Science fiction has long framed narratives of aliens around questions of identity and societal acceptance. To be an alien is to be an outsider, and vice versa. In Severed Souls, humans and exterrestrials alike struggle to survive in worlds that view them as Other. They must fight to defend the fragile barriers of their skin, community, and world while bearing the existential ache of not belonging in any of the above. Defeat is not an option when their very selfhood is on the line.

The anthology begins with a battle between hope of cross-species co-operation and fear of alien invasion. Monica Wang’s No One Reads Missed Connections Anymore But Here Goes is a personal ad with a manic twist. The ominous use of alien implants in that flash fiction ties worryingly well with our next poem. Michele Witthaus’ ‘Side Effects May Include’ captures the paranoia of the pandemic moment with both the relief of the vaccination and sense of the embedded virus being something alien and menacing. Keeping with Katherine Franklin’s love of sending the most unexpected of heroes on one-way voyages across the stars, Speak of the Dead follows a badass nun with a doctorate in extraterrestrial communications on her mission to make contact with a sentient alien species.

Credit:  Mo

‘S.O.S’ is an almost desperate plea for humanity’s soul that James Walton infuses with hope of salvation. But it is the aliens that are on the verge of extinction in our next story. The protagonist in Phillip Irving’s Translation is sent to Earth to be implanted in a human body in the hope that our planet could be his people’s new home. Abida Akram’s ‘That Rare Thing’ is a poignant poem about the Othering effect of migration. Continuing this idea of the self being or becoming something alien, Jennifer Moore and Yevgeny Salisbury’s poems both use otherworldly language to explore how strange it can feel for an expectant mother and transgender teenager to have their bodies transformed by pregnancy and puberty respectfully. But while the woman in ‘Empty Vessel’ welcomes these changes, the young trans man in ‘Adam’s Apples’ laments the disconnect between the man he is inside and the ‘alien form’ that his body is becoming. Similarly, the child narrator in Sarah Davies’ What the worry monster knows uses the familiar story of alien abduction to understand the changes he sees in his brother after the other boy goes into hospital for an operation.

Credit:  Marten Newhall

Then we are whisked away to an interplanetary party in ‘The Yin of Mars, the Yang of Venus’, which combines vivid imagery with references to real life conditions on both planets. Emma Lee’s assertion in this poem that the creatures that live on Venus and Mars dream of another world, one like Earth, makes this the first in a series of pieces about fresh starts. Teika Marija Smits’ How to Honour A Beginning tells the story of an alien being who is entrusted with the stewardship of Earth. Three powerful women give him a series of gifts to aid him in this task, including the title of The Green Man. The being’s easy acceptance of his new name contrasts sharply with the migrant speaker’s rejection of hers in Abida Akram‘s ‘Could I confirm the name, please?’. Tired of constantly having her name mispronounced and shortened by her adopted community, she longs to escape to a different world. Sam Parr’s Backlands is a guide of sorts to leaving your life behind. Follow the instructions in this sinister flash fiction piece at your own peril though as danger lurks among those peaceful pines.

Credit: Johannes Plenio

The android protagonist in Rob Bray’s Twitching is a top-of-the-line assassin who has learnt to appreciate the beauty around her. Defying her creators’ orders could either kill her or set her free. Likewise, the narrator in Liz Byfield’s ‘Digital Solutions’ risks being captured and spending the rest of their life as a science experiment to use their power to clean the world of pollution. J.K. Fulton’s Call of the Void and Joanne Shaw’s Fish Child follow a NASA astronaut and a bereaved mother respectively as they go on seemingly routine excursions that have quite unexpected outcomes. Aliens sneak past the vigilant scientists in Liz Byfield’s ‘East Field’ to leave a mysterious message for them. But it’s not clear whether it’s humans or aliens who should be paying attention to the omens in James Walton’s ‘Interstellar Notes – Travel Warnings – Earth’. Meanwhile, the protagonist in Ivan Richardson’s Following the Lines believes she is an alien that has been stranded on Earth her whole life. After years of waiting in vain for her ‘real’ people to come back for her, she decided to take drastic steps in order to prove what she really is.

Credit: MaddiesCreation 

The final section of the anthology is a tribute to human resilience, starting with Emma Lee’s ‘A Sentinel Observes’, which captures the debate around Oumuamua while raising important questions about our planet’s future. Mary Byrne’s Bronius is a historical love story that explores Scotland’s religious and sociological landscape during the World War II era. This gentle story is about a young artist and a refugee musician whose shared passion for the Arts challenges the prejudices of the local community. The protagonist of Sarah Fearn’s Carrying Starlight is a teenager faced with bullies at school, a dysfunctional family and imminent loss. She depends on the enduring power of human connection to survive and even prosper. Similarly, James Walton’s Collected Works is a beautifully written flash fiction piece about a man who expresses himself through the literature that he surrounds himself with and that he tattoos all over his body.

Credit: Loren Cutler 

The hopeful tone in these stories continues in Michele Witthaus’ poem ‘Undiagnosed’, which explores the Otherness of neurodiversity. Then we have Monica Wang’s Insects, a flash fiction piece narrated by a woman whose whole life is crippled by her fear of insects/insectoid creatures. Emma Lee follows this unsettling piece with a compressed and dystopian poem about the fall of humanity. Told from the perspective of a spider, ‘Tales of Bipeds’ is infused with wonderfully creepy insect detail. Then we travel far, far away to a moon whose colonisation is being disrupted by its native inhabitants. Alex Harwood’s Live Specimen is a thrilling short story about a soldier who wakes up in the aftermath of an ambush and finds herself in dire straits. Will she make it to the dropship safely or will she suffer the same fate as the woman in Jennifer Moore’s Judgement Call: captured by a hostile alien species, subjected to unspeakable horrors, and sent back to Earth as an extraterrestrial Trojan Horse?

Credit: Hamish Weir 

Severed Souls is an anthology of dual-meanings. Many of its characters face the same challenges whether they are human or exterrestrial, native or migrant. Some of them dream of cross-species cooperation and some live in fear of alien invasion. There are those who long to escape from their lives and those who are pulled away from theirs against their will. We hear from the invader and the invaded, and from those caught in between the two. When you’re finished reading all these pieces, ask yourself the same question we asked our contributors: what does Alien and/or Otherness mean to you?