Synthesized Sunsets is a magazine and podcast about speculative fiction, romantic art, and the evolution of popular culture. Every few months, the magazine will rebrand to reflect a new “season”, complete with an aesthetic theme.

Synthesized Sunsets is a magazine and podcast about speculative fiction, romantic art, and the evolution of popular culture. Every few months, the magazine will rebrand to reflect a new “season”, complete with an aesthetic theme.

When we say speculative fiction, we mean fiction that is centered around novel ideas of what could be or what could have been. In general, we think that the best speculative fiction tends to come from those who infuse their non-literary academic perspectives into literature: think Greg Egan with math or Ursula K. Le Guin with anthropology. However, good speculative fiction can obviously come from all sorts of places.

The project is run by Kevin Kodama (Seattle) and Gordon Anderson (Chicago), two Gen Z speculative fiction enthusiasts who want to see the genre evolve. In general, Kevin focuses more on cultural criticism and literary sci-fi, while Gordon focuses more on fiction and high fantasy. However, this is not a hard-and-fast rule, and most posts in the magazine are written collaboratively.

The essays on Synthesized Sunsets can generally be divided into reviews, reflections, surveys, speculations, and surveys:
- Reviews are either more conventional X/10 “this is a review” posts, or more stylized essays about a particular work or author that Gordon or Kevin loves.
- Reflections are stylized personal essays about childhood experiences with some speculative fiction themes mixed in.
- Speculations are pieces that try to imagine the future of literature and popular culture, particularly as it relates to the Internet and other digital technology.
- Surveys are comprehensive breakdowns of what speculative fiction is out there right now and/or how it came to be this way.

In addition to essays, Synthesized Sunsets also publishes fiction and biweekly-ish podcast episodes. We are only accepting speculative fiction at this time; that is, stories where some novel idea of “what could be” or “what could have been” is central. We will also be prioritizing stories that are on-theme (which is currently "mist"), although this is not strictly a requirement.

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Synthesized Sunsets

We are looking for speculative fiction stories that preferably relate to this issue’s mist theme. By speculative fiction, we mean stories have some novel speculative idea about possible futures or alternate pasts. This idea may be scientific or technological, but it could also be philosophical, sociological, mythological, etc. While we hope to publish primarily sci-fi and fantasy, our definition will include works not normally considered within those genres. At the same time, just because a story has sci-fi aesthetics (e.g. spaceships and aliens) does not mean it is speculative fiction.

Synthesized Sunsets

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