“La révolution et la libération des femmes vont de pair. Et ce n’est pas un acte de charité ou un élan d’humanisme que de parler de l’émancipation des femmes. C’est une nécessité fondamentale pour le triomphe de la révolution. Les femmes portent sur elles l’autre moitié du ciel.”

—Thomas Sankara (le 8 mars 1987)

Issue 2022.62

Short stories

• ‘Song of Your Life’, Nicole Lungerhausen - art by Fluffgar
• ‘We Were Ghostless Against Her’, Ioanna Papadopoulou - art by Sarah Salcedo
• ‘Unspoilt’, Louise Hughes - art by Eric Asaris
• ‘New Day Dawning’, Francesca Forrest - art by Toeken
• ‘The Heart of the Party’, Sarah Day - art by Miguel Santos

Novelettes

• ‘A Door of My Own’, Tim Pratt - art by Carmen Moran

Poetry

• ‘We Don't Always Have to Toss Her in the Deep End’, Jordan Hirsch - art by Cécile Matthey
• ‘Reasonable Accommodations’, Nicole J. LeBoeuf - art by Cécile Matthey

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We have a diverse, inspiring and beautiful slate of stories, poems and art to share with you this month. We’re writing and painting and singing about revolution, about resistance, about cooperation, endurance, quiet rebellion (and loud rebellion!), about fellowship. We’re telling tales of how having somewhere to hide, having safety and security, makes it easier to help others in turn. And all these stories of hope and anger and love and persistence are also filled with gladiatorial combat, angry ghosts, hidden paradise, eco-pocalypse and utopian posthumanism, psyberpunk music, superpowers, surviving witches, long-suffering lycanthropes, and many other speculative fiction tropes that we love (and more that we didn’t realize we loved). Stories of the unreal giving us hope and fuel to keep going in the real.

Not that we needed reminding, but it is good to remember what people are struggling for—what we don’t dare stop fighting for—things like justice, safety, bodily autonomy, fair treatment (and not just “more pay”). We also know, but need to remain alert to, those who shout loudest about “identity politics” while with their other hand plotting to take away our rights based on identities they don’t like.

If this struggle in the news just this week, and you may wonder if I’m alluding to just one of them, but—there is no fight for justice without standing up for all of us: there can be no white-feminism, trans-exclusionary feminism, misogynist labour struggle, health justice that ignores disability and race, any true social justice without full intersectional representation. (I mean, no one can do everything all the time, and we’re all allowed to prioritize our protest sometimes, but the least we can do is not deny rights to marginalized groups through our activism.)

Our little contribution to the fight for a better world is to platform social justice issues, under-respresented voices, and beautiful, radical stories in these pages. We always love to see the more unusual, experimental, avant garde forms of speculative fiction and art. If you have ideas for work we might like to see, voices we might be missing, people we should collaborate with, we’d love to hear from you for these or any other reason. You know where to find us.

Djibril al-Ayad, July 2022

Comment on the stories in this issue on the TFF Press blog.