Bewildering Stories’
First Quarterly Review, 2011

The Editors’ Choices: issues 413-423

“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 winter or summer season with the Review Editors’ selection of favorites from the first quarter of 2011. 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.

Two notes about progress in the first quarter:

We’re especially grateful to the special agents of our new Prose Task Force; their support of our review readers’ work has been invaluable, and the backlog has been reduced by about one-fourth in the past weeks. However, we have a way to go yet: three-fourths of a lot is still a lot.
We apologize for delays in acknowledging poetry submissions. Evaluating and critiquing poetry — especially from new contributors — is difficult at best. We like to make things easy for everyone; however, experience shows it’s best that any submission contain only one title. One poem in an e-mail will be read; two or more in the same message are overwhelming. Just letting you know.

The Quarterly News

In the past 11 weeks, the Review Editors cast 661 votes on 86 titles, 45 of which have qualified as Editors’ Choices. Almost all the genres have been strong this past season.

The Order of the Hot Potato is longer than in many previous quarters, not because there has been more difference of opinion than before but because your Managing Editor feels a more complete list will be more interesting. Only about one-third of the titles are true Hot Potatoes, and one-third are also Editors’ Choices.

The Order of Merit is revived for reader interest. It is somewhat interactive: it lists the genres represented in this Quarterly Review and links to the most highly rated work in each genre. Several others not listed are nonetheless odds-on favorites to qualify for the 2011 Mariner Awards.

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

Regular publication resumes with issue 424 on March 28, 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
Novellas Serials Short Stories Flash Fiction	0 of 1 1 of 4 18 of 36 8 of 13	Poetry Short Poetry Essays Memoirs	7 of 14 6 of 12 3 of 3 2 of 3

Special listings

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

Selections are listed in alphabetical order by author unless noted otherwise.
All serialized works — with the possible exception of intermittent serials — must have concluded in or before issue 423 in order to be eligible.

Serials	Harry Lang, The University of Dreams and Knowledge
Essays	Bertil Falk, Time Paradoxes... Marina J. Neary, Hugh O’Neill Richard Ong, Dangerous Ballet
Memoirs	Bertil Falk, Memory Slip Henry F. Tonn, An Afternoon at Buchenwald

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
Time Travel Unorthodox Punctuation Punctuation, Reading, and Language	Naming Characters When Poets Meet
Doomed to Repeat It Stop Watch Sing a Song of Cookies The Raider of the Spanish Main Low-Light Sight A Bowl of Living Water	Punctuation Names in “Left Behind”