Bewildering Stories welcomes...

John Olson

On the Net, everyone is virtually in the same place; only local clocks differ. John is in the GMT minus 8 time zone. In Real Life, he’s in Seattle. Never mind global warming and plate tectonics: the sheer weight of Bewildering Stories talent located in Washington state (Ian Arbuckle, R D Larson, Danielle Parker, Jerry Wright and now John Olson plus others I don’t know about) will cause a pole shift any time now; the world will finally realize it’s supposed to revolve around Canada South.

“The New Neighbors,” in this issue, is listed as a poem in the index for two reasons. First, I think it’s a prose poem. Second, John Olson has achieved recognition as a poet. I’ll throw in another reason for good measure: I’m a fan of any writer who’s a fan of Arthur Rimbaud and Marcel Duchamp — especially in the original.

Well, okay, we thrive on the uncategorizable. “The New Neighbors” is a story as well as a poem. What if the neighbors living in the upstairs apartment are space aliens? And really alien space aliens? But not so strange that they don’t do laundry or share things with you and can’t be heard rummaging around beyond the inadequate soundproofing. And you can communicate with them after a fashion: they get hurt feelings and they share good times; at last you realize they have the same existential concerns as we.

The aliens’ surrealism flowers up beautifully out of the ordinary. But in the end we realize they’re just foreigners: they look funny and have weird customs. Just like us.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, John. We hope to hear from you again soon and often!

John Olson’s biographical sketch — complete with a link that will expand on it greatly — can be accessed here.