Translunar Travelers Lounge

Every so often, after decades or centuries or millennia of steady, incremental change, humanity makes a giant technological leap forward, a societal saltation that changes every aspect of life, making it nearly unrecognizable to those who came before.

This is the reason that writing science fiction can be so difficult, and why hundred-year-old predictions of what they thought life would be like today often seem so comical. No matter how carefully you map your route, you can’t foresee the flash flood of culture shift that’s going to wash out the road ahead.

It may or may not be obvious that I’m talking about AI. Just like the printing press and the light bulb and the invention of the wheel, AI has darted out into the headlights of humanity’s road trip and has made us swerve in an unexpected direction. At this present moment, we’re still in that slow-motion fishtail, bracing to see where we’re going to end up.

Maybe that’s why we have so many stories in this issue about alternate universes and brancing paths. This issue, we have a woman who helps her alternate selves and a woman who is hurt by them; a wife of starlight and a husband beyond the grave; a reflected village and a resurrected zoo; an autonomous bot and an automatous abbey; a misbehaving herd of alpacas and a boisterous group of drakelings; unanswered prayers and unwanted things; and a game of go fish.

As always, this magazine wouldn’t be here without the help of our first readers: Kate Ravenna, Chana Kohl, Nicholas Jay, Jeff Watson, Ares Benoit, Bartholomew Redd, Heather Norton, Sally Christensen, Tom Mock, Lizzie Blackwood, Emry Jordal, Katherine Smith, Cynthia Zhang, Evelyn Teng, and J. Neira. I’m also eternally grateful to the voice of TTL, otherwise known as Neil Wilcox; the heart of TTL otherwise known as Priya Sridhar; and the extremely organized brain of TTL, a.k.a. Hannya Kay.