ANYONE interested in figuring out an art form’s place within a society, a culture, a civilization, begins thinking about such things as waves and cycles, growth, peaks, plateaus and declines, as if everything’s on a long-term rollercoaster-style chart. The universe pulses and breathes, as does every part of it. Far be it for our tiny human brains to understand the patterns or plan– but we try. A key part of this modest project is understanding where literature is— where it’s been and may possibly be going. Determine that, and we might just own the literary future. In the same way, maybe, Brian Epstein saw a raw working-class band performing in a smoky underground club in Liverpool, England, and realized that he witnessed the future of popular music.

One writer we’ve published, Zach Smith, writes imaginative stories centered around ideas of time, space, aging– and about the universe itself. His newest story, “Millennia After Millennia After Millennia,” which we’re running as our newest feature, delves speculatively into those questions as much as anything we’ve seen from him. We hope you find it entertaining and thought-provoking!

“One hundred years ago, we took off from the launchpad of Quark. Our planet was dying, and we set forth with all the raw materials we needed to build a new society on a planet in the Zygorch Star system. The starship was a wonder, the pinnacle of what our society could create. She was covered fore and aft with panels that drew power directly from the stars, sails that could ride the wind of the stars, and twenty-seven rockets to blast her off the planet. We called her the Eringostar.”

The old man took a sip of his whiskey, a drink he claimed to invent, the recipe a secret he shared with few, as the potion was quite powerful.