As announced earlier, On Spec bought my science fiction story “One Hand Washes the Other.” Normally that would be cause to celebrate, but in this case it was bittersweet as I learned that “One Hand Washes the Other” would not only be my second story to appear in On Spec, it would be the last. On Spec was shutting down shop with one final issue.
That issue, #134 vol 35 no 4, has now been released and it’s huge. Over three hundred pages with twenty-one stories and three poems, as well as a cartoon and author and artist interviews. This issue is also an important keepsake if you’re interested in Canadian speculative fiction. It contains retrospective editorials by current managing editor Diane L. Walton, by On Spec‘s first general editor Marianne O. Nielsen, and by long-time production editor Jena Snyder. It also includes a future-looking editorial by Edward Willett, who has agreed to keep the On Spec name alive.
You can purchase your very own copy on their Ko-fi page.
On Spec was one of the first magazines I tried to sell a story to (way back in 1996, when I wasn’t yet legally allowed to drive). I’m immensely proud to be part of their legacy, and bittersweetly delighted to help them close out their incredible thirty-five-year journey. Congratulations once again to Diane L. Walton and the entire On Spec team, past and present and (hopefully) future.
One Hand Washes the Other
by Karl El-Koura
Pietr squirmed against the cold bands cuffing him to the chair, causing the restraints to bite more deeply into the exposed skin of his wrists and ankles. They—his colleagues, his friends—but not really them, of course, but the virus that had infected their cybernetic brains—had tackled him to the ground, pinned him down, then dragged him into the ship’s mess and strapped him into one of its hard metal chairs.
That had been, what—an hour ago?
He struggled against the cuffs again.
The door to the mess opened and they both walked in: Valda Metroya, a friend since they were both hopeful applicants and without whom he never would’ve passed the entrance exam, and Xi Wing, whom he’d met at the Lunar-based Unified Intelligence Agency almost three years earlier. Xi held his hands unnaturally behind his back, hiding something.
Keep reading by buying your copy of #134 vol 35 no 4 of On Spec.
