past, close enough he could have spit on them. If he dared, that is, open his cockpit to the cold embrace of vacuum.

"Cosmic Weird is science fiction, a sub-genre within Space Opera," replied Commander Athena Madison over the staticy commline. Encased in her famous crimson survival mesh, she weaved without effort between the combat droids of the Tethyan Hierarchy, the control fields of her suit interacting with separate Eisentein frames to propell her forward, backward, and sideways with shocking ease. Very little of this suit made sense to Lance or any other reputable scientist, but it worked. In a universe filled with implacable and deadly foes like the Hierarchy, the government could be forgiven for overlooking a few arcane …

Gehenna and Hinnom has released the cover and tableWealth disparity just hit a couple of new milestones in America. The Census Bureau reported in late September that U.S. income inequality, as measured by the Gini Index, hit its highest level in more than 50 years. A new book by two economists at the University of California, Berkeley, offers an explanation and another jarring data point: For the first time in U.S. history, America's 400 richest families paid a lower effective tax rate last year than any other income group, including the working class.

Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman detail in The Triumph of Injustice that — based on federal, state, local, corporate, and "indirect taxes" like motor vehicle licenses — the top 400 billionaires in the U.S. paid an effective tax rate of 23 percent in