Post Human Conditions: Arc 1.2 Now Available with Komodo

(Splash page for "Komodo" in Arc 1.2--art by Lydia Wong)I posted here earlier about having had a novelette accepted by Arc Magazine, the awesome new glossy SF periodical being published by New Scientist in the UK. Well, it's out now in Arc 1.2: Post Human Conditions--along with an amazing piece of art by Lydia Wong. Also in this issue of Arc, fiction by Nick Harkaway and features by Anne Gallaway, Frederick Pohl, and Regina Peldszus, among much other cool stuff. The first issue had fiction by Margaret Atwood and a lovely piece about China M. visiting squid and octopi at a marine lab. There's ordering information here for electronic and print versions, and their blog entry about "Komodo" here.I'm fairly excited about this story---it's my longest published piece of fiction since my novel Finch came out in 2009--and I think Arc's amazing look-and-feel is just what SF needs. It's a stunningly beautiful magazine and I can't wait to see what they get up to in the future. Always difficult to have the full sense of a magazine until you've read three or four issues.Here's the beginning of "Komodo"...

Child, standing there in your flower dress considering me with those wide dark eyes while the mariachi band plays out in the courtyard…I’m going to tell you a story. It doesn’t matter if you can’t understand me—they can, and they need to trust me, need to know I’m telling them this for a reason. But I need you, too, because every tale requires an audience, and you’re mine. So I hope you’ll stay awhile. It won’t take long. I don’t have long, anyway.It starts in a strange place, I’ll admit, inside of a giant green plastic alien head. I was all dressed up. I was on my way to a party. Let’s say the party celebrated something like the Day of the Dead, and that I was in a hurry to get there not even because of looking forward to the party but to the after party. The after party is always where it’s at—if you can get an invite.