April 2025

The fifth year of Orion’s Belt commences with more nuanced speculative explorations of deeply human yearnings and laments, the throbbing soul of interpersonal storytelling, or what William Faulkner called “the human heart in conflict with itself.” This month’s essay praises Ray Bradbury, whose wry but deeply humanistic mode of storytelling shaped the modern notion of what constitutes good speculative fiction in ways that are so deeply ingrained nowadays that understanding their impact is difficult. Though Bradbury died over a decade ago, his influence continues, as demonstrated by this month’s story and poem, which mix together speculative concepts with heartfelt and poignant storytelling about transformation and yearning liminality.