I stumbled upon Aôthen Magazine this month, a very interesting classics magazine that publishes work related to the ancient Mediterranean. I am thrilled by this project for several reasons. I think too often some parts of academia try to separate artistic ventures from scholarly ones and this magazine works to marry the two. I also like that while the magazine “encourages the exploration of modern, abstract, and non-traditional perspectives on the ancient world,” the works in the magazine clearly stem from a familiarity with source material. While I don’t want to be too negative in my praise, I personally have found that a lot of “re-tellings” of Greek myth in particular, are re-tellings not of the source material but of someone else’s re-telling, and the chain of re-tellings becomes increasingly watered down, and devoid of the flavor of its source material. So I appreciate that this magazine features work that is a playful engagement with the translation of a specific line of text, or a story that hasn’t made it into the public consciousness the same way that something like the Hades and Persephone or Orpheus and Eurydice myths have.

My favorite pieces from Issue 7 Summer 2024 were:

While “Giant Ants and Royal Riches: Herodotos in Context” by Dr. Neile Kirk perhaps spends less time focusing purely on the giant ants than I would have hoped, the article does provide a whirlwind linguistic journey. Fun and informative!

Diego Calle’s Out of Lemnos has some of the most evocative gore I’ve ever read, and a real weight of scenery, in a heart wrenching poem of Hypsipyle saving her father.

Romulus and Remus of the East Coast by West Ambrose reminded me a lot of Ann Carsons’ An Autobiography of Red, in the best of ways. A queer, lyrical re-imagining of Romulus and Remus’ relationship, the richness of language and subject matter is what reminded me of Carson’s work. However, “Romulus and Remus of the East Coast” is definitely it’s own creature, playing significantly and expertly with form between the different sections of the story while circling around the ideas of walls, self, bitterness, and loss.

Tiles by Matthew Nisinson is a tremendously charming translation project, creating a page of “tiles” of different potential translations of the same sentence. My personal favorite translation is the final tile in the bottom right, as a playful culmination and remixing of all the translations that have come before it and the original Latin of the chosen line.

Hexagon Issue 17, Summer 2024

I always love Hexagon, they’re one of my favorite spec-fic magazines out there. This summer issue is themed, focusing on climate change, struggle, and what the future may look like as a result of that struggle.

Heat Devils by Madi Haab is a heart-pounding cyberpunk heist that involves the storming of a corporate seed vault. There is a lot happening in this story, deftly packed into the confines of the word count. Amidst gunshots and metal music, the story explores the way corporations infringe on our lives, pressing in on all sides until even our bodies are not fully our own, while also expanding into and eating away at the natural world, and the way terms like “harm” are controlled and misappropriated by those same corporations.

Feathers and Wax: A Triptych by André Geleynse uses form to really elevate its narrative, and provide a sense of physical action and thrust. Other people will likely engage with this story differently, but for me, my main frame of reference for triptychs are altarpieces like Martin Schongauer’s Madonna of the Rose Bower. I’m actually not sure what the “correct” method of viewing an altarpiece is, but I always take them in left to center to right. But that’s only if the altarpiece is displayed already open! If it’s closed, the possibilities for its contents still endless, then it opens from the left panel, then the right, finally revealing that secret and yearned-for center. While the triptych-as-altarpiece is what I’m bringing to the story, the framework of the triptych deployed by Geleynse is such a bold narrative framework for this sense of opening and of movement towards a center. Myopia and self-serving action on the left panel, and all-encompassing love and potentially self-sacrificial action on the right. One of these two forces wins out, and we see that victory in the center, in a glimmer of something brighter, yearned for and physically earned by the casting open of the two prior panels.

Smugglers Without Borders by Christopher R. Muscato follows the newest leader of the boycott congress as they meet the smuggler who is able to dodge the Company and get their district alternatives to boycotted goods or withheld Company resources. I really enjoyed the build towards the protagonist becoming the president of the boycott congress, with the repeated disappearances enforced by the Company leading up to it, as well as the smuggler’s leading of the protagonist towards the final tool they really need, solidarity across borders. It’s a story that rings crystal true, even amidst its near-future setting.

An Epicurean’s 10 Steps to Utopia by John Eric Vona is another story that uses format as part of the narrative, laying out a ten course meal that relays the rebellion of the underclass against those who would feast and hoard resources while everyone else goes hungry. Really clever narrative, excellent sense of momentum across the courses, and delicious details of a world being made anew.

Wonders of a Plastic Ocean by James Cato really stuck with me after reading it. An agent is sent to a group of climate refugee camps on a beach made of plastic pellets to locate several targets. I thought this story was going to be more of a thriller, secret agent has a change of heart kind of story, but through expertly wound detail and the looming shapes of plastic effigies that may or may not move at night, Cato has written a marvelous story that transcends easy classification and invites you into a world where not knowing the slang will give you away and leave you lost on a plastic beach.