It's hard to believe, in the factory, how the satin feels and the diamonds gleam

Hm. I'm sort of like the evil robot Maria in Metropolis.

Cool.*

*I should point out that when I was very small, my parents took me to an exhibit about robots at the Boston Museum of Science. Robot Maria? Scared the bejeezus out of me. Masks, again. Doppelgangers; the false that fronts itself as the real: the same reason that I hid behind the couch when we watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers in fifth grade. If I'd been a character in Hoffmann's "Der Sandmann," I wouldn't have made it past the scene where the clockwork Olimpia's eyes fall out and roll across the floor. And now I write stories about golems and possession and the scientist-alchemist Rotwang interests me more than any other character in Fritz Lang's film, so go figure . . .

You woke up screaming aloud a prayer from your secret god

John Benson has posted the final table of contents for Not One of Us #34 over at his livejournal, and it is a doozy. The theme is numinous. The work is . . . well, see for yourself.

On the fiction side, you'll find the first published stories of hans_the_bold and rushthatspeaks, as well as work by the prolific and often-honored Patricia Russo, the far too infrequently seen Patricia J. Esposito, filmmaker Mark Steensland, and finally my own (headache of a) story "Drink Down." Not to mention poetry by SFPA President Mike Allen, Eric Marin of Lone Star Stories and MultiVerse fame, the variously-nominated Karen R. Porter, Lee Clark Zumpe, Kristine Ong Muslim, Kent Kruse, and Jennifer Gomoll; and my first-ever collaboration, Mike Allen's brainchild "Aranea," appears here as well. Art by H.E. Fassl, Augie Wiedemann, Teresa Tunaley, and Russell Dickerson.

(That was some linkdump.)

So, go pick up yourself a subscription, or at least a couple of single issues. Send work: the guidelines are clear. And if you have a question, bother John, not me. But mostly, read the magazine. There is nothing exactly like Not One of Us out there, in the professional or semiprofessional or published-out-of-the-basement world, and that's as it should be. We're all aliens at some level. But you know how it is . . .