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SciFiwise Magazine
November 2024
A detailed DC-3 airplane flies through thick smoke and turbulent skies with flames engulfing the hills below. In the distance, a massive, silvery alien spaceship looms over the burning landscape, casting an eerie presence. The scene captures the chaos of the wildfire and the impending extraterrestrial threat, with the aircraft sharply focused as it battles in the fiery atmosphere.
In this issue:
  • Robert Silverberg
  • Mary Robinette Kowal
A detailed DC-3 airplane flies through thick smoke and turbulent skies with flames engulfing the hills below. In the distance, a massive, silvery alien spaceship looms over the burning landscape, casting an eerie presence. The scene captures the chaos of the wildfire and the impending extraterrestrial threat, with the aircraft sharply focused as it battles in the fiery atmosphere.

Against Babylon by Robert Silverberg (Science Fiction)

Carmichael flew in from New Mexico that morning, and the first thing they told him when he put his little plane down at Burbank was that fires were burning out of control all around the Los Angeles basin. He was needed bad, they told him. It was late October, the height of the brushfire season in Southern California, and a hot, hard, dry wind was blowing out of the desert, and the last time it had rained was the fifth of April. He phoned the district supervisor right away, and the district supervisor told him, “Get your ass out here on the line double fast, Mike.”

A winged woman on a dusty rust colored road.

Rust and Bone by Mary Robinette Kowal (Fantasy, Horror)

Something small and metal smacks against flesh. I swallow and turn. A woman with wings of iridescent blue stands on the road. Her wings stir the dust, sending a different wind skidding across the road.