Litzine, Maxwell Stern (words) and Timothy Dilich (illustration), Studio Mosaic, studiomosaic.org, $10
In one of Star Trek’s more enlightened moments (The Wrath of Khan, 1982), while explaining the usefulness of a life- or-death test that’s a no-win scenario, William Shatner remarked, “How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life.” The lead characters that populate the three short fictions in Paradox Lost’s have all been forced to deal with their mortality and the need to come to terms with loss and failure in their own no-win scenarios. They’re realizing — perhaps for the first time — that their wants may be unattainable: an incarcerated murderer has one more target to kill, but is too feeble to escape; a badly-injured soldier wants to die, but can’t find a bullet; an old man whose memories are dissolving, struggles to retain the story of his great love. Each of them interacts with the inevitability of death in their own way, and each is certain they’re on the desirable side of the blurring line between right and wrong. “There’s a thin line between the worthy and the worthless,” comments the jailbird in “The Escape.” Protagonists in stories of this length can be easy to dismiss, but the players Maxwell Stern has created are lasting, primarily due to the extreme positions they find themselves in. His prose leads to questions that aren’t explicitly stated, ensuring the reader will still be thinking about the stories once the cover is closed. The cover itself can live on, as well; it’s printed on seeded paper. Planting this zine is encouraged. (Scott Bryson)