Short Fiction Review # 28: Dark Faith
[Hell] doesn’t exist, no more so than the entities that are called Satan and the Devil. They’re all…storybook constructs…Know this: there is no such thing as a ‘cosmic evil.’ Evil is a human matter, fashioned by ignorance, brutality, addiction, emotional trauma—the list is endless. The cosmos doesn’t feel anything, it is just a space, it doesn’t care about either good or evil, it is simply, like Heaven, indifferent.
“For My Next Trick I’ll Need a Volunteer” by Gary A. Braunbeck
p. 275, 285
That pretty much sums up my personal view of a universe indifferent to ongoing human folly. That said, I’m fascinated by the notion of faith and its ethical implications, so a short story collection entitled Dark Faith co-edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon naturally got my attention. People rely on faith to provide an orderly framework to their lives, to infuse meaning to their existence. What these stories (as well as several poems) share is a consideration of what happens when the assumptions that underpin faith unravel. For the most part, the results are not good
The opening story, “Ghosts of New York” by Jennifer Pelland, considers the afterlife of those who made the horrific choice to jump from the Twin Towers rather than remain in a burning buidling about to collapse. The whole subgenre of 9/11 fiction is tricky, given our collective memory of something so frighteningly incomprehensible that’s been trivialized over time with the endlessly surreal replaying loop of the imploding skyscrapers, but Pelland’s take here is vividly disturbing in suggesting that memorializing the dead can make matters worse.
Poets and sages like to say that there is clarity in certain death. That a calm resignation settles over the nearly deceased, and they embrace the inevitability of the end of life with dignity and grace.
But there was no clarity for her, no calmness, no life flashing before her eyes in a montage of joy and regrets. There was just pure animal terror, screams torn from her throat as she plummeted toward the ground in the longest ten seconds of her life.
And then there was an explosion of pain.
p.2
Following some of the recent discussion on the future of the magazine, including the 
It gives me great pleasure to announce what some of you may have already heard — the talented Ryan Harvey, author and Black Gate blogger extraordinaire, has placed third in the International Writers of the Future contest for the First Quarter of 2010.
Ah summertime! With Memorial Day behind us we can finally relish the signs that warm weather is here to stay and the frigid months are at least temporarily a thing of the past. Though I am already counting down the less than five months until Halloween, even I am somewhat giddy in the abundant sunlight streaming in the office window, making it clear I haven’t dusted since the last full moon. Which reminds me…
Reports have surfaced that Realms of Fantasy publisher Warren Lapine has written to subscribers of the magazine, telling them that if they don’t renew their subscriptions he’s going to shut it down.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
The Cimmerian, one of the most respected websites devoted to heroic fantasy — indeed, perhaps the most respected — 
, coming soon to a monitor near you. Looks promising.
Back in 2005 I had the pleasure of lunching with Charlaine Harris, who was on a book tour celebrating the release of her fourth Sookie Stackhouse novel Dead to the World.