Orion's Belt

13/09/2024

Our August 2024 issue is now live! The kinds of adventure stories that last and endure are those that create an intensified, heightened image of life. In the past, these stories were called “romances”; H.G. Wells famously called his stories “scientific romances.” They are not quite mundane depictions of ordinary life, and they are not quite ideal fantasies; they are somewhere in between, soaked with the kind of vividness and mystery that is rare and fleeting in everyday existence. The world of adventure romance is not happier or more prosperous, necessarily, but it does exude more meaning and wonder and vitality. Both the story and poem of the month evoke the same mix of fear and exhilaration that defines the best adventure stories past and present, and the essay of the month discusses the enduring value of adventure fiction.

13/09/2024

Our July 2024 issue is now live! Art does not just copy life, nor should it. Simply repeating the sensations and images of society, without adding insight or clarity, is meaningless. Great art depicts the emotions and tensions of life, but often in unexpected ways, and always with a vividness and intensity that the diffuseness of ordinary life lacks. This month’s essay discusses the ways in which art does and does not reflect life, and this month’s poem and story demonstrate how speculative fiction is uniquely capable to unsettle ordinary assumptions and expectations of life. Pre-existing beliefs are revealed to be too insular and reductive, and the seemingly strange and bizarre are revealed to be surprisingly familiar and poignant.

13/09/2024

Our June 2024 issue is now live! What makes a narrative more than a collection of ideas and plot points is the sense of experience it cultivates: the vivid impressions felt by particular individuals in a particular place. Stories deal purely and directly with life, not disembodied abstractions. Context and environment make themes more than dry platitudes and characters more than outlines. The difference between life and sterile abstractions is the amorphous and unpredictable nature of interactions: between individuals, and between individuals and their expectations. Our month’s essay discusses the need to create a vivid environment, and both the story and the poem of the month excel at articulating a sense of place. The use of vibrant and specific details breathes life into an empty form.

13/09/2024

Our May 2024 issue is now live! Making a work of art feel truly new is not about narrative gimmicks or experimental structures. There is no completely original idea; everything has been done before. Art is fundamentally about human experiences, which remain similar throughout different cultures and time periods. Great art feels original because it combines past ideas and techniques into a specific and detail-rich vision that transcends the detritus of superficial observations and inert routines that can make everyday life so distracting. No storytellers do this better than Ghibli, so this month’s essay demonstrates what writers can learn from them. The poem and story of the month exude that crispness and intensity of experience that makes art feel new, escaping the bo***ge of platitudes and sentimental clichés.

22/06/2024

Our April 2024 issue is now live! The start of a new Orion’s Belt year means the exploration of stranger and more enigmatically ethereal worlds that are nonetheless grounded in the passions and yearnings of the psyche. Our story and poem this month both revisit fantastical and fabulist scenarios from unusual perspectives, revealing suppressed and half-felt impressions. The month’s essay continues the focus on fairy tales, contemplating how successive generations find meaning and connection in the oft-told tales of the distant past. https://www.orions-belt.net/issues

17/07/2023

Our May 2023 issue is now live! Speculative fiction depends on the discrepancy between external appearances and symbolic, latent significances. It departs from the observable, superficial details of everyday life to create a vast, estranging world that nonetheless has metaphorical significance, reawakening understanding and insight from the paralysis of custom and routine, as this month’s essay discusses. Both the story and the poem we publish this month deal with knowledge and its aftermath, how to respond to an unexpected, ethereal expansion of awareness.

https://www.orions-belt.net/issues

17/05/2023

Our April 2023 issue is now live! Artistic creation cannot be faked. AI generation is nothing but a grotesque parody of a process that expresses the imagination and perspective of a curious individual and in doing so illuminates the sorrows and longings of the world. The poem of rebirth and the story of fractured wandering we publish this month testify to the vitality of artistic creation, and our essay this month demands that we reaffirm our commitment to that creative process.

17/05/2023

Our April 2023 issue is now live! Artistic creation cannot be faked. AI generation is nothing but a grotesque parody of a process that expresses the imagination and perspective of a curious individual and in doing so illuminates the sorrows and longings of the world. The poem of rebirth and the story of fractured wandering we publish this month testify to the vitality of artistic creation, and our essay this month demands that we reaffirm our commitment to that creative process.

https://www.orions-belt.net/issues

All our stories are collected here in these beautiful issues. Fellow cosmonauts, these are portals to the worlds our writers create.   Orion’s Belt 2022 Year-End Anthology The enigmatic, lyrically poignant works we published in 2022 ground themselves in the trembling and intimate while reaching t...

15/01/2023

Take a look at our 2022 year-end anthology! The enigmatic, lyrically poignant works we published in 2022 ground themselves in the trembling and intimate while reaching toward the mythic and infinite. They are works of acute feeling and dazzling imagination, looking out of tear-specked eyes at worlds much more haunting and more strange than they at first appear. Existential suffering conceals itself in the mundane, while the unsettling darkness can provide unexpected grace. Climb aboard our starship and depart for these mystifying worlds. Buy it here: https://www.amazon.com/Orions-Belt-2022-Year-End-Anthology/dp/B0BNTYZV2X/

The enigmatic, lyrically poignant works we published in 2022 ground themselves in the trembling and intimate while reaching toward the mythic and infinite. They are works of acute feeling and dazzling imagination, looking out of tear-specked eyes at worlds much more haunting and more strange than...

15/01/2023

Here is our August 2022 issue, now posted here! In the final issue of our second year, we consider the ambiguous, amorphous experiences and connections that exist outside the didactic bombast of mainstream speculative fiction. Elusive dreams of an idealized kingdom haunt a tempestuous mind. The boundaries between life and death blur in a solemn, elegiac nocturne. This month’s essay considers the value of works like these in a fraught, uncertain literary landscape. https://www.orions-belt.net/issues

15/01/2023

Here is our July 2022 issue, now posted here! Mythologies are not simply collections of old, dusty stories. They provide a window for appreciating the strange, the ambiguous, and the wondrous. Breaking from the desiccating malaise of mundane reality, they provide us with psychological and philosophical insight. This month’s essay contemplates how we should think about myth in our fractured, alienated age. Both our poem and our story for this month demonstrate the weight of the mythic past, cosmic yet intimate and passionate, bearing upon the ambitions and routines of the present. https://www.orions-belt.net/issues

17/08/2022

Enjoy our new June 2022 issue! The strange deserves to be praised. It is an antidote for complacency and materialism, a reminder that statistics and logic provide only a pale, abstract picture of our wild, amorphous reality. This month’s essay is a tribute to strangeness, and both works published this month it. Be immersed in two bleak, violent worlds that nonetheless latently possess beauty and clarity. https://www.orions-belt.net/issues

17/08/2022

Enjoy our May 2022 issue! Contrary to the consumerist ethos that sees stories merely as a delivery for plot information, a disposable resource, this issue focuses on the importance of re-reading. When we return to great works, we find that they and we have both changed. This issue features an essay on re-reading as well as two works that deserve to be re-read: a poem that blurs together magic and natural observation, and a plaintive story about honor, regret, and connection. https://www.orions-belt.net/issues

17/08/2022

Enjoy our April 2022 issue. Literature should challenge, shaking us out of our complacency instead of providing easy messages and morals. This month’s essay analyzes the value of difficult literature in an era of echo chambers and superficial moralizing. These two fictional pieces embody that ideal of challenging the facile and reductionist, encouraging us to contemplate moral uncertainty and difficult decisions. A folkloric figure laments the label assigned to him, and an existentially confused woman laments the difficulty of fitting one’s life into simple archetypes.

11/05/2022

We've released our March 2022 issue! Our second year begins, and we explore the dreamlike and poignant. Contemplations of food and charity exist alongside fantastical nocturnal flights through the enigmatic cosmos and a lyrical meditation on poetic practice.
Read it: https://www.orions-belt.net/issues
Cover Art: https://www.orions-belt.net/s/Orions-belt-issue-march-2022-final.jpg

27/10/2021

We've released our Year One Anthology! Read it for free now!https://www.orions-belt.net/s/Year-One-Orions-Belt-Version-2.pdf

10/09/2021

www.orions-belt.net/archives/root-to-sapling-sapling-to-stem
Our September story is now live. Join us for a poignant tale of connection and community, about the intimate ties that shape our identities and perspectives, written by the wonderful
Wendy Nikel Author Page. This is "Root to Sapling, Sapling to Stem."

Maybe it’s these things that, despite her passing, still make me feel like we’re connected.

30/08/2021

We're pleased to present "A Generation of Darkness," written by the inimitable Lynne Sargent as our August story. It's the eerily beautiful love story of two black holes, a cosmic symphony of isolation and connection, sorrow and transcendence.

https://t.co/nCPOul3Z59?amp=1

Where love exists the universe takes note. It is light within the darkness, it is making, it is a promise that all kinds of creatures can create.

10/07/2021

Later some would claim to have seen where the crown of fire had scorched a black ring around his skull.

Our July story is now out! It's a haunting work about fate, fanaticism and complacency, lucidly demonstrating how the Chosen One title can be a curse disguised as a blessing. This is Crown of Fire, by the excellent Reuben Dendinger.

https://www.orions-belt.net/archives/the-crown-of-fire

Later some would claim to have seen where the crown of fire had scorched a black ring around his skull.

12/06/2021

You approach a door. What lies beyond it you do not know.

Our June story is now live! Join us for an enigmatic, mesmerizing tale about hope, longing, liminal spaces, and the choices we make. It's "You Do Not Need to Open the Door" by the wonderful
Alex Penland. https://t.co/02sT3aQBC9?amp=1

You do not need to open the door. It calls to everyone. You’re nothing special.

15/05/2021

Delve into the waves with us. Our May story is the wonderful piece of mermaid speculative fiction, "The Songs of the Siren." It's wistful, haunting, and even hopeful. Read it here: https://www.orions-belt.net/archives/the-songs-of-the-siren

Sylvia gazed at the tranquil sea with despair.

10/04/2021

We have a new story out for April. It's a wonderful story about grief, loss, and longing called "Joanna West's Final Five Reviews on the Day of the Apocalypse," written by Kelly Sandoval. Read it here:
www.orions-belt.net/archives/joanna-wests-final-five-reviews-on-the-day-of-the-apocalypse

1. Coya's Books and Games - 4 Stars I' ve been a customer of Coya's for over 40 years, and it's always attracted a bit of an odd element. Heck, my husband and I turned a few heads, back in the day. I'm happy to listen to the woman who preaches about the healing power of essential oils in the self

10/04/2021

If you still haven't read our March story, The Truth About Woopy, you should read it here. It's by the great Romanian writer Liviu Surugiu. We'll be publishing our April story soon, but for now, check out The Truth About Woopy: https://www.orions-belt.net/archives/truth-woopy

Nabi is six years old and not the sort to fear his own shadow.

04/04/2021

If you're interested in literary speculative fiction, we want to see your story. We want fantastical concepts and weird structures, combined with grounded, poignant character work. Submit to us at orions-belt.net/submissions.

Submit to Orion.Read the clarifications below, then give us your submission. The BasicsStories should be submitted to [email protected]. All stories must be under 1200 words (not including the title and byline). All stories over 1200 words will sadly be rejected automatically. All sto...

03/04/2021