No Magic, No Gods: Infinite Worlds & Infinite Horrors

This feature is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #186. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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This series of articles is made possible through the generous sponsorship of Exalted Funeral. While Exalted Funeral puts us in touch with our subjects, they have no input or approval in the final story.

I love zines. I love making zines, I love having my students (from the sleepiest freshmen to my rhetorical theory graduate course) make zines, but most of all, I love it when a zine appears before me, ready to read. Short for either “magazine” or “fanzine,” depending on whose historical account you reference, zines are the last true bastion of democratic grassroots text circulation. Zines, in my experience, are rarely something you seek out – rather, they are a manifestation of a zeitgeist, crystallized kismet, falling into your open hands through happenstance at slam poetry readings, punk shows or campus protests, nearly always telling you things you didn’t know you needed to hear.

But in 2020, all of the meet-cute ways to get your hands on whatever was fresh off the Kinko’s copier came to a screeching halt. It is a near certainty that we will be unraveling the social and cultural impacts of quarantine for decades to come, and there are, admittedly, several things higher on civilization’s priority list than a drought of paper zine production. But zines emphatically did not go away. They went, as almost everything else did, online. Now the democratic power of the zine has ballooned in scope, able to reach anyone with an internet connection. I’m pleased to remark that, although they are no longer directly associated with gatherings of radical society, zines have not lost their brashness. Here, there is no shying away from the gross, the impolite and the unpolished. Weak constitutions or delicate sensibilities need not apply.

Two such examples of this sensibility are the twin productions of Infinite Worlds and Infinite Horrors, two underground lit-and-art zines promising the strange and uncomfortable. Head editor Winston Blake Ward fully embraces the ethos of the genre, referring to the publication as having a “bit of a punk/metalhead vibe” and refusing to place many overt restrictions on the content, saying he “rel[ies] largely on instinct” and knows good material “when he sees it.” No stuffy double-blind vetting process here. If the vibes are right, come on in; the water’s fine.

This is not to say that IW/IH are total free-for-alls, though – each zine has its home in a particular flavor of genre works. Infinite Worlds (the first publication, longer running) focuses on sci-fi, and Infinite Horrors (a new spinoff launching its inaugural issue) is a home for all things scary. When asked why he launched IW and then made the move to branch out into IH, Ward gives his only firm edict on what is and is not allowed in his work – Infinite Worlds is for the science fiction purists – no elements of fantasy allowed. The common combo of sci-fi and fantasy (in other genre mags as “speculative,” on shared shelves in bookstores and libraries) can mean that the crunchier, denser elements of hard sci-fi can get overlooked. But not here. In Infinite Worlds, what you write doesn’t have to be true, but it must be in some way possible – no magic to deus ex machina your way out of a plot problem.

But Ward doesn’t totally put the kibosh on the fantastical – seeing that this rule prevented a lot of solid horror from making its way onto his pages, he launched Infinite Horrors to give the supernatural an outlet under his purview. This, he says, was to avoid “compromising the vision” of his original zine – a savvy business move to keep branding cohesive.

Outside of this one rule, content of both zines roams far and wide – there is a variety of short (bordering on micro) fiction, visual art and interviews with creatives of diverse backgrounds and forms. In addition to interviewing authors and artists, Ward has put to page talks with everyone from metal bands to professional fighters. He sees this work as fundamentally coalitional: bringing other fandoms to the table through inroads with local celebrities, and hoping some of those metalheads pick up a copy of the zine for reading later. The importance of “expanding the genre culture[]” is emphasized throughout my talk with Ward – he expresses disdain for the “cultural monolith” he sees in most major productions today, indicating that things would be better if more people struck out on their own and made things for themselves instead of following the established plot beats of mainstream culture.

As I perused the copies I was given, I was struck by the “crazy-quilt” nature of the content – the zines stuck religiously to their genre, but inside that wide boundary, everything was fair game. The “something for everyone” idea has its merits, especially for an indie product trying to find its voice and audience in the endless void of the internet. But I would love to see future issues taking a slightly more targeted approach, with tighter themes (haunted houses? AI?) and specific calls. Free reign is great, but sometimes the most creative work is born out of constraint instead of opportunity.

Ultimately, what stuck out the most is how these zines, like all good zines, are a labor of love. Ward waxes poetic about the honor and privilege of people choosing him to submit work to, referring to it as “the honor of [his] lifetime.” When prompted, Ward is unable to single out any work from his catalog as the best or most memorable – he does not, it seems, play any favorites. The work is not without its struggles (he also tells prospective creators to “get used to headaches”), but the joys of creation, of stewardship, and of community win the day.

While he does idly muse about how it would be nice to get noticed by larger outlets in the genres “for what they are,” Ward ultimately presents himself and his work as being more concerned about passion for creation than any financial gain. He ended our interview by saying:

What I want most [for] IW and IH is to inspire people to create. Create stories. Create art. Create music. Anything and everything you create yourself has value and the more of it exists, the better off we all are.

And I can’t think of anything more punk than that.

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Infinite Worlds and Infinite Horrors are available from Exalted Funeral.

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Emma Kostopolus loves all things that go bump in the night. When not playing scary games, you can find her in the kitchen, scientifically perfecting the recipe for fudge brownies. She has an Instagram where she logs the food and art she makes, along with her many cats.