Stupefying Stories 24 • IT'S ALIVE!

AMAZON KINDLE LINK - More links coming soon!

UPDATE:

Okay, these links are known good:
US - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CDB3HC83
UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CDB3HC83
Canada - https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CDB3HC83
Australia - https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0CDB3HC83
Japan - https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0CDB3HC83
Mexico - https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B0CDB3HC83
Brazil - https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B0CDB3HC83
Spain - https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0CDB3HC83
Netherlands - https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0CDB3HC83
Germany - https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0CDB3HC83
France - https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0CDB3HC83
Italy - https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0CDB3HC83

In theory it's also available in India, but the link Amazon provided returns an error 404. Amazon UK *really* wanted to redirect me to the Amazon US page. Amazon Japan has put an "adult content" warning on the book and asked me to confirm that I'm 18 or older. A couple of the Amazon sites required me to do a Captcha before it would let me view the page; the first time Amazon France did so it required me to read and retype a string of letters, one of which is not on my keyboard. I lucked out the second time.

Kobo and Apple rejected the book as initially submitted because it mentioned Amazon and Goodreads in the afterword. We’ve updated the file to remove the “offensive content” and have resubmitted it. Cross your fingers.  

____________________

I can’t begin to tell you what a relief it is to see STUPEFYING STORIES 24 finally finished and on the pad, fully fueled and ready to launch. There have been a lot of times when I thought we’d never make it this far. If you’ve been following the Stupefying Stories blog (stupefyingstories.blogspot.com) or me personally on Facebook, you know the past four years have been challenging, to put it mildly, and the past year especially has been nearly unspeakable.

Yet, here we are: tired, but very proud of our work, and eagerly counting down the last seconds until we push the button and light this candle.

And yes, this is most definitely a “we” and “our” effort. I may be the face and voice of Stupefying Stories, but I would never have gotten this far without the help and support of a lot of people. My thanks go out to the stalwart Henry Vogel, for sharing some of his courage when I had none of my own left; to Pete Wood, for pushing me to keep this thing going every time I was ready to pack it in and call it quits; to the indispensable Sharon Cherri, for more help, support, and in-the-trenches tactical editorial assistance than I have the space to describe here; to Don Muchow, for delivering the whole state of Wisconsin when all we asked for was a little cheese; and especially to our generous Subscribers and Donors, who have voted with their wallets to keep the Stupefying Stories project going. There is an old saying in the aerospace industry: “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.” Thanks to your support we now have a schedule and budget in place for the next five issues, and we’re making good progress on securing the funding.

Thank you!

I am really pleased, and slightly surprised, by how quickly and easily Stupefying Stories 24 came together once we fully committed to doing it. We have a really nice mix of science fiction and fantasy stories here, by a really good mix of authors. You'll find stories by writers who have been with us from the beginning—Jamie Lackey, Beth Cato, Pete Wood, and Robert Lowell Russell—by new friends, some of whom have already appeared in recent issues or on the Stupefying Stories website—Andrew Jensen, Avery Elizabeth Hurt, Mike Adamson, and Karl Dandenell—by one shining star who has become a fan favorite on our website but is now making her first appearance in the pages of our magazine—Carol Scheina—and by one really old friend, but you’d had to have been reading Asimov’s and Amazing back in the 1980s to know just how far back Phillip C. Jennings and I go together, and yet this is his first appearance in our magazine.

Speaking of the magazine: I keep looking at that cover. I picked the artwork because it’s exciting, colorful, and dramatic, but what exactly is it? A phoenix? A dragon? Rodan emerging from the Isla da Mara volcanic crater? Is it simply, as one person suggested, an image of all Hell breaking loose? The artist wasn’t much help. They titled this painting, “wizard summoning the phoenix from hell.” Shrug. We paid them for artwork, not to teach mythology and folklore.

It is, I have decided, a phoenix—and it’s us, rising from the flaming wreckage that was the past four years. The past is behind us. It’s time to discover the future. All systems are go.    

Now let’s launch this thing!

Per aspera ad astra,
Bruce Bethke