The Never-ending FAQ • 21 August 2024

Welcome to this week’s installment of The Never-ending FAQ, the constantly evolving adjunct to our Submission Guidelines and general-purpose unfocused Q&A session.  If you have a question you’d like to ask about Stupefying Stories or Rampant Loon Press, feel free to post it as a comment here or to email it to our submissions address. I can’t guarantee we’ll post a public answer, but can promise every question we receive will be read and considered.

Eschewing our usual Q&A format this week…

Ever since last week’s column, in which we tackled the big question, What’s going on with Stupefying Stories magazine?, there has been a lot of discussion going on behind the scenes. In particular, the announcement that we were planning to drop the idea of doing “theme” issues and intermix the stories we’d accepted for the “Clankalog,” “Cyberpunk 2.0,” and “Heroes” theme issues into Stupefying Stories issue 27 through 30 provoked more and stronger push-back than we’d expected. 

This caused us to reconsider.

Quick Recap: A year ago we were planning to do Stupefying Stories 27 as an all-cyberpunk double-issue, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the original magazine publication of my short story, “Cyberpunk.” In a moment of hubris I decided to use issue 27 to present stories I felt reflected my concept of “Cyberpunk 2.0”—that is, stories that discarded the original 1984 cyberpunk code base and started over, honoring the history of the genre but coming up with fresh ideas rooted in the new realities of the 21st century.

Admittedly, it was an idea that was ambitious to the point of arrogance. 

Then October 2023 hit. Then the world in general went to hell in a flaming gasoline-soaked hand basket. Then in our little corner of reality, Stupefying Stories 26 flopped so badly it nearly put us out of business.

That was a year ago. For a time the future of Stupefying Stories looked quite grim and very uncertain. Then, just when it seemed certain it was time to strike the tent and close this circus, we were found by an angel investor, who believes we have something worth doing here and who saved the business, and put us on sound financial footing.

But not an unlimited financial footing. Basically, we have the rest of 2024 to prove we can make this concept work. And now that you’re all caught up…

After further consideration, and extensive conversations with our financial backers, here is our updated plan for the remainder of 2024.

Stupefying Stories 27 is too far along as a “no theme” issue to pull it back now. We are still targeting it for a September 1st release, although that being the Labor Day holiday weekend, it might slip a few days.

Stupefying Stories 28 is now the “Cyberpunk 2.0” issue. Once we learned that October 10th is “World Cyberpunk Day,” how could we resist? SS#28 is targeted for an October 1st release and we’re pretty confident we’re going to hit that date, provided some a-hole doesn’t start World War III or collapse the power grid or something.

Stupefying Stories 29: We were stuck for a bit, trying to figure out what to use as the theme for this issue, and then a lifetime spent in software development kicked in and the answer instantly became obvious. What is the logical follow-up to Cyberpunk 2.0? 

Cyberpunk 2.1, the bug fix and code patch release, of course.

Stupefying Stories 30: oh boy, do we have some surprises planned for #30! 

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As regards SHOWCASE: at our current rate of four new stories weekly, our publishing calendar is full through the end of September and October is filling up fast. We don’t anticipate reopening for unsolicited submissions before December at the earliest, and more likely not until after Christmas.

By which point we will have either figured out how to monetize this site or will be migrating to a new site, which, I’m sorry to say, will quite likely be behind a paywall.

Until that day arrives, though: remember—

If you like what you read here, tell your friends!
Likes are nice, but shares and retweets boost the signal!
And please, BUY OUR BOOKS!
BUY OUR FRIENDS’ BOOKS!
SUPPORT LIVING AUTHORS!
BUY BOOKS!

That wasn’t too subtle, was it?