Fourth Anniversary Winter Issue

Welcome to the 4th Anniversary Winter Awards and Staff Issue. That's right, this issue has twin purposes: to recognize superb writing in our pages over the past four years, with our Fourth Annual Retro Awards, and to showcase several Staff Pieces that we think you're going to love. If you're snowed in under blizzard conditions, like our Chief Editor, or just can't find anything on TV that doesn't depress you (I'm about to watch the 9th film in the Sharpe's series - thank goodness for the BBC and Netflix!), you'll find plenty here to intrigue, tantalize, and even scandalize: Mary Pat Mann's two nonfiction pieces, a flash fic feast by John Ritchie, and a parade of award pieces from issues past. - Asher Black, Editor-in-Chief

Review: PsiberDreaming Con 2006

by Mary Pat Mann

Sam Spade (and Humphrey Bogart) termed a priceless art object, "the stuff that dreams are made of", but that hasn't stopped a growing number from becoming dream detectives that search for far more in their dreams and the dreams of others. Associate Editor Mary Pat Mann went to the PsiberDreaming Conference to do her own research. She takes us there in this report, a conscious journey across the liminal divide and into the unconscious, where the mind spends more active time than we might acknowledge.

Mermaids

by Mary Pat Mann

Sex or innocence? What is the mermaid's role in culture? For some of us, encountering them first as children, it was the possibility of something beyond. Mermaids represented the wish that the world not be an accident of binary mathematics, an anomaly that will one day work itself out, as the whole moves relentlessly toward entropy. We were in danger of the rigidity we were taught to impose on our perceptions becoming the object of those perceptions, and never escaping the prison of what we expect. Others encountered mermaids later in life, fascinated with their challenge to the conventions of sexual experience. MYTHOLOG asked Associate Editor Mary Pat Mann to write on the subject of Mermaids, and she has taken their story where she will. Complimented by illustrations from Teresa Tunaley and the mermaid mummy photo here generously provided by our star proofer, Rod Walker, she's given us an almost Fortean bestiary (or should we say anthropology?) of Mermaids in human culture.

Fast Food

by John Ritchie

Quick bite? Associate Editor John Ritchie provides us a seasonal snack, with this flash-fic contribution. It's illustrated by the illustrious, industrious Teresa Tunaley.

Retro Awards 2006

Each Winter issue we do a retrospective of past issues - and honor a number of pieces that typify what we're doing here at MYTHOLOG. The Retro is kind of like our own Grammys, Emmys, or Tony Awards. We don't pass out statues, but we do call attention to literature that has made a distinct splash here at MYTHOLOG and for our audience. Past retrospectives have honored work by Mary Pat Mann, Em Wycedee, and Michelle Erica Green, among others. This year, we're giving the Retro and special applause to sixteen pieces, a number chosen for the number of past issues we've published. These sixteen, in alphabetical order, are:

• Everything's a Secret, But All is Known by Mari Miller-Lamb: A dystopian short. (Spring 2004)
• Fist Mountain by Liesl Jobson: A story of cherishing the dead. (Summer 2003)
• For Those Who Have Died In His Feet by William Lengeman III: A commentary on war. (Autumn 2003)
• Ghost of a Night by Charles Lipsig: Behind every face, a story. (Winter 2003)
• Life: a ghost story by Phil Rockstroh: Finds the tension between meaning and lethargy. (Winter 2003)
• Magic in Atlanta by Mary Pat Mann: a Review of the Mythic Journeys Con. (Summer 2006)
• Over a Kiss by Anthony Miller: Rushing in and the cost of caution. (Summer 2004)
• Resting Place by Bill West (Illustrated by Mary Pat Mann): Persistence and disintegration. (Spring 2006)
• Scaffolding by Tristan Moss: About meaning and shared meaning.(Winter 2005)
• Shaving by Bruce Holland Rogers: The theme is loss. (Autumn 2005)
• Vacancy by John Grey: A reminder that life is terminal. (Autumn 2004)
• We Painted Red by Eric C. Stever (Autumn 2006)
• Wild Goose Harvest by Kelly Searsmith: Disappointment in love. (Winter 2003)
• Wishing by T.R. Nunes: Envy and other illicit desires. (Spring 2005)
• Workday Adventurer by Mark Alan Gunnells: Fantasy vs. the daily grind. (Spring 2006)
• Workers of the World by M. Lamb: A workday fantasy. (Winter 2004)

Likewise, we've decided to honor one cover and one illustration from previous issues. These two Retro winners are the Illustration for John Grey's Echo by Teresa Tunaley (Spring 2005), and the Autumn 2006 Cover, also by Teresa Tunaley. Honorable mention goes to Mary Pat Mann for her Illustration of Bill West's Resting Place. (Spring 2006)