The Physicality of Change

THE PHYSICALITY OF CHANGE

by Conyer Clayton

Stories for the futures we need. As someone who has naturally gravitated towards darker works and the more horror-tinged side of speculative fiction and poetry, I frankly sometimes found myself wondering how this Augur slogan applied to my tastes as a Senior Editor. But as I read through submissions, and we compiled the longlist, then the shortlist, and then Issue 7.3 came together, I looked at all these incredible final chosen pieces and I realized it is really quite simple:

Sometimes, to get to the futures you need, you have to get real about the past and present. Often, those realities are dark. This issue is about wading through it, standing in it, taking a look at how those truths can transform us bodily, sometimes in ways we desire, and often, against our wishes. What then, these pieces ask? Embodied and transfigured, rooted in where they stand. What now? What now?

Change is a big Augur theme this year, both in our organization and within many of our issues. In this issue, that change is manifested physically. You will witness animal, human, machine, structural, and holographic beings in various stages of change.

Welcome to the dark side of Augur—contemporary Canadian gothic, body-horror, surrealism, sci-fi, and more—brimming with the physicality of transformation, slicing deep into the underbelly of language. How are we, willingly and unwillingly, morphed by family and belonging? By loneliness or connection? By gender, by sex, by expectation? By what’s gone unspoken? By grief and love? 

Reader, I’m not going to lie to you and tell you everything is hopeful at the end of this issue, though hope certainly peeks its head in the door in various places—that’s just the ride we’re on here.

But I will guarantee you this: everything changes. 

Continued in Augur Magazine Issue 7.3...