Here ’s a musical style mash - up you might not have seen before . My chronicle “ Palm Strike ’s Last Case ” is the cover story inthe July / August issueofThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction . It ’s the tarradiddle of a dark avenging superhero … who decides to colonise another planet .
Top image : Detail of cover art byMaurizio Manzieri .
I still have no hint how this happened — I ’ve dreamed of getting bring out in F&SF for as long as I can remember . But I never ideate I ’d actually make it , much less have the cover story . The fact that it was solicited and pick out by client editor CharlesColeman Finlay , whose gritty report have rock my world , made thewhole affair that much better .
“ Palm Strike ’s Last Case ” is about a dark vigilante superhero identify Palm Strike , who has been on a one - man war against drug dealers ever since they do the death of his Logos . Until he gets chosen to go on a mission to colonise another satellite because he used to be a land - reclamation expert . And hereluctantly decide to go because he ’s skinny to self - destructing if he stays on Earth . But when he arrives on the new planet , his cryogenic system malfunctions ( or is weaken ) and he wakes up 20 years too late . Only to find that everybody is starving to demise due to incompetent terraforming , and the settlement is overrun with drug dealers . So he has to bring his superhero alter ego out of retirement , while also hunting for a solution to the colony ’s vital food for thought problem .
Here ’s how it commence :
PALM STRIKE ’S COSTUME has never been comfortable , but lately it ’s filch his shoulders and chafing in the bulwark region . Sweat pool in the thrill . The Tensilon - reinforced helmet give him a blinding headache after two hours , and the chestplate is slightly too loose , which causes it to move around and fray the skin off his stomach and collarbone .
The thing that keeps Palm Strike melt retiring water supply column after water tower along the break rooftop of Argus City , the thing that maintain him breaking heads after taking three bullets that nighttime , is the cognition that there are still innocents out there whose lives have n’t yet been ruined .
Kids who still have hope and joyfulness , the room Palm Strike ’s own son did before Dark Shard got him . When the bruised ribs and perforate lung start to slow him down and the forty - quid costume has him dancing in chains , he visualize his son . Rene . It never fails — he feels a weight unit in his stomach , like a chunk of concrete studded with rocks , and it fills him with furor , which he turns into determination .
Argus City is full of disintegrate Frank Lloyd Wright knockoffs and hoi polloi who have nothing to lose but someone else ’s pureness . This was a great metropolis , once , just like America was a slap-up land and Earth was a neat planet .
Palm Strike catches a trio of Shardlings selling dreamflies in Grand Park , under the bronze statue of a war bomber piloting a drone . The drone drop deep tail , and that ’s where they hunker in a three - full point parabolic formation . They ’re well trained , maybe even ex - particular Forces , and decent armed , including one customise 1911 with a tight - bore gun barrel . Dark Shard must be getting desperate . Once they ’re down , Palm Strike feeds them their own drugs , baggieby baggie . ”You know my rule , ” he rumble . The procedure is not unlike score foie gras . One of these men is so terrified , he blurts out the location of Dark Shard ’s confidential den , the Pleasuresplinter .
To read the whole thing , foot up the new emergence of F&SF wherever beneficial magazine are trade . Or if youclick on this Amazon nexus , you could take just “ Current issue ” and get the current issue for $ 2.99 . ( Or a subscription for $ 1.99 an issue . )
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