New short fiction: “Eko and Narkiss,” a myth by Jeremy Adam Smith

Thanks to a recent post by Dave Tackett of the blog QuasarDragon, I just read “Eko and Narkiss,” a science fictional myth by author Jeremy Adam Smith that was published online in the February 2009 issue of Lone Star Stories. The myth is related to Smith's
“The Wreck of the Grampus,” a novella which appeared in the April 2008 issue of Lone Star Stories.

“Eko and Narkiss” describes the human settlement of Mars and explains why the ancestors of the early settlers sacrifice a machine at the start of every planting season and forge narcissi from the scraps of the sacrifice. Here are the opening lines:

“Excerpted from Every Child’s Solar Encyclopedia: Myths and Legends of the Solar System (Babel: Woelfle, 452). What follows is the story of Eko and Narkiss as told by Arion Overture, famed in the third century for preserving the oral traditions of the ancient solar system. Overture was deactivated in 261, after he fell victim to Kafka's Syndrome and was unable to finish any story that he began.”

Jeremy Adam Smith is senior editor of Greater Good magazine. His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Apex Digest, Interzone, New York Review of Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and numerous other publications.