As the cover art by Carl Scharwath, whom we had the pleasure of interviewing for this issue, implies, I think it’s often good to take a step sideways and gain a little perspective ...

This issue marks a full three years since I sat in complete lockdown in Cornwall, staring out over the sea and wondering what to do next in my life. Even though I’d been proofreading and coding all along, it felt as if something was missing, and I hearkened back not only to the first run of Penumbric in the early 2000s but also the publications I’d worked on at university and, before that, my grandmother’s weekly newspaper in Brush, Colorado. The thing is, regardless of whether there is much money to be made in it, publishing a periodical—developing the concept, calling for submissions, finding out there actually ARE people interested in submitting, and then laying out and producing (and coding)—is something I really, really enjoy. So I do owe the pandemic that much—I was able to restart a work I love.

The world had come such a long way since Y2K and the “compassionate conservatism” (a Bushian term implying that regular conservatism features no compassion at all, I guess) that lead to the Iraq war and the subsequent horrors of that and similar conflicts. The US actually created an affordable health insurance system, LGBTQIA+ rights began to be recognized at increasing speed, and it seemed people were willing to see other people more as actual human beings, rather than Others to be feared and controlled. It was not perfect—not even close—but at least the compass bearings seemed favorable.

But by 2020, it felt like these new ideas were set not in stone but in movie-prop Styrofoam, and rabid Trump supporters were ready to tear down the entire democracy rather than be willing to move forward, would rather tear down human rights than to see any bit of their power eroded (or see the world move forward from the narrow views of the 1950s, or even 1850s), or in other cases, would be happy to succumb to the fear-mongering that made everything a zero-sum game. There’s only one pie to go ’round, said Trump and his buddies, even while they had a baker’s dozen of their own in reserve. And so, even though we have a sort of respite (but not much of one) while the Dems are in office, we have a host of Trumpian judges taking away rights, immigrants are still looked at with fear and suspicion, women’s bodies are the property of the State, the only good education is patriotic brainwashing that ignores actual history, and only guns are given any sort of reverence. Heck, AI is a distant star barely twinkling in the background of all this horrible pollution. (Oh, and don’t even get me started on actual pollution ...)

Into this madness sprung (loped? sauntered? stumbled?) Penumbric, in the hope of helping creators who wanted to shine even a bit of candlelight into the darkness, especially those who wouldn’t normally be given the candles. And despite the sort of lion-roar/squeak of that previous sentence, I hope we have been at least moderately successful. I think we have. And I look forward to getting better at this in the years to come, and to inspire others as well.

It’s sort of like environmentalism (to go back, in a way, to the pollution metaphor): It may seem hopeless if the big players (politicians, companies) are dead set on poisoning us all, but every small voice raised against them, every tiny step that stalls their agenda, every campaign that makes them at least pay lip service to doing good, is something. And enough small somethings can eventually create a tipping point, and ... well, I don’t need to explain to anyone how that works.

Hopefully Penumbric is busy being a few of those small somethings. And thank you to all who continue to be a part of it.

Jeff Georgeson
Managing Editor
Penumbric