E.G. Condé

“The can is light in my hand. I shake. A metal ball rattles inside. The music of genesis as my index finger pushes down the tab, breaking open dams of possibility. I world. Rains of possibility, flowing through the grooves of bricks in all the colors of my homeland.”  – E.G. Condé

Synopsis: Generations of graffiti artists ponder the meaning of their craft in a future where augmented reality has become the surface for their defiant inscriptions…

“Perhaps it is hubris to think we belong here, in this impossible
place of such extremes of pressure, gravity, and temperature. An
atmosphere so hostile to our physiology that our lungs would melt
if we dared draw even a single breath. And yet this giant wellspring
of poisonous vapours has turned out to be our salvation. For this is
the most abundant source of 3He in the Solar System. And without
this stable isotope of Helium, our aneutronic nuclear reactors
couldn’t function, and the Earth, Luna, and its LaGrange Habitats
would go dark.” -E.G. Condé

Synopsis: Dr. Ahim Hodei and his partner-turned-drone Amaranth are dispatched to determine the mysterious cause of diminished returns of Helium-3 gas from a remote space station orbiting Jupiter. What they uncover will transform humanity’s understanding of the cosmos and their place in it…

Author’s Note: The cover art of the magazine issue is by Carly A-F and is a depiction of my story’s protagonist Dr. Ahim Hodei with his drone companion Amaranth.

“Things had been good before the aliens came.” – E.G. Condé

Synopsis: In the island formerly known as Puerto Rico, a pair of sisters lead a Taíno chiefdom that can no longer thrive under the light of their sun due to a climate change technofix gone terribly wrong.

Author’s Note: This story is based on a Taíno myth cycle that explains the origins of day and night, and the sun and the moon, respectively. The story directly overlaps with the events of my novella SORDIDEZ, featuring some of its characters. *Please note that this story is currently only available for purchase.

“I can still remember the pyres where they heaped the “apostates” they used as scapegoats to explain why the world was burning. But it was not God or queers that made the world hot.” – E.G. Condé

Synopsis: A Novemberist revolutionary defends his Siberian homeland from a neo-monarchist regime that has risen in Petrograd in the aftermath of climate disaster.

Author’s Note: An entry in the vast interconnected web of my story universe, the events of this story are referenced in my novella, SORDIDEZ. With its queer characters, I see this story as an intervention to a subgenre of SF that tends to be hypermasculine and heternormative.

“Over the course of his long life, many of his elder kin had fallen ill, their bodies withering as they transformed into the Fulminous, ascending past the weepers to the ever-torch, where they would begin their drumming, spawning again as the blue serpents that now brilliantly illuminated the ebon vale.” – E.G. Condé

Synopsis: A legendwalker teams up with an unlikely ally to protect his people’s way of life and secure the future of his ancestors who have become sapient lightning.

Author’s Note: This is my first published Fantasy story and my only story set in a secondary world.

“There isn’t even a whisper of birds anymore. This world is quiet. Empty. Like the blank, barren sky, bereft of those formless flocks of white that now only live in memory.”  – E.G. Condé

Synopsis: A climate scientist recounts the tragic disappearance of clouds from the world and his failure to understand their true nature.

Author’s Note: This story is a narrative expansion and adaptation of a collaborative speculative film project I helped create called “World Without Clouds“. This story was the winner of the EASST Science Fiction Sub plenary Short Story competition.

They had survived extinction before. They could survive it again.
– E.G. Condé

Synopsis: The last remnant of the Taíno awakens in the cosmos to rekindle the flora and fauna of extinct Caribbean archipelagoes, but horrifying abominations of techno-capitalism stand in their way.

Author’s Note: I envision this as the first of a far-future story cycle (Taínofuturism) where Taíno Cemís & Yoruban Orishas must wrest the cosmos from the vestiges of a vast techno-capitalist empire.

“Sometimes I remember the shadows of vaulting hawks cascading over rosy buttes, I remember the sun, when it was not yet too bright to see.” – E.G. Condé

Synopsis: A botched climate technofix has depleted the ozone layer resulting in the Bright. A disillusioned construction drone operator devises a way to survive beyond the UV-shielded walls of their city.

Author’s Note: This was my first story acceptance so it has a special place in my heart. It is the first installment in my universe of near-future climate fiction. *Please note that it is currently only available to read in print or ebook.