News
Issue #4, Fall 2008
COLUMN: Causal Domain Shear, by Matt Carey What does Neal Stephenson's Anathem have to do with the stories in this issue of Labyrinth Inhabitant Magazine?STORY: The Wall, by Therese Arkenberg The architects of Raishya’s hometown didn’t realize they were holding the blueprints inside-out. Now the city is at war against its own walls, and the more defenses the townsfolk build, the more the enemy advances…
While Center was cloaked with an air of mystery, Outside held more concrete dangers. Outside was where the men came from every month with the supplies that weren’t available on the Wall: grain and feed and cloth and meat that didn’t come from birds caught on the rooftops. People could raise goats and gardens on the Ground between walls, but they had no space for fields to grow wheat or cotton. And the iron they used to build and repair and defend the Wall came from Outside, too, but also what they defended against: foreign men who would not be turned away at the Gate House.
STORY: Simon Says, by Terence Kuch Our wry tour guide welcomes us into his home as he does some time. Technically, I suppose he does some space as well. But not very much of it.
Please do not expatiate upon the shit-bucket; instead, O do mention our grand patriotic festival.
Oh, yes: National Day. Once a year -- as far as I can tell -- my food comes festooned with banners and devices, shredded colored plastic glued to toothpick ends. It seems the nation is celebrating, and so my food is celebrating, too.
STORY: Ten Cities Down, by Lindsey Duncan It was only after death that Timur took an interest in upward mobility. In life, he wanted just the opposite.
Timur suppressed a shiver, part unease and part relief to which he could not yet give voice. The guards paid no mind to anyone who wanted to ascend; they checked credentials only on the way down, but the Travelers would ride soon, hunting for the most recent escapee from the afterlife. It would be a race to the surface, and he was on foot.
Issue #3, Summer 2008
COLUMN: Failure and Success in Biosphere 2, by Matt Carey Much like Biosphere 2, Labyrinth Inhabitant Magazine was conceived as a hermetic environment where stories could attempt to survive in isolation, uncontaminated by readers or ad revenue.POEM: Somnambulis, by Megan Arkenberg A young woman seeks to discover whether there is such a thing as a world outside of her native land of Somnambulis. Based on the knowledge and experience that I bring to this poem as a reader, I would answer, "probably yes."
STORY: Arrows, Co-Arrows, by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro In the future, a woman has cancer. A man has ants.
Closing his eyes, ignoring the sting of his armpits, he could just discern the sound of the ants, those still alive, tiny legs scampering against the foul cardboard. He reached forward and took three of the cards from the disheveled collection. He gazed at them intently for a long time. Trander followed the indications on the cards like a somnambulist under the siren-song of sleep. Halfway through re-filling the artificial food pockets he noticed there weren’t enough bags left. Very well. Tonight would be different.STORY: Roadside Attraction, by Walt Jarvis Just follow the billboards for a journey into mind-crushing old-school terror.
As he stepped inside, the afternoon seemed to grow darker, as if an approaching thunderstorm had suddenly obscured the face of the sun. Instinctively he looked up, but the blindingly blue sky was cloudless. It must be the height of the corn, he thought; indeed, the stalks towered over him. The fat man who had gone ahead of them had stopped in the middle of the path to vigorously wipe his brow. "It's plenty warm in here, isn't it?" he asked plaintively.STORY: The Cold, by Jon Baldridge Jeff's plan to move his family into an abandoned mansion for 24-hour video surveillance and psychological experimentation has absolutely awful consequences.
"Hotter'n hell."
Jeff glanced at the spines of a few books. The titles seemed to have been chosen for aesthetics rather than reading enjoyment. The bindings all matched, filled with Olde English-style titles, some of which were incomprehensible. Back in the other living area, Jeff swung open the doors of a wall-to-wall armoire that revealed a television. Good. So Joey wouldn't completely go crazy, and neither would Jeff. In the cabinet below was a DVD player and a selection of recent, popular titles. Lisa was at Jeff's side, though he hadn't heard her approach across the thick rug that dominated the room.
"Have you seen a phone?" she asked.
Issue #2, Spring 2008
COLUMN: The Library in the Labyrinth, by Matt Carey Remember that scene in the Da Vinci Code when Tom Hanks really had to get to a library? This is gonna be just like that.STORY: The History Eaters, by Neil James Hudson The curator of the archive of Earth's history follows a cross-reference...to danger!
“They warned me about you,” the Professor said. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to use this. It’s a warrant for access to the index, from the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge You’ll see it’s been countersigned by the Home Secretary.”STORY: The Sentinel Gate, by Subodhana Wijeyeratne "It's finished!" the author said. "The tale of a boy on the verge of manhood, who goes on a quest to understand the labyrinth that his civilization inhabits. But where shall I ever submit this story?"
Librarians argued that the end of a wall could also be considered a beginning, and also that a wall that begins need not necessarily have an end but could continue on forever from that point. This gave rise to the legend of the Eternal Wall, one that neither began nor ended but went on forever. Some Librarians believed that if one were to follow this Wall from any one point along it, for as far as one could go, the journey would become metaphysical and one would attain transcendence along the way.STORY: The Canyon of Babel, by Daniel Ausema This tale is a despondent cry for salvation, howled into a cruelly incoherent void!
Fael felt a strong need to shout, to let his voice echo also between those walls. He brought his hands up and yelled, "Ish al limagui." The words were an old greeting used by Fael and his blood family to greet each other in the streets. But it was not these words that came back in the echo. Instead the answer sounded like, "Hilo-een."VIDEO: Harlan Hatcher Graduate Labyrinth Guglielmo R. Deidzoeb makes the case that his university library is an architectural folly, or perhaps something far more sinister.
VIDEO: CORN MAAAAAZE Thanks to mirandageegaw for the link.
LINK: Programmer Xin Gao, also known as Jerric, reveals his method for creating a "maze walker" that can find its way out of two-dimensional mazes with right angles. His maze walker spends about 35-50% of its time retracing its steps, and you can watch its Sisyphean labors in a Java applet on Jerric's page.
[T]he algorithm here is not a random one. The key here is that, I'll record each step (walk) on each cell it arrives at. and when I want to leave a cell, first check its accessable neighbours and pick one with the smallest step number. that one either can be never accessed before if step number equals 0, or the oldest one that has been accessed.LINK: John Young of Bellflower, California has posted a guide to getting published in Labyrinth Inhabitant Magazine on his personal web site. I was happy to answer his questions, but because I was feeling like even more of a wanker that day than usual, I insisted on referring to this site only as "LabInhab".
Issue #1, Winter 2007-2008
COLUMN: How Are You Going to Get Out of This One?, by Matt Carey Welcome to the first issue of Labyrinth Inhabitant Magazine.
POEM: The Fifth Stranger, by Kristine Ong Muslim The author of more than 500 poems and stories channels Rabelais in this imaginative visit to a grim ribcage colony.
STORY: The Kingdom Defaced, by Louise Norlie Four members of a royal family make their unhappy home in a labyrinthine palace none of them has ever left. The ending is not that they turn out to be two-dimensional and living in a pack of cards. I swear.
The king snipped the strings that held him together, toppled to the floor and dragged his helpless fragments toward the blazing fireplace where the last remaining echo of his mind finally could be silenced. His fingers tore off of his hands. His jaw came unspooled and dragged on the floor behind him. Before he could reach the flames he was a shell of a corpse, little more than an eye and a bit of a brain, powerless to execute his suicidal plan.
The ministers caught him in time to repair the damage
STORY: Phobia, by R. E. Hartman Embark on a journey through a bleak cityscape of epistemic and existential uncertainty! What's that ominous tower that dominates the skyline far off in the distance? Could it be the beacon of hope and meaning we yearn for? (Nope.)
I feel a drop of sweat upon my neck, and must fight the urge to wipe it away. I can never be sure that I have moved my hand in just such a way before. If I haven't, then that simple act may be my destruction. Or I feel a need to cough, and I panic as it rises, my mind racing through possibilities: have I covered my mouth when I've coughed before, and if so how? Or did I suppress it and let my chest heave, or did I simply let it out? Such constant considerations make it difficult to meditate on trying to find some way out of the City.
POEM: Tangled Legs, by Greg Beatty The Rhysling Award-winning poet contributes a sonnet that poses the question: Where does the Minotaur get his drawings mounted?
LINK: The Labyrinth and the Stairway
This work in particular represents "a vast fictional topography that exists within the walls of a mythological Roman city." Within that city, according to the Borges story, "a lone figure traverses its magnificent, eternal architecture in search of immortality."
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LINK: Knossos: The Palace of Minos
...the only actual cult room that Evans found is the Shrine of the Double Axes. The room is tiny, barely a metre-and-a-half square, with a plastered clay bench at the back. It was installed, according to Evans, by squatters who reoccupied the site of the palace shortly after its final destruction.
LINK: Information Policy for the Library of Babel
...Censorship is usually irrelevant.
Some of the books in the Library are dangerous in themselves: “There is no combination of characters one can make—dhcmrlchtdj, for example—that the divine Library has not foreseen and that in one or more of its secret tongues does not hide a terrible significance.” Others are dangerous because they divert us from the books we seek: “thousands and thousands of false catalogs … the proof of the falsity of the true catalog … some perfidious version of his own [Vindication].” In the face of these dangers, some “Purifiers” have turned to censorship...