Sir Reginald F. Grump XXIII presents...
The journal of unlikely entomology
Editors' Note:
Dearest friends, both mammalian and arthropod in nature, it gives us the greatest pleasure to welcome you to the inaugural issue of The Journal of Unlikely Entomology. What you see before you is a labor of love. Each specimen herein has been carefully collected, and is subsequently presented for your delight. You will find no glass-cased creatures, pinned and pressed, none who met their most ignoble ends in the confines of a killing jar. No! Rather you are entering the rarest of insectariums, holding the most wondrous species yet discovered by humankind. We feel it only fair to warn you, however — some of them do bite.
Here you will find Arachne, weaving for her lost love; a group of school children who are among the last witnesses to a dying world; an immortal cowboy, his most unusual horse, and the scorpion he tries to befriend; a world devoid of both mosquitoes and love; a museum, slowly being devoured from within; the rise of a new kind of humanity, triggered by an earworm of a song; and a terrifying childhood nightmare, made horribly real.
And so, without further ado, and with much thanks to our most generous sponsor, one Sir Reginald F. Grump XXIII, we invite you to step inside and discover for yourself the beauty that skitters and crawls within.
Table of Contents:
Arachne by J. M. McDermott
Love in the Absence of Mosquitoes by Mari Ness
So Speaketh the Trauma Gods by John Medaille
Plague of Locusts by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley
Museum Beetles by Simon Kewin
They Wait by Steve Barber
The Cowboy, the Horse, and the Scorpion by Nathaniel Lee