About

The Christian faith is filled with mystery, from the Trinity and the Incarnation to the smaller mysteries found in some of the strange and unexplained passages of the Bible: Behemoth and Leviathan, nephilim and seraphim, heroes and giants and more. There is no reason for fiction engaging with Christianity to be more tidy and theologically precise than the faith itself.

Mysterion is an ezine of Christian-themed speculative fiction edited and published by the husband and wife team of Donald S. Crankshaw and Kristin Janz. We seek quality speculative fiction with Christian characters, themes, or cosmology. Join us as we rediscover the mysteries of the faith!


About the Editors 



Donald S. Crankshaw

Donald has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT, which was more useful for writing fantasy than he had expected, though less helpful for writing science fiction than he had hoped. He has previously published stories in Nature Futures, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Black Gate.

Kristin Janz

Kristin is a Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and a 2008 graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in Escape PodDaily Science Fiction, and On Spec. She has an M.Sc. in Chemistry, and does not want to read any more stories about nanobots.

Editor photo (c) 2016 by Al Bogdan

Staff Submission Policy

Mysterion does not publish fiction by editors Donald and Kristin. We do allow our first readers to submit stories, but only during submission windows for which they are not reading stories submitted by other authors.

About the First Readers

Current First Readers

Anne Horn

Anne Horn has been an avid reader since the age of four. Since finishing up her college career studying English, she's dabbled in marketing, graphic design, freelance writing, and editing. She and her husband were born on opposite sides of the country, but they met in the middle and now continue to live in the Midwest.




Once and Future First Readers (not reading for current submission window)

Hannah Eagleson

Hannah Eagleson is at work on a novel about a dragon who runs a tea shop in eighteenth century London. Hannah enjoys a delightfully wide range of projects as a writer and editor, from writing sidebars on the Mariana Trench for a geography curriculum, to proofreading the original Mysterion anthology, to crafting poetry about the classifications of angels. She co-designed a series of study guides to works by J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Dorothy L. Sayers for Classical Academic Press. She also does communications and strategy for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s Emerging Scholars Network, in which capacity she launched an ongoing online devotional for academics called Scholar’s Compass. She holds a PhD in Renaissance literature from the University of Delaware and an MA in liberal arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.

Lelia Rose Foreman

Lelia Rose Foreman was born and things progressed from there. After gaining a degree in Clinical Lab Technology, she swam in the South China Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the YMCA. She has climbed Mt. Fuji, Mt. St. Helens, and looked at Mt. Denali. She has raised and released five children (including Josh Foreman). Cyborg (cochlear implant) and avid gardener, she enjoys collaborating with her oldest son on stories set on Talifar. Find her work on Amazon: ShatterworldCircumnavigation of Shatterworld, and Pacifists’ War.




David McDonald

David McDonald is a mild-mannered editor by day, and a wild-eyed writer by night. Based in Melbourne, Australia, he works for an international welfare organisation, and divides his spare time between playing cricket and writing.

In 2013 he won the Ditmar Award for Best New Talent, and in 2014 won the William J. Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism or Review and was shortlisted for the WSFA Small Press Award. His short fiction has appeared in anthologies from publishers such as Moonstone Books, Crazy 8 Press and Fablecroft Publishing. In 2015, his first movie novelisation, Backcountry, was released by Harper Collins, and his first Marvel novel—Guardians of the Galaxy: Castaways—was published in August 2016.

David is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the Horror Writers Association, The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, and the Melbourne-based writers group, SuperNOVA.

John Nadas

John Nadas is a European writer based in Melbourne, Australia. You can find "What Comes Before" and "Salvation" in Mysterion and "Progress" in Daily Science Fiction. He is drawn to philosophical, religious, and theological themes, and is an Associate Member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. 




Travis Perry

Travis is an Army Reserve officer who has deployed to the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan, and East Africa, and who has a deep interest in science fiction, though he also has written fantasy and horror. He began editing short story anthologies with Avenir Eclectia and Aquasynthesis by Splashdown Books, anthologies he also contributed short stories to. In addition, he contributed to Aquasynthesis Again, and a non-fiction military account to the anthology Stories from a Soldier's Heart. He has several novels in the works as well as numerous short story anthology projects via Bear Publications, which he owns. He currently resides with his wife Tabatha in Wichita Falls, Texas.