is a rollercoaster of friendship and peril, bonding and the unknown. As the three women make their way across the country, each of them changes and grows, perhaps none more than the protagonist, Chelsea. Their adventures will keep you reading more than you might have planned in a single sitting, so be forewarned!
A clever juxtaposition of the absurd and the everyday, The Traveling Triple-C Incorporeal Circus by Alanna McFall will take you from laughter to the verge of tears and have you rooting for her incredible and unconventional heroines all along the way. This book will be available on June 4, 2019, and you can pre-order it now!
The publisher provided us with a free copy of this novel in exchange for review consideration.
Public domain (http://www.public-domain-image.com/public-domain-images-pictures-free-stock-photos/nature-landscapes-public-domain-images-pictures/winter-public-domain-images-pictures/rough-sea-ice-at-sunset.jpg)
The Regeneron Science Talent Search is an opportunity for high school students to present their original scientific research and win awards based on that research. Winners of the annual competition were announced last week, and included a mathematical model to locate exoplanets, analysis of the genetic makeup of HIV patients resistant to anti-retroviral treatments, and work related to an unsolvable math problem.
But the talent search also poses questions to their finalists, and this year those questions included what the finalists proposed as solutions to climate change. The suggestions were widely varied, reflecting the unique scientific approaches of the various young scientists queried. You can read more about the answers in this article at Science News for Students.
A case study by Goire Zatla, as provided by Soramimi Hanarejima
Art by Ariel Alian Wilson
Keeping this secret from you has become so taxing that I have to use the venom of sleep bugs to tame the eagerness to divulge it.
In the mornings, I apply this toxin to the region of my memory where the secret resides. A little dab of it spreads easily from my fingertip across that part of my mind, cool and thick, greasy until it dries to leave only a minty, vaporous sensation. It’s marvelously effective. This insect secretion from the local apothecary preemptively soothes the itch, which will otherwise inevitably flare up by the middle of breakfast, and the relief it provides lasts well into the evening. After a few days of performing this practice, it is assimilated into my morning bathroom routine, tucked cozily between washing my face and brushing my teeth. Like I’ve been doing this for years.
But after a week, I find that this use of sleep bug venom does have at least one side effect. It is numbing me to beauty. When I see a meteor shower or moonbow or quadrilateral triangle or northern pygmy owl, I merely note it as an exceptional phenomenon. No longer am I enthralled by that sense of ethereal, transient joy.
While this is concerning, the numbness to beauty does present one benefit: I will be able to converse with Qalixy without being in awe of her gorgeous personality.
So I arrange to meet her in conference room R, to provide critical, candid project feedback with a state of mind undistracted by her psychological splendor.
And indeed, within minutes of sitting down at the conference table, I’ve delivered all my comments on her work with pithy honesty. This leaves her plenty of time to ask follow-up questions, most of which are concerned with my emotional responses to key facets of her project, particularly metaphor repurposing and thought nucleation catalysis.
“But how does that make you feel?” she keeps asking.
That won’t do at all. Beauty is a deep part of all this. I can’t believe you’ve been missing out on that.
To read the rest of this story, check out the Mad Scientist Journal: Winter 2019 collection.
Having forsaken aspirations to join the intelligentsia, Goire Zatla is a metaphysiologist whose research focuses on memory, emotion, and consciousness. Goire’s recent studies have examined the properties possessed by a shard of shattered attention and responses to immoderate chronesthesia.
Soramimi Hanarejima is a writer of innovative fiction and the author of Visits to the Confabulatorium, a fanciful story collection that Jack Cheng said “captures moonlight in Ziploc bags.” Soramimi’s recent work has appeared in various literary magazines, including Panoply, Pulp Literature, and The Absurdist.
Ariel Alian Wilson is a few things: artist, writer, gamer, and role-player. Having dabbled in a few different art mediums, Ariel has been drawing since she was small, having always held a passion for it. She’s always juggling numerous projects. She currently lives in Seattle with her cat, Persephone. You can find doodles, sketches, and more at her blog www.winndycakesart.tumblr.com.
“Handling the Contents of Consciousness” is © 2018 Soramimi Hanarejima
Art accompanying story is © 2018 Ariel Alian Wilson
Public domain (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grapes05.jpg)
Grapes are pretty cool because they make wine, but did you know that they will also explode if you put them in the microwave (which does not make wine)?
If you put even two grapes in the microwave, or a single grape that’s been cut in half, but with the skin still attaching the halves, you can see this phenomenon. It’s not entirely recommended to try it at home–causing sparks in your microwave from any source can be dangerous–but you can find YouTube videos where other folks have tried this experiment.
What was lacking from the YouTube experiments, however, was an understanding of why grapes cause sparks when microwaved. Physicists have recently figured this out. It’s a combination of the grapes size and shape, along with the water inside. These details match up with the length of microwaves’ wavelengths, causing the sparks (or combustion, in some cases). Scientists have recreated this phenomenon with other small spheres, including quail eggs, grape tomatoes, and large blueberries, among other things.
What application this has to science remains to be determined, but researchers believe that it could assist in the field of nanophotonics, or for wireless antennas and microwave imaging.
You can read more about this here!
Public domain (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ball_lightning.png)
If you enjoyed our tale of weird necromancy on Monday, here are a few more stories from the MSJ archives you might also enjoy!
“Deddville” by Nicole Tanquary (a town populated by the dead, and one living man)
“There Will Be No Encore” by Darren Ridgley (a reanimated performer unraveling the secrets of his unlife) (available in Winter 2018)
“An Atheist’s Guide to the Afterlife” by J. R. Hampton (how to survive in an afterlife you might not believe in) (available in Autumn 2016)
“The Infernal Bones of Canaan, Mississippi” by Elizabeth S. Berger (talking bones and magic) (available in Spring 2016)
Today, we’re talking with one of our MSJ alum, Alanna McFall, who has her first full-length book, The Travelling Triple-C Incorporeal Circus, due out in June 2019.
DV: Tell us a bit about yourself!
Alanna McFall: My name is Alanna McFall and I’m a writer based out of the Bay Area in California. I’m originally from Minnesota, but I’ve spent the last handful of years bouncing back and forth between the coasts. I’ve been publishing short stories and ten-minute plays for a while now (including a few with Mad Scientist Journal, mostly about some bedraggled minions working under an evil overlord), but this is my first full-length novel. I spend most of my non-writing time working as an administrator at a circus theater in Oakland, and visiting my fiance Andrea who lives up in British Columbia.
DV: What inspired you to write The Travelling Triple-C Incorporeal Circus?
AM: This is going to sound ridiculous, but a random prompt generator, actually. I was coming up with what I wanted to write for National Novel Writing Month in 2014 (an online writing competition where people try to write 50,000 words in the month of November) and no ideas were really sticking. I clicked through a prompt generator a few times mostly as a writing exercise, and ended up with something about ghosts and road trips. I had already been toying with the idea of a story about mimes, and somehow the two got combined in my head. I sprinted through the first draft for that year’s Nano, then spent the next very long while sorting it out into something coherent.
DV: This book has a main character but several other very significant characters in the cast as well. Which of the characters in The Travelling Triple-C Incorporeal Circus did you find the easiest to write? And which one was the most difficult?
AM: Out of the main trio, I probably found Chelsea, the point-of-view character, the easiest to write, as I got to spend so much time in her head that writing her voice came across as very natural to me after a while. She is also probably the character who is most similar to me in attitude. If we expand it out past the main group, one of the ghosts they meet along the way named Jamie ended up being my favorite to write, as she probably has the most of my personal style and mannerisms.
The trickiest for me to write was Carmen, the woman serving as a sort of ghostly mentor to Chelsea. She is probably the most different from myself, and I wanted to find good ways to make her an occasional obstacle without being deliberately obstructive. She can be very stubborn about how things “should” be done, but I wanted to make it clear that it comes from a place of concern and love.
DV: The ghosts you present come from a variety of backgrounds and cultures. Were there any particular mythologies or belief structures that colored the way you portrayed ghosts? Are there specific sorts of people in your novel’s world that either don’t become ghosts or always become ghosts?
AM: I didn’t so much base my ghosts around specific mythologies as much as I picked and chose what tropes and ideas I wanted to include, for what fit best with the story I wanted to tell. But the core idea I kept coming back to is that these ghosts are the echoes of incredibly strong emotions that were felt at the moment of their deaths. They felt so much as they were dying that their soul/being/essence/what-have-you couldn’t just end when their bodies did. For someone like Chelsea, who dies in a random accident, that could be shock. For someone like Carmen, who dies by violence, that could be anger or fear.
But beyond just emotion, there has to be a sense that there is something central in their lives that they have not completed yet, the classic “unfinished business”. These ghosts are largely powered by emotion and drive, which becomes incredibly frustrating for them when they don’t have any ways to influence the world around them with that motivation. Being a ghost is inherently unsatisfying, because as soon as you’re satisfied, you have no more reason to be a ghost.
DV: What’s on the horizon for you?
AM: I have actually been working on playwriting a lot in the past year, which is continuing forward. I am a part of the Writer’s Pool for the Monday Night PlayGround program in Berkeley; every month, the members of the pool are given a prompt and four days to write a ten-minute play, and the best six of those scripts are given a staged reading on the first Monday of the month. I have found I thrive with prompts and quick deadlines, so I have had a lot of fun writing some truly wild stuff. My latest piece was a ten-minute jukebox musical using a Cyndi Lauper song, so the program has definitely pushed me to some fun places I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.
One of my short plays from last season, “Sh*t Farming for Fun and Profit”, was commissioned to be expanded into a full-length play through the Planet Earth Arts program, so with the book finished up, I am having time to dig into that. It is a story about a family composed of a farmer, an environmental scientist, and their two children, and how they navigate their different causes and relationships. I am hoping to get working on another novel soon, but some time to toy around with shorter ideas again will be lovely.
Thanks, Alanna! To learn more about The Travelling Triple-C Incorporeal Circus, check out the Atthis Arts website. Also check back next week, when we’ll have a review of this book!
Emerald City Comic Con, also known as ECCC, is an enormous convention in Seattle, and although Mad Scientist Journal will not have an official presence there, MSJ Editorial Assistant and alumni Amanda Cherry will be a panelist at this convention. You can find her full schedule on the convention website. Assistant Editor Dawn Vogel will also be attending the convention, though she might be a little more difficult to track down, as she’s not a panelist. She will, however, be attending some of the writing panels throughout the weekend.
Tickets for ECCC are pretty hard to come by at this point, but if you were already planning to be there, you can hear what Amanda has to say about Star Wars, writing consent, and more! See you there between March 14th and 17th, 2019!
An essay by an anonymous narrator, as provided by Ron Riekki
Art by Leigh Legler
As an EMT, we routinely come upon body parts. A finger gets severed by a pair of pliers. A toe gets cut off by an escalator. A leg gets ex-ed off in a sawing accident. An arm just decides to leap off a body. I don’t know how it happens. I just know that I end up with body parts. What good are they? With living people, I always return them. But if they’re dead, a toe can slip into a pocket. An arm can get covered by some bushes on the side of the road and be returned to later.
What did I start doing with the pieces? I’d read Frankenstein. You have to. Don’t tell me you haven’t. “He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.” It’s my favorite ending line. It made me want the story to continue. I wanted to step into the darkness and distance and find out what was there. I wanted my own monster.
I started assembling the parts in my basement. It was beautiful seeing a body slowly coming together. I was patient too. You have to earn a body. You can’t just steal one like a nineteenth-century medical body snatcher, digging up graves for medical school anatomy lectures. There’s no skill to that. You just need a shovel and a lantern. What I was doing was the equivalent of cultivating a garden. This wasn’t speed and power. This was the slow, steady dedication of science. When I came upon a wonderful ring finger, it made me feel warm with the realization of just how married I was to physiology. Ring fingers are golden and gorgeous and so rare in amputations. The middle finger, I found, was so common that I just ignored them. It would be flopped boringly in–appropriately–the middle of the room, flipping the bird at the world even in death and I would, honestly, sometimes, flip it off right back, continuing my search for something more valuable. And there were so many tips of fingers. It felt like finding a diamond when a finger was intact, separated beautifully from the rest of the world, waiting for me to cradle it in my palm.
It took me years to get a complete arm with hand and fingers. Seven different patients. A rainbow of rigor mortis.
It took me years to get a complete arm with hand and fingers. Seven different patients. A rainbow of rigor mortis.
To read the rest of this story, check out the Mad Scientist Journal: Winter 2019 collection.
The unnamed narrator of the aforementioned account wishes to remain unnamed. He is currently doing a twenty-six-year sentence in Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Bay State Prison, a Supermax prison in central Rhode Island. While imprisoned, he has been thoroughly rereading the works of Nina Kulagina, Uri Geller, and Stanislawa Tomczyk, and is convinced he should be able to escape by bending metal bars by late June of next year.
Ron Riekki’s books include And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017 (Michigan State University Press), Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (Michigan State University Press, 2016 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal Great Lakes Best Regional Fiction), The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (Wayne State University Press, 2014 Michigan Notable Book awarded by the Library of Michigan), and U.P.: a novel (Ghost Road Press).
Leigh’s professional title is “illustrator,” but that’s just a nice word for “monster-maker,” in this case. More information about them can be found at http://leighlegler.carbonmade.com/.
“Or, The Modern Levitation of Frankenstein” is © 2018 Ron Riekki
Art accompanying story is © 2018 Leigh Legler
Amateur and professional astronomers alike got an exciting treat during January’s blood moon–a meteor impacted the surface of the moon while all eyes were on the skies.
While scientists say that meteors of the size observe strike the moon about once a week, seeing one during the blood moon marks a novel occasion. Never before have scientists recorded a meteor striking the moon during a lunar eclipse.
At this point, scientists are looking forward to being able to see the crater that this meteor created when it struck the moon, which provides data on the impact of meteors both on the moon and on Earth.
You can read more about this cool occurrence here!
