Dear Reader,
The last few months have taken roughly ten thousand years, a time dilation so bad it's got me shouting Murph! and reading Dylan Thomas poetry. The thing I hated about Interstellar was that they named the bad guy Dr. Mann and told us "he was the best of us" over and over. All Matt Damon was missing to broadcast his evil was a mirror-Spockian goatee because as metaphors go, Dr. Mann is as subtle as a frying pan to the head, a real this-is-your-brain-on-drugs level of metaphor, and please, are there any questions? But time dilation is real, and dry land is not a myth, I've seen it, along with all the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. And so I missed the May issue entirely.
I tell my students each semester that there were years of my life when I was younger that I basically only spoke in Simpsons quotes, and it's an exaggeration but not by much. Sometimes it's easier to find the right feelings to express in quotes (because you can't just have your characters announce how they feel. That makes me feel angry, which, okay, is a Futurama quote, but still).
So, here goes: In April, my dad fell and hit his head (Steve Urkel saying, "I've fallen and I can't get up!" because the 90s medical alert version is too real). He went into the hospital and didn't come out again (something from Scrubs, but all that comes to mind is Ted saying, "Too much ha ha, pretty soon boo hoo," which still feels apt). I spent much of May and June in New Orleans organizing things (Cowboy Mouth's Fred LeBlanc wailing, "Take me back to New Orleans and drop me at my door!"). And then he died (I reach for a quote but nothing comes to mind).
When I sat down to write this, I told myself to stay positive and not get too melancholy (always look on the bright side of life?), but there's a surprising amount of work that goes into organizing the end of someone's life. Death is big—so big it bends the bonds of time and space. And so, the last few months have somehow felt like an age has passed, but also like I looked down for a moment in April and when I looked back up it was mid-June and there was so much stuff to do. Like I'm Théoden of Rohan and Wormtongue's spell has been lifted and I'm shouting "Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! Ride for Ruin and the world's ending!" but only if Théoden had a tiny voice in the back of his head that's Milhouse Van Houten saying, "So this is what it feels like when doves cry."
Take care of yourself, dear reader, and as always, thank you for reading,
Leon
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Leon Perniciaro, Editor
Haven Spec Magazine
© 2025 Leon Perniciaro
Leon Perniciaro is the editor of Haven Spec Magazine, an English PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut, and a member of the Game Design and Development faculty at Quinnipiac University. A citizen of the Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb and a New Orleanian, he now resides in New England, where he's terrified of both the climate crisis and the Great Filter. His academic research centers on the intersections of Indigeneity, race, and the environment, with a dissertation project shaping up around ideas of extraction and the various ways that settler society tries to claim Indigeneity for itself. Follow him on Bluesky @leonp.