The Zharmae Anthology: Ends of Man

Synopsis: Pooling the creative talent and dramatic expertise of a battalion of up-and-coming authors, Ends of Man glimpses into many possible futures, sampling how the smallest of catalysts can let loose a furor of consequences.

An end can be a very physical destruction or collapse. It can be the beginning of something new, a transition or transformation. An end can be an object toward which one strives, or it can be a result; the final measure of the aria that sums up the whole symphony in one lingering, heartbreaking note.

The prize-winning short story "Last of the Human Race," by Jak Kavan, follows interstellar pilgrims on a voyage of discovery. Before they can begin to deal with where they're going, they must unravel their own past.

In this and many other offerings, travel to the stars or into the depths of a human heart. Solve a mystery or challenge the very nature of belief. Watch civilizations rise and fall. Ask questions about your most basic assumptions and stare down the ghosts of those whose stories were ended too soon.

Contributing Authors: 

Marten Hoyle, a native of Spokane, Washington, writes with a singular dark elegance that carries the reader away into his own sanctuary of words. He finds inspiration in his father, a talented painter, and in the rest of his family. Further, the seeds of his creativity are borne on the shoulders of a shadowed insight that pursues him even into dreams. His selection Going Home is a rich tale, luxuriously told. In it, Hoyle hauntingly unfolds a dark mystery and the profundity of grief in the life of a young man whose father's suicide may tear his family apart.

Austen J. Brauker is a tribal member of the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians from Manistee, Michigan. A seasoned artist in innumerable medias ranging from visual art and traditional crafts to original music and a broad and varied career as an author, he is a man of bottomless talents. His writing style is uniquely, almost transcendently lyrical, and the reader can find his heritage whispering in the margins of every page. His selection The Genome Kunstler is a love story that takes us back through time and across oceans to what seems as though it would be a familiar setting: post-war Germany. But to survey it through entirely new eyes, and to find there an entirely new darkness, is an experience that must be read to be believed.

Savannah Thompson lives in Reno, Nevada while pursuing her Masters Degree in English and has been writing stories about the strange and idiosyncratic curiosities hidden inside our everyday existence since the tender age of 13. With her special talent for twisting a familiar story into a new and exotic shape, The World After is a post-apocalyptic re-imagining of classic Greek myth. Curiosity is a driving force behind both discovery and utter destruction.

Jak Kavan was born in a coastal Ireland town, the youngest of six brothers and sisters. He is currently married with two children of his own. His impressive short story, Echoes of Kennedy, follows a brilliant scientist on a journey to fulfill the desires closest to his heart. His prize winning masterpiece, Last of the Human Race, follows interstellar pilgrims on a voyage of discovery: Before they can begin to deal with where they're going, they must unravel their own past.

CL Redding is a writer/blogger/photographer and lifelong philosopher who makes her home in the Pacific Northwest. Something of a renaissance woman, her journey through life has spanned continents. The Money Shot is magical realism piece in the tradition of Calvino's COSMICOMICS, and gazes through the camera lens into the abyss of inevitability vs. the persistance of humanity.

Johanna Lipford, though native to California, presently resides in Rome, Italy, and works as a translator (Italian to English.) With a background in the aerospace industry, education, and even real estate, it is only recently that her writing has taken flight, winning several competitions. She writes because she has something to say that she believes needs to be heard, and so that all of the people she knew will not die when she does. Grandma tells an entirely new creation myth, where the collapse of one way of life births another in the endless physical and psychological struggle of human experience. Transmitted Man is a short story in the form of a play that poses questions both ethical and existential against a backdrop of the surreal.

Matthew Hance is happily married with a four-year-old son, and even though he lives in Columbus, Ohio, he's a diehard Nittany Lion fan. For him, writing is the most intimate of art forms, and he is inspired by the desire to capture and hold a reader, to show them something they've never seen before. CML is a journey into an eerily familiar tomorrow, venturing into the extremes of human behavior by skipping far ahead down the paths we now travel. Tower 5 is a study of control and chaos; a completely self-contained society bound by unbreakable rules and structure. Even within such restraints, humanity will out ―but what will be its ultimate shape, and how will it cope with the unexpected?

Daniel F. De Bono is a professional writer with more than twenty years experience and innumerable credits, both fiction and non-fiction, to his resume. A versatile and eloquently imaginative writer, he has also published fiction under the name Gareth Blackmoore. Born and educated in Michigan, he now resides in Florida with his wife, Melissa, and son, Zachary.Tattoo You follows a detective on the trail of a murderer that defies comprehension. Agnatha Anathema is a frightening glimpse at danger lurking beneath the waters of Lake Michigan. Clone Drones and the Real Thing explores a future where that wish ever in the back of our minds may indeed come true.

Oscar Francesco started writing at the age of six. His first story was an adaptation of Noah's Ark incorporating robots and dinosaurs, and he has continued to write ever since. He comes up with ideas by walking around in circles, continuously. As this tends to alarm people, he uses props to create the illusion that he is doing something such as practicing basketball (even though he doesn't play basketball) or following trails of breakfast cereal. The Florist is an enchanting and imaginative romp through a bafflingly absurd landscape of crime, adventure, politics, and misdirection.

Charles Redding, a Pacific Northwest native, is currently a student at the University of Colorado. As a life-long creator of characters and worlds, he has a gift for transporting the reader entirely into his own domain. Water City is the story of a young man struggling to survive and save his family in the dawn of what comes beyond world‘s end. This and other glimpses into our own dubious future will be featured in The Broken World, a forthcoming series.