by Eriel Edward Red

Image by Глеб Коровко on Pexels. (All photos and videos on Pexels can be downloaded and used for free).

It didn’t begin with a knock.

A chittering noise echoed through the apartment door, like the kind one would hear from a giant insect. Galen Rodan, junior underwriter and long-time resident of the Olympus Mons Metroplex, froze just as he was about to take a sip of his genetically modified coffee.

Another chittering sound, then the sound of something large shifting its weight. Then, the doorbell, a high-pitched chime, rang.

“All right,” Galen muttered as he took a sip. “They’re actually here.”

The man set down his mug and got off his floating chair. He glanced momentarily at his laptop, which displayed an email from the Bureau of Social Reconciliation and Strategic Housing Efficiency.

  He read the message again. “In accordance with Reintegration Directive 77-B, your dwelling unit has been deemed suitable for cohabitation with a liberated Neosapien citizen undergoing urban acclimatization.”

Mel Loja is a freshman at UP Diliman. He likes reading HG Wells, Isaac Asimov, Dan Simmons, Terry Pratchett, and John Steinbeck.

by Mel Hubahib Loja

I don’t suppose you’ll let me in? All I’m saying is, it would be a lot easier to have this conversation indoors than yelling through the intercom.

No? Well I don’t blame you. Trust is in short supply these days. Among other things.

by Christine V. Lao

Christine V. Lao with her book, “Affidavit of Loss”

In the Philippines, as elsewhere, genre fiction has long had to prove its worth. Often overlooked by academic and literary spaces and dismissed as less serious than realist writing, these stories have thrived in communities—online forums, book and fan clubs, and popular magazines—where writers create for the love of imagining, and readers seek worlds that challenge, delight, or surprise.

The above image was downloaded from Freepik with a free license. The image was created by Pikisuperstar.

The Year of the Fire Horse (2026) is nearly upon us as we shed the last bits of skin from the Year of the Wood Snake (2025). The older I get, the more aware I am of the cycle of years. The decades have piled on and, taken as a whole, is a burden most heavy and overwhelming. To avoid such weight, discipline is needed in approaching the three tenses we exist in: the past, which provides the memories from which we learn and grow; the future, unknown and so easy to find despair in, and therefore must be faced with hope and determination if we are to go on; and the present, as in living as wholly as possible in it, and taken in moments, in scenes, in chapters.  

In stories. 

We are the stories we tell ourselves and each other.