Editor Karen A. Romanko writes to tells us her latest anthology, Retro Spec: Tales of Fantasy and Nostalgia, has just been released by her Raven Electrick Ink.
She offers this description: “Retro Spec: Tales of Fantasy and Nostalgia uses the prisms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror to examine the culture, society, and politics of our recent past, the 1920s to the 1980s, in the United States and Europe. Twenty-six authors have contributed short stories and poetry to the anthology, twining history with speculation to find out what happens when suffragettes construct robots, insects spread cultural movements, women carry out the first ‘manned’ space flights, or hair metal bands make deals with the devil. Along the way, Retro Spec hits many of the notches on the 20th century timeline, including World War II, the ’60s counterculture, Chernobyl, and the fall of the Berlin wall, testing their limits with genre elements such as alien invasion, ghosts, alternate history, and time travel.”
The table of contents, with brief annotations noting form/genre/era/theme, is:
“Hula Hoop” by Jude-Marie Green (fiction/fantasy/1950s/hula hoop fad)
“Invasion, 1955” by Robert Borski (poem/sf/1950s/hula hoop fad)
“Storm on Fifth Avenue” by Neil Coghlan (fiction/dark fantasy/1930s/Empire State Building)
“Rain Goddess: The Dust Bowl, 1930s” by K.M. Praschak (poem/fantasy/1930s/Dust Bowl)
“The Mustache” by Lyn C.A. Gardner (fiction/dark fantasy/early 1970s/counterculture)
“beat people” by Bruce Boston (poem/speculative/1950s/Beat culture)
“The Day Alan Turing Came Out” by Leonard Richardson (fiction/sf/1980s/computers; gay rights)
These United States of Frankenstein: Meltdown” by Brian Rosenberger (poem/horror/1980s/Chernobyl disaster)
“New and Improved” by Jennifer Rachel Baumer (fiction/sf/1950s/housewives-“feminine mystique”)
“Sparks between Our Teeth” by Amanda C. Davis (poem/sf/1950s/cigarette-smoking)
“Chalk Circles” by K. Curran Mayer (fiction/fantasy/1930s-1940s/Olympics; World War II)
“R101 is Burning” by Cliff Winnig (fiction/sf/1930s/airship disaster; Nazis)
“Dreams like Snowflakes” by Todd Wheeler (fiction/dark fantasy/1970s/Blizzard of ’78)
“Zeb” by Karen A. Romanko (fiction/sf/1970s/discos)
“Ticktock Girl” by Cat Rambo (fiction/sf/early 1900s/suffragettes)
“All That Remains Is the Middle” by Lon Prater (fiction/sf-fantasy/1920s/investors)
“Slipstream Fiction” by Don D’Ammassa (fiction/slipstream/1920s-1940s/novelists)
“Putting off the Past” by G.O. Clark (poem/sf/1960s/poets)
“The Fix” by Marge Simon (fiction/fantasy/1940s/inventors)
“The Last Time I Was in Vienna” by Nancy Ellis Taylor (poem/dark fantasy/1940s/post-WWII Europe)
“U8: Alexanderplatz (1989)” by C.D. Covington (fiction/fantasy/1980s/Berlin Wall)
“The Devil Went Down to the Sunset Strip” by Dayle A. Dermatis (fiction/dark fantasy/1980s/hair metal bands)
“Art Deco and the Infestation of New America” by Paul Abbamondi (fiction/sf-fantasy/1930s/Art Deco style)
“The Darkness Whispers” by Ann K. Schwader (poem/speculative/1930s/discovery of Pluto)
“Mercury 13—and Beyond” by Brenta Blevins (poem/sf/1960s/space flight)
“Nucleon” by David D. Levine (fiction/sf-fantasy/20th century/junkyards-mementos)