This Medical SF themed issue features fiction from the Czech Republic, the Philippines, Germany, China, and USA.

Foreword – Issue 8 Introduction | Read now RM Ambrose There is no Science Fiction without Medical Science Fiction. It is not a subgenre; it is the very foundation. Intrinsic. Endemic. Our beloved genre was born like Athena from the head of Mary Shelley. Victor Frankenstein’s Promethean act of creation, and then neglect, of an intelligent and sensitive person is a narrative examination of ethics in science, still relevant two hundred years later....

Second Generation Fiction | Read now Julie Nováková “Is our baby going to be okay?” The tiny human being was almost lost under the monitors and cannulas fastened to her reddened skin with hypoallergenic adhesive tape. One tube went into the mouth, another into the nose. Was she going to be okay?...

Panoptes Fiction | Read now Eliza Victoria Joanne felt hope drain out of her eight hours into the traffic jam. Granted she was asleep the whole time, but the sight of the exact same tree with the lightning-burnt bark, which Joanne had stared at an equivalent of an entire workday ago, was panic-inducing....

Keloid Dreams Fiction | Read now Simone Heller They told us we would be heroes. Sounds like a lie, doesn’t it? Sounds like hitting a dented, cracked shell to see if deep inside a pinpoint of light might flicker on. We worked just as well in the dark, but the Plowshares Decommission Initiative kept searching for high-profile jobs to win over the public, and when I signed up for their pilot program for nurses, I had hoped to do my part....

The Other Reel – Post Sunset Non-Fiction | Available on September 30, 2020 Paul Levinson A Review of Twice Upon A Time (Netflix, December 2019) Twice Upon A Time is, of course, a time-travel story. It has been the title of at least three movies: one an animated film by George Lucas from 1983, another a non-time travel movie–and a 2017 Dr....

Chrysalis Fiction | Available on October 7, 2020 David Brin Like every person who ever contemplated existence, I’ve wondered if the world was made for me—whole and new—this very morning, along with counterfeit memories of what came before. Recollection is unreliable, as are the records we inherit each day. Even those we made the night before—our jotted notes or formal reports, our memorials carved deep in stone—even they might have been concocted, along with memories of breakfast, by some deity or demon....