All artists—whether visual arts or prose, poetry or music—create worlds. Every song, every stanza, every story, every canvas or storyboard implies a world behind it, whether the one we know or another invented from an imagination, a world that in our roles as readers/viewers/listeners we come to inhabit during the brief, or long, moments we are immersed in the artist’s vision. So the question that is often asked is ... what is the best way to go about creating these worlds? Do we plan out the intricate details? Do we just fly by the seat of our pants, creating as the vision strikes us?

The internet, as the internet is, is full of opinions.

In this issue we delve into world-building—the whys, the hows, and inevitably my opinion on the best way to go about it (although I do link to a lot of other ideas). Given that my background in storytelling began with being a DM for AD&D games, building whole worlds and weather systems and countries and beings and ... well, you’d think I’d come down squarely in the “plan it” camp. But you’d be surprised. A little, anyway.

But first, we have an amazing interview with Novyl Saeed, well-known to readers of Penumbric as “Novyl the Mysterious.” We talk about her visual art, her writing, and physics and science generally, and learn as much as we can about her upcoming Dunya epic, which involves a lot of world-building itself.

Unlike past issues, this one isn’t particularly themed, per se. Part of this is that theming everything is difficult, but a larger part is that it can be challenging to theme around “world-building” when one isn’t printing Herbert- or McCaffrey-esque novel series that all take place in the same milieu. It’s an interesting thought to one day put out a magazine with stories that all take place in the same world, though ... hmmmm ... another theme lol.

As usual, we feature a lot of excellent work, from Steve DuBois’ haunting “The Commander” to the blackout poetry of Anton Cancre (“Restructant#1”), from the springing forth of new life in Joe Baumann’s “The Right Kind of Love, the Wrong Kind of Death” to its opposite in Alicia Hilton’s “April.” Strange religions are the fare in Lawrence Buentello’s “Drivers and Their Fares,” while Lauren Marrero’s “What Good Girls Do” explores the kinds of things perhaps they shouldn’t, and Gerri Leen’s “Amateurs” shows us what pretty much everyone shouldn’t do. We slip over into science fiction in S P Jenkins’ “Content” and slip sideways from there in Maxwell I. Gold’s “The Static and Black Lectures.” And then, really, we’re back to the haunting worlds of Anatoly Belilovsky’s “Mercury Rises” and Michelle Muenzler’s “There can only be one Soul Princess,” and we construct the world in Amelia Gorman’s “The World Needle.” We end by looking forward to October in Frank Coffman’s “The Skald Sings of Samhain” (although Penumbric’s October will be full of other things).

Beyond the fantastic art by Novyl that graces not only our cover but also our interview with her, we have haunting work by Jade (Ghoul), Christina Sng (Eva), and Elby Rogers (The Dollar Store’s Bottom Bitch), while also looking outward at whole worlds in Carl Scharwath’s Planet Gazing and a bit of the fantastic in Marge Simon’s Amaranth. We finish, as usual, with Jesper Nordqvist’s Mondo Mecho, and sadly we see the final installment of T. Motley’s The Road to Golgonooza (although hopefully not the last of his work in Penumbric!).

Again, thank you so much to all the artists, of whatever medium, who contribute their worlds to Penumbric! And we’ll be back in October to have a little (or large) update on the state of cyberpunk.

Until then, be well!

Jeff Georgeson
Managing Editor
Penumbric