It's been five years since David Bowie passed. I imagine some people have forgotten about it by now; five years is a long time in 21st century years, as 24-hour news and a broadly applied Moore's Law make everything that happened a year ago seem like last century, and the relentless beating given us by the coronavirus (aided and abetted by timing itself to appear just when certain governments wanted to pretend science = politics) has made the past year even longer. But I still remember sitting stunned at my computer and staring at the news, unaware that he'd been sick, just assuming he'd keep existing for as long as I would, that he was one of those figures that would reinvent himself yet again just when you thought he was gone, and ... well, just not being able to complete coherent sentences, much like this one.

It was, I suppose, no coincidence that he'd just succeeded in reinventing himself yet again, putting out Blackstar just days before he died, with two videos that introduced yet another character to his pantheon, Mr. Button Eyes. At the time, many remarked that it was the perfect farewell letter to his fans. For me, as N. A. Rossi says in our interview in this issue, or at least a character of hers says, I would have been happy if he'd come back out of that wardrobe in the "Lazarus" video and kept on going.

At the time, Penumbric was mothballed, so I had no chance to pay him any tribute in print (although I did shave my waist-length hair and give it to a cancer charity for wigs; that was the last I've seen of my Jareth-style Labyrinth hair ... at this point, I'd look like I was only growing the back half of it back if I tried). But now ...

I wanted to have an issue dedicated to not only Bowie, but also music and musicians' influence on authors (or indeed any type of artist). How does music influence our work? Does it play in the background? Does it inform characterization? Can it send us down certain narrative paths and not others? Do we sometimes manage to create a written milieu that inspires the reader to intuit our stories' musical score? I didn't want to just blather on about this myself, so I (very thankfully) had the help of three authors, Lenore Sagaskie, Callum Pearce, and David Busboom. We discuss these influences in the article that begins this issue.

Little did I know, however, that I'd be able to interview an author who was literally creating Spotify playlists to go with her work--and who was a massive Bowie fan as well, having commissioned art for her book covers that's heavily Bowie-influenced (and beautifully designed by artist Tim Doyle). We speak to N. A. Rossi, author of the Rockstar Ending series, at length about Bowie, music, and inspiration.

The works in this issue, both written and artistic, sometimes have a direct link to music and sometimes don't--at times a little imaginative license may be required to make the connection, but I love everything. "A Visit from the Beatles" by Bob Ritchie and "Regret in Blue Sharp" by Arasibo Campeche have very obvious ties to music--and also sometimes feel like music, somehow. There are also a few of what feel to me to be Bowie-inspired pieces: "Ghost in Orbit" by Jennifer Crow and Avra Margariti's "Radio Silence" have distinct echoes of Major Tom, as does (for me, anyway) Grace Wagner's "Asteroid Impact." Other pieces are not so direct, but to me "felt" musical in some way: Franco Amati's "The First Metaphor" reminds me that music is metaphorical, and Cory Swanson's "The One I Fell Into" feels like a magical mystery tour of artistic endeavor. "Red Shoes" by Colleen Anderson sends me dancing up some incarnation or other of the yellow brick road, albeit "dancing" might be the wrong word; "The War God" by N.C. Krueger feels like an ancient song of war; Anatoly Belilovsky's "Apocrypha" and Umiyuri Katsuyama's "The Early-Morning Garden" seem stories made visual in very few words, like songs; and Darien Dillon's "Mnemosyne in Formalin" and Gerri Leen's "The Hit" seem very much songs themselves. Not always happy ones, mind ...

toeken's art again graces this issue with Engine#3, which looks like music flying silently into the sky, while Elby Rogers' Deleting the Dream Machine reminds me of what happens when the musical colors will finally not be contained. And I suppose dream and fantasy images do remind me of music: both Carl Scharwath's Troupe and Novyl the Mysterious' College City of Trebay take me to fantastic realms. Josie Levin's animation in 2020 Animation Reel sometimes feels like dancing, sometimes transformation. And did I not mention the cover art yet? Thank you so much to Novyl the Mysterious for creating Inspiration Creation for Penumbric, illustrating in a single piece what I've been struggling to convey for several hundred words!

The Road to Golgonooza is taking a little break this issue, but there are several pages of T. Motley's whimsical artworks to tide us over. Jesper Nordqvist's Mondo Mecho does continue, although, amusingly, I failed to realize when I was putting it in the last issue that there were only two pages left of the first section of the work ... and then also that the natural break in the next bit wishes everyone a Happy Christmas! I think it's becoming sort of a tradition here in the opening new issues of Penumbric to be just askew of where you'd expect us to be--horror in December, a wintry-looking August cover--so I'm just going to run with this and wish you all the very best of holidays. You may apply this retroactively or forward in time, as you wish. And the best of all possible new years!

Jeff Georgeson
Managing Editor
Penumbric