GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Issue 0

Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine #0

by Kaolin Fire (Editor), Charlie Jane Anders, Joshua Babcock

Issue 0 leads with Debbie Moorhouse's Sundown, a near-future science fiction reflection on death and life. It follows through with a solid variety of works from semi-gritty fantasy; far-future time travel; modern sci-fi humor; historical paranormal; mainstream literary; a fable; poetry that doesn't rhyme but has a rhythm (involving coffee, mayhem, love, death, and television); reports concerning poetry and software and narrating a journey to a poetry conference in Taiwan; and art of all sorts, from humorous and surreal line drawings through haunting brush work and even a single-panel comic from a celebrated illustrator.

Comprising:

Stories

Sundown by Debbie Moorhouse;
Painsharing by John Walters;
A Yellow Sun with a Purple Crayon by Michelle Garren Flye;
A Problem With The Law by Neil Davies;
Songs Of The Dead by Sarah Singleton and Chris Butler;
One in Ten Thousand by Athena Workman;
4 Short Parables Revolving Around the Theme of Travel by A.B. Goelman;
The Doctrine of the Arbitrariness of the Sign by Shweta Narayan;
The Infinite Monkeys Protocol by Lavie Tidhar;
Moments Of Brilliance by Jason Stoddard;
Cutting A Figure by Charlie Anders;
The Eternal's Last Request by Joshua Babcock;
Where Water Fails by Rusty Barnes;
Longs to Run by David Bulley;
Pepé In Critical Condition by Tomi Shaw;
Sown Seeds by Errid Farland;
She Dreams in Colors, She Dreams in Hope by F. John Sharp;
Chicken by John Mantooth;
The Tale that Launched a Thousand Ships by Janrae Frank.

Poetry

Trying to Make Coffee by William Doreski;
Fade In Fade Out by Beverly A. Jackson;
As a Child by Kristine Ong Muslim;
No Motor Home by Kenneth Ryan;
Past Due: Final Notice by Kenneth Ryan;
Fortune by Kenneth Ryan;
Dialogue with the Hollows of Your Body by Benjamin William Buchholz;
Ah Those Letters in the Attics or Modern Lit by Lida Broadhurst;
The first day of the last day my face fell off by Rohith Sundararaman.

Reports

Invitation To Kaohsiung by Allen McGill;
Poetry Code by Robert Peake.

Art

Gutmouth by Konrad Kruszewski (cover);
Kmantis Hunch5 by Konrad Kruszewski;
Cosmonaut's Last Day by Jamie Dee Galey;
Changing Destiny by Fefa;
Bird and Ghost by Sarah Coyne;
Media Hype by Jamie Dee Galey;
The Kiss by Konrad Kruszewski;
Having Fun at the Party by Fran Giordano;
Jack Rabbit by Jamie Dee Galey.

Comics

Belly Busters by Bruce Boston and Larry Dickison.

Why not download our free .epub of teasers from this issue?

Genres: Short Stories

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Kaolin Fire is a conglomeration of ideas, side projects, and experiments. He loves to program in c, php, jsp; talk in the third person; write fiction; and teach. He supports himself by way of his partnership in a web development firm, and dabbles in doing the odd e-book cover for Renaissance eBooks, and teaching at a community college. Kaolin is especially interested in trends of technology, ritual, consciousness, dreaming, artificial intelligence, the nature of intelligence, the meaning of life, reincarnation, religion, and programming (of all sorts). He's Editor-in-Chief of GUD Magazine and instigated Issue 0. He's had short fiction published in Strange Horizons, Right Hand Pointing, and Tuesday Shorts, among others. A more complete bio and publication credits can be found on his personal website.

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

eclectic and pretty good, all in all. and I copy-edited it. sort of. my particular favorites: stories from flye, narayan, stoddard, anders, shaw, mantooth; poetry from kenneth ryan. i shouldn't say what i disrecommend, since my feelings may be influenced by the editing experience... :)

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

This first issue of GUD really defies genre. Not all of it is great, but a lot of it is fun to read.

200 pages of variety, and as a pdf file it took longer to read.

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first issue of GUD starts with a superb cover and some excellent stories, though the last half while still good has only very short stories that are fun but not that memorable.

However:

Sundown by D. Moorhouse - investigator Jack tries to find a missing boy and help his wounded partner Chris in a nightmarish future setting

Painsharing by J. Walters - Humanity's descendants want to express their love for their ancestors

Songs of the Dead by S. Singleton and C. Butler - Victoriana with mad doctors, aspiring painters and much more

are stories that stayed with me for a long time after reading them.

The art is superb and the rest of the stories are good too; all in all an excellent debut issue

[Ann Hutchinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://sciencefictionmusings.blogspot... for full review.

[Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only is GUD an increasingly excellent magazine (just check out their reviews!) but my work is in a couple of issues. Which makes me VERY happy.