Bewildering Stories’
Fourth Quarterly Review, 2010

The Editors’ Choices: issues 402-412

“The place to be at Bewildering Stories”

Everything in green is a link.
Pages other than those of the QR open in a new window, so you won’t lose your place.

Bewildering Stories ends the year with the Review Editors’ selection of favorites from the fourth quarter of 2010. New readers will have easy access to the recent best of Bewildering Stories, and veteran readers will have a chance to catch up on anything they may have missed.

The Quarterly Reviews are Bewildering Stories’ honor roll. While they’re not a contest or competition in the strict sense of the term, we’ll match them against any contest or poll in terms of fairness. And there are no quotas: everything or nothing in any genre may qualify for a Quarterly Review. The Review Editors vote according to their estimate of each work’s success on its own terms.

As always, the Review Board’s discussions have been extensive and lively. A big Thank You to Bill Bowler, Bertil Falk, Gary Inbinder, Harry Lang, Michael E. Lloyd, Marina J. Neary, Carmen Ruggero and Lewayne L. White.

We also express special gratitude to our Coordinating Editor Bill Bowler and the Associate Editors. Their insightful and detailed critiques of submissions help us set what we like to think is an Internet standard for editorial practice and for service to our contributors and readers.

Finally and foremost we congratulate the authors represented here. They and their works have well earned the honor. We hope they will inspire all our contributors.

The Quarterly News

In the past 11 weeks, the Review Editors cast 662 votes on 85 titles. Some 44 titles have qualified as Editors’ Choices. In Short Stories and Poetry, especially, the selections have been gratifyingly difficult; both genres have been distinguished by solid works this past season.

The Third Quarter was a hard act to follow; it was two weeks longer and was very strong in many areas, including the Departments. Nonetheless, this Fourth Quarter will be exceptionally well represented in the Annual Review; almost one-fifth of the titles qualify for it.

The 2010 Annual Review, coming next week, has a new mission and format. It revives the old Merit award as the “Mariner Awards”; its mascot is Mariner 2, one of the first successful interplanetary missions. The Annual Review will appear on a single page and will list by genres the 65 selections — out of a total of 412 titles published in the calendar year — that the Editors have rated as “very good” or “excellent.”

Regular publication resumes with issue 413 on January 3, 2011.

Reminder: everything in green is a link.
The following tables also serve as a linked index to all the genres and sections in the Review.

Titles selected of titles eligible
Novel Novellas Drama Short Stories	1 of 1 2 of 2 1 of 1 24 of 47	Flash Fiction Poetry Short Poetry	2 of 9 11 of 18 3 of 7

Special listings

Departments
The Quarter’s Best Issues
The Order of the Hot Potato
The Quarter’s Most Bewildering Issues

Selections are listed in alphabetical order by author unless noted otherwise.
Italics indicate that the serial has titled chapters.
All serialized works — with the possible exception of intermittent serials — must have concluded in or before issue 412 in order to be eligible.

Novel	Michael E. Lloyd, Donna’s Men
Novellas	Kir Bulychëv, Half a Life Oonah V. Joslin, A Genie in a Jam
Drama	Marina J. Neary, Hugo in London

Departments

All selections are listed in chronological order.
The Art Gallery and Reading Room are excepted from the Quarterly Reviews.

The Critics’ Corner, Discussions, Letters

Challenges	Challenge Responses
Carmen Ruggero & Don Webb, Call Your Apple, Raise You a Pineapple Stefan Brenner, In Search of Lost Truth: Donna’s Men Oonah V. Joslin & Don Webb, Is DJ a Superhero? Richard Ong, Backyard Astronomy Bewildering Stories discusses Time Travel
Count Past Twenty, Hold Your Fire The Future Ridiculous Tense This Page Does Too Exist Five Degrees of Integration Chocolate Eggs and Ham Notice This	Stefan Brenner on “To the Meadow’s Edge”