Musician/writer Zack Wentz has started a new online SF literary journal called New Dead Families.  They have already featured short works by Blake Butler and Colette Phair.  With this outlet Zack intends to share an “exceptional selection of stories and visual art by a variety of writers and artists I both admire and enjoy.”

In some alternate universe there is my ideal periodical:  a cross between H.L. Gold’s Galaxy, and Gordon Lish’s the Quarterly, and/or Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds and Bradford Morrow’s Conjunctions.  In the 70’s there were a number of original paperback anthologies that came close: Damon Knight’s Orbit series, Judith Merril’s numerous SF bests, and Harry Harrison’s Nova.

But where are those sorts of literary venues now?  Where could that kind of work go now?

Perhaps New Dead Families is that periodical, in that place, and by some quantum trick I have pushed/pulled that alternate universe into my own.  This.

Perhaps.

We can certainly try, can’t we?