Dreams of the Moon Cover

Dreams of the Moon

Lunar stories of our past and future

Since before even the first words were written, the cosmic pull of the Moon has captivated humanity. It has shaped our myths, our night lives, our songs, our symbols, and indeed, our stories.

Arrive on a Moon colony under revolt against its corporate owners. Befriend a strange, yellow-eyed hound. Witness the divine meeting of Beninese celestial spirits. Uncover a suspicious murder following the 1969 Moon landing. Take a weightless tourist trip to the lunar surface. Feel the call of the tides under the Moon’s spectral glow.

This issue of the London Reader explores the Moon—both its effect on our lives and our longing for it—through short stories of our past and future from Paulene Turner, Matt Slaybaugh, Amy B Moreno, Maria Donovan, Nathan Alling Long, Sarah Oluwatomi Michaels, Pippa Gladhill, Emma Raymond, and Magdalena Stefanni.

The collection includes a special extended interview with Chris Hadfield—the former commander of the International Space Station, YouTube sensation, and author of the forthcoming novel The Apollo Murders. It also features an interview with Susan Beth Pfeffer, the New York Times bestselling author of Life as We Knew It.

Rounding out the issue is poetry and art exploring our intimate relationship with the Moon by Alison Burns, Dominic Weston, Finola Scott, Ruswa Fatehpuri, S Rupsha Mitra, Sait Mingü, Felicia Simion, Roger Leege, Gemma Campbell, and Susan diRende—including a poem by Lisa Rosenberg, the former space program engineer and poet laureate, and poems by one of Italy’s most celebrated contemporary poets, Chandra Livia Candiani, translated to English for the first time by Roy Duffield and Elisabetta Taboga.

Dreams of the Moon seeks to find the place that the Moon holds in our imaginations, in our hopes, and in our fears. The Moon has shaped our past and continues to shape our future. What now does the Moon mean to us, and how will the stories we tell about the Moon today shape our future on its surface?

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