EARLIER today we made a post which was an Introduction to our newest fun feature story, "Quest of the Globules" by John Haymaker. Unfortunately, the Globules had us so mesmerized, we made the original post without the necessary link enabling subscribers to read the story! Which after all is the whole point. So we're sending out this follow-up, with link in the title of the story-- but also: here. No excuses exist now for not reading it! Thanks!! -New Pop Lit

WHY do we have "Pop Lit" in our name? What's that about? Isn't anything pop scorned right now? (In truth, isn't it because most well-hyped pop music at the moment is corporate-produced generically-imagined garbage?) The great thing about the word "pop" is it has several meanings depending upon context. Popular. Populist (with a political edge). Pop Art in the Andy Warhol sense.

by John Haymaker I. The Great Echo A vibrant sound had reached Globiliad, a planet 10 billion trillion light years from Earth and inhabited by a highly evolved alien species known as Globules. Their commander, General Nimble, organized a quest to locate the sounds’ source. His assembled forces, a brigade of multicolored Globules the exact size of tennis balls, streaked across space fleet as a comet’s tail.

NEW POP FICTION! The Globules pinpointed the sound’s source as a jumble of radio signals emanating from planet Earth, and they thereupon commenced to traverse the broad expanse of space-time in microseconds toward the sound. On the way, they binge-watched Netflix, Prime, YouTube and learned our languages, even dead ones, consuming all knowledge thus far attained on earth. They grew keen on pop culture and acculturated to Earth’s vibe well before landing.

LESSONS FOR WRITERS? RECENTLY, my co-editor Kathleen and I watched a DVD recording of the Verdi opera Aida. A performance at New York City's Metropolitan Opera from 1988, starring Aprile Millo and Placido Domingo. We were reminded how great opera, especially grand opera, can be at its best. We'd seen the opera before, live, twelve or so years ago when we both worked at the Detroit Opera House.

Hi! My name is Delia Tramontina and I am a longtime friend of our beloved poet, s… Delia Tramontina needs your support for Support Chris's Journey to Healing

Is the Cost to Be Civil is a gripping sci-fi thriller that delves into the world of AI and identity. Based on a short story by Tom Ray, the film follows an elder named Albert as he navigates a mysteri...

NEW POETRY we wore our best hunter-green waited patiently as men took a different kind of field we craved sustenance a resurrection a flight a waiting by window in the purple light under wrong tin roof what we tossed into sky we threw away our wing-missiles pigskins of self talons landing burrowing deep out of view what craft drunk disturbance in the flapping…

AN ANALYSIS (engraving by Willy Stower) THE MOST TELLING aspect of today's literary scene is even the most loyal servants to the status quo system are barely making it. Having to edit, and struggle to promote, their generic Substacks while paying outrageous rents in the Imperial City of New York. Yet they refuse to leave the ship's bridge! Rigidly adhering to their obsolete "high modern" standards though the ship of Literature lists at an ever sharper angle, waiting to slide beneath the waves, into the depths.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."-William Faulkner Meaning: Life consists of ongoing narrative threads, like musical motifs in a vast symphony. ONE of our themes as a literary project is the relationship of American writing to American history. That nothing exists in a vacuum. That art is an expression of time and place, that it springs from the roots of a culture and represents the authentic voice of a people.

by J.B. Stevens Robert Forsyth’s heart longed for Scotland. The American Colonials spoke with an odd accent, their manners were disgusting, and the food was ghastly. Despite the challenges, they’d become his people. Their love of freedom and indomitable spirit was overwhelming. The United States was his true home. This new nation gave him everything. He was proud to serve her.

NEW FICTION (c/o hiltondotcom) My career as a Seattle restaurateur has really taken off. A food magazine recently referred to me as “the grande dame of the Northwest dining scene.” On a dark gray day, in the pouring rain, you pull up outside my flagship restaurant in a brand-new black Corvette. When you roll down the window, my employees recognize your distinguished profile and say, “It’s him!

BIG LITERARY NEWS IN THE BIG PUSH back to humanity and reality, Wred Fright's new zine Frighty is at the forefront. IN THE AFTERMATH of the Halloween season, with smashed pumpkins and out-of-control squirrels everyplace, it's appropriate that another issue of Frighty-- #3-- appears on the scene. Does the pumpkin on the cover foretell the fate of the established literary realm?

NEW FICTION (EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, I know, editors aren't supposed to run their own work on their litmags, but I do it anyway. You might say I'm the Donald Trump of this modest little literary site.) He dreamt of a ballroom. A big ballroom. BIG. In capitals. An actual dream. He'd first had the dream at age twelve. Or maybe seventeen, when he was a cadet at a military academy, sleeping in a dorm.

by Jeff Nazzaro (image c/o ktla) It’s Veteran’s Day, 2019, and the Metrolink commuter train into LA is all but empty. The private university I teach at instead gives us something called Autumn Day …

What's happening out in the world? As opposed to, say, in stray literary areas of gentrified New York, where what's happening among a self-absorbed media elite seems to be an article in Harper's magazine about, er, self-absorption. We say, enough! Time for writers to not be as insular as an AI chatbot, but to become interested in other people. To plunge into real-world human experience-- the one edge we have over our new programmed, computer-generated competitors-- then write about it.

NEW FICTION Crowded. I move across the car and stand in the doorway. It’s the rear of the front end of a double car. Just before the train leaves the station, a tall, thin man hurries on and thumps down into the empty aisle seat by the door across from me. He looks up at me. Then he looks again. He keeps doing it.

AN ONGOING BATTLE (cover to the French version of a Robert McAlmon memoir about the 1920’s Lost Generation) TWO THINGS recently caught my attention. FIRST was a quote from Susan Sontag giving…

NEW POETRY (publicdomainpicturesdotnet) Hello, my name is Hello.Yes, it rhymes with yellow, mellow, Jell-O. You know.I don't talk much, I just drink. Put me in a taxi, call me Buddy,take me anywhere. I don't care. Home is the bottom of a bottle,the last drop a farewell kiss before I blast into space,my veins full of rocket fuel.