The original plan for this editorial was to trumpet Penumbric's return, to tell you all about this new/old project, to be relentlessly hyper about it ...

Well, we know what happens to original plans.

As I write this, not only is the world dealing with a pandemic in about a hundred different ways, ranging from actual lockdowns to shrugging shoulders to actually protesting being told to protect oneself from dying; some believe that just letting the virus run its course (and capturing "herd immunity") at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives is just peachy, and some believe that immediate economic return alone is worth tens of thousands of deaths. And this isn't all.

The US is undergoing daily protests like it hasn't seen since the 1960s, and for many of the same reasons--and the world is protesting as well, not only for the inequalities in other countries but against the US. I used to think, in the bubble I lived in as a child, that we were continually moving forward, becoming more diverse, becoming more accepting. The 70s and 90s seemed particularly progressive, from that certain point of view ... but that turned out to be, at best, the media presenting us with the most optimistic version of events, with TV sitcoms telling us that The Fresh Prince and Cosby were the new faces of acceptance. Even then we could tell it was imperfect, sanitized. But we certainly couldn't go backwards, could we? I mean, we actually elected a Black president. Doesn't that just make it all better? Doesn't that mean that racism had disappeared, and all was well in this utopic world?

Welcome to 2016. 2017, 2018, 2019. 2020. The whole 2010s, really, but the hatred, the vitriol, the backlash against even modest gains has become concentrated in the last few years. And here we are, suddenly back in a time before I was born, dealing with issues I would have hoped were long since solved--well, not solved, but acknowledged, and on the way towards actual equality. But in the same way I was promised living on other planets and flying cars and teleportation (which are minor in comparison), matters of race and culture and diversity seem more a promise broken than one achieved. (Some days seem better than this. But this isn't some of those days, months, or years.)

And really, it's worse than all this. The technological changes that have occurred have, on the one hand, connected us in ways that used to be near-impossible. In the 1980s, even talking on the phone between the US and Spain meant static-filled conversations delayed by seconds as your voice trickled across the Atlantic at great expense. Now we do video calls to several people at once spread across the globe in real time, and for free.

Well, not free. And there's the rub. We're not the only ones in these conversations. Big Brother is watching as well. Not just the government version; now megalithic corporations collect every byte and bit of information, use analytics to squeeze as much info as they can out of it, and then go further by predicting those parts of our lives that they cannot see. And then they sell this information to the highest bidder--often those who benefit from segregating us, setting us up one against another.

And we fight this ... barely at all. Ever since Big Brother became a show everyone wanted to be on rather than a dark evil to be avoided at all costs, we have happily traded 3 seconds of fame (and falling) for access to our entire lives, for allowing corporations and governments to manipulate us into buying their product, voting for them, hating the enemies they want us to hate, hating each other, falling into ever-smaller silos even as we have access to cultures across the world.

And this is the irony, I guess. Whilst we now have the ability to learn about and experience people and cultures everywhere, we do not seem to have the desire to do so. Even though we are social creatures, we seem to have some sort of inbuilt limitation to the size of this society--or at least have a resistance to it, a rubberband effect that only allows us to increase our social and cultural knowledge so far before rebounding and making us insular, pitiful caricatures of what we could be.

I don't think this limitation is in all of us. I don't even think it's a hard and fast limitation in those who do experience it. I think all of us can learn about other humans, no matter where, and can appreciate their very humanity, even if little else, and build from there. The problem is, those who have the power to promote this, those who have our data, are currently the ones who have the least interest in building bridges. Many of our current governments have themselves reached that rubberband breaking point and rebounded, are xenophobic and insular ... and worse, are hungry for riches and power and all that can mean for them, and now see that the people's data can be used to keep us working for their aggrandizement and keep us in our own backyards, ignorant, fearful, and angry about every other yard on the block.

This is the dystopia we are allowing to be built. It is built not with Terminators or Sentinels but with data analytics and greed and fear. Whether it has gone so far we cannot stop it is ... a concern.

In this issue, the first for Penumbric in 15 years, we talk about dystopia in fiction and whether one could even write 1984 in the current climate in our interview with Dr. Colleen Donnelly. We also include a few dark future pieces for your perusal--"Projections" by Donnelly, "Consumed" by Grace Wagner, and "All You Can Eat" by Mark Anthony Smith.

There is also hope even within nightmares. We interview Bram Stoker Award-winner Christina Sng as she celebrates putting out her new book, A Collection of Dreamscapes. We have "Angels Don't Wear Denim" by Lenore Sagaskie. And we continue the story of "Mondo Mecho" by Jesper Nordqvist (well, we begin it again, after all this time), while beginning T. Motley's serial "The Road to Golgonooza."

The art covers the gamut as well. We have both darkness and light in pieces by Novyl the Mysterious, and our cover art is once more provided by James Cukr, whom I interviewed for our very first issue back in 2002.

I have restarted Penumbric with diverse voices in mind. We are specifically looking for work representing multiple cultures and values, exploring issues of race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, and more. This is particularly important now, as we move through a world whose mindset seems to be shrinking, whose myopia is growing, and whose leaders treat us as just so much data to be manipulated. It may be small, but Penumbric will amplify those voices as best we can. That I promise.