Foreword

First came floods, then came fire.

This has been a long, destructive summer. Floods in Libya, China, Korea; earthquake in Morocco; fire in Hawaii, Greece, Canada. Thousands of deaths, billions in damage, and the world left on edge as we wonder what extreme weather event is going to happen next. One almost gets the feeling that the Earth is raging against the fragile commuters hurtling through the cosmos to a destination yet unknown.

One thing that has been constantly bewildering yet persistently true is that despite the tumultuous times humans endure, the vast majority of us keep pressing forward. No matter how bad it becomes, we seem programmed to push on to a next generation, and then the next. If we are a reality show of some advanced alien species who are exhilarated by watching us struggle against crazy weather and crazier world leaders; an advanced species who code plot points in the simulation to make Series, Earth more exciting and dramatic; then we seem actually capable of withstanding their narrative tsunamis no matter what they write into the plotline.

Humans bend but we do not break in the gale. Until and unless we are one day faced with total annihilation, it’s probable to imagine mankind persisting for generations to come.

In the vein of that indomitable spirit, Samjoko Magazine is proud to release our 8th Issue of poetry, prose, and art. We are as excited today to give voice to creatives around the world as we were in our inaugural Issue of Winter 2021. We plan on publishing content despite the odds for many years to come.

We would like to thank our two patrons, B&B Trade Winds of Taiwan, and Lokey Worlde, for their continued support. We ask others to join them on Patreon for as little as $3 a month, which will go towards maintaining the website and paying our contributors, which costs hundreds of dollars each year.  

We would also like to inform submitters that our Theme option is still open, and will continue to be so for further issues. You can read more about it here. As we said before, though we appreciate everyone who submits to our magazine, we still wish to see more from people who work a wider range of jobs: sanitation, night entertainment, customer service; those without college degrees; high school dropouts. Art transcends artificial boundaries society creates, and we would love to see more from unexpected places. Please don’t assume that your content isn’t for us. We’re a non-genre-specific publication for a reason.

We would also like to announce that we are now accepting spoken word and short visual media. Visit our submission guidelines for more information.

For our most dedicated readers who Subscribe, we’ll have special theme calls delivered directly to your email which will always pay higher than our usual contributor’s payment.

Finally, we are going to update our submission guidelines in lieu of the many issues with AI generated content. We discussed this topic in the Spring Issue I 2022. At the time, we felt that there was little point in prohibiting AI content because people are going to use it to cheat and invariably submit the content regardless.

That, we said, was life.

However, we will now take the step and state that we do not accept AI generated or assisted creative content. This isn’t because we think this is going to stop the submissions from coming (it won’t), but more so because if we do accept content that’s later discovered to be AI generated or assisted, we want to make sure to reveal the individual(s) to the general public. We can’t stop AI content, but we can at least call out those using it.

And with that, enjoy the Fall Issue II 2023 of Samjoko Magazine.

Photography