Wow, another new issue already?
It seems like just last month we were looking at Stupefying Stories 24 sitting there on the launch pad, fully fueled and ready to go, and wondering whether it was going to soar like an eagle or blow up in our faces when we pushed the big red button.
Now, here we are again, watching the Amazon links to Stupefying Stories 25 go live and feeling much more confident this time. The magazine itself continues to evolve, with scads of little technical improvements under the skin that you can’t readily see but that make it much better and easier for us to build. Our new editorial team is really coming together and starting to hit their stride. Special thanks to Sharon Cherri and Henry Vogel, for much midnight oil burnt in order to make sure we hit our launch date. Submissions are continuing to stream in for issues 26, 27, and 28, and we actually managed to handle the submissions pipeline and get this book finished and released on time, which is something we’ve always had trouble doing smoothly before.
If you’ve been following this blog (stupefyingstories.blogspot.com) or me personally on Facebook, you have some idea of how hard it has been for us to get this point. If you haven’t been following this blog, you should be, if only to catch SHOWCASE, our daily free flash fiction feature. We’ve been publishing a lot of great little stories in SHOWCASE and growing a really good community around it. If you like short fiction, you owe it to yourself to check out the stories, and join the conversation. SHOWCASE is also turning out to be a great place for us to find and recruit the writers we want to feature in future issues of our magazine—
But speaking of magazines, I need to tell you how excited I am about STUPEFYING STORIES 25! We have a great mix of stories in this issue, by a great mix of returning fan-favorite authors and writers who are new to our pages.
If you’re looking for science fiction that’s so hard it clanks, check out “A Limited View” by Gary Kloster or “Something Came Through” by Michael D. Burnside. If you’re looking for something that’s still hard SF but with more of a biological angle, read “There Is Another Sky” by Bo Balder. If your tastes run to steampunk, read “Cloudbreaker Above” by Brandon Nolta, or if you like to relax with a tall glass of cold horror, read “The Demolition Job” by Neva Bryan.
If you like fantasy, check out “Two-Tone” by Elise Stephens. In this story Elise introduces us to a new form of magic and tells a beautiful and heart-breaking story, which is something we don’t see often. If you’re a bit more jaded about romance, read “The Wawa Stick” by Karl El-Koura, a futuristic tale of crime, betrayal, and just desserts. If you want a foretaste of the kinds of stories we’re selecting for issue #27, be sure to read “Tin Lizzi” by J. L. Royce and “Caliban’s Cameras” by Allan Dyen-Shapiro.
But we decided to lead off this issue with fan-favorite author Fred Coppersmith, and his contemporary fantasy story of two brothers who just can’t seem to stop getting into magical trouble, “If We Shadows.”
Enjoy!
Per aspera ad astra,
Bruce Bethke
1 comments:
What an engaging and beautiful way to describe all these stories and the eclectic and magnificent sub-genres they all represent. This sounds like a wonderful cross section of sci-fi/spec.
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