And we don't mean fish!

First off, I'd like to take this moment to thank the two magazines that made Bewildering Stories possible, Analog Science Fiction and Fact and Asimov's Science Fiction, and their respective editors, Stanley Schmidt and Gardner Dozois, for setting such a good example for high-quality science fiction and for constantly rejecting my stories.

Without them, we wouldn't be here today. Or we would be; we just wouldn't be putting this webzine up for y'all to read. So if you don't subscribe yet, go over to their web sites (links available in our Links section) and subscribe!

So . . . anyway, I'd like to explain how this webzine came about. Much of the fiction and the original layout of this zine were adapted from the unpublished single issue of a webzine I started in December 2001 called <iostream.h> - The Webzine. The first issue was going to be the January 2002 issue, but due to certain difficulties which shouldn't concern anybody reading this, it never got off its feet. Nevertheless, I felt there was a great quantity of good (that is, good for our webzine) material to saved from the ruins, as well as the pretty nifty look of the site. So <iostream.h> - The Webzine has, for the most part, resurfaced here, in reincarnated form.

As to what Analog and Asimov's have to do with anything, I'll discuss Analog in the next paragraph. In this paragraph, I'll talk about our connection (sort of) to Asimov's. If you have a copy of the June 2002 issue, please turn with me to page 13, the last page of James Patrick Kelly's "On the Net: Cons" column. In the second column of this column (eh?), you will find this:

Hot topics include "What are some of the dumber science fiction ideas you can remember?" "Solar Flares," "Popular books you didn't like" and "Short science fiction of the nineteenth century."

The last seven words, "Short science fiction of the nineteenth century," were my creation, and they account for my only publishing credit whatsoever as of the moment I'm writing this. "Short science fiction of the nineteenth century" was the title of one of the topics on the Asimov's Forum I created, and the reason I created that topic was because the January 2002 issue of <iostream.h> - The Webzine wasn't long enough, in my opinion. So I went searching for some old out-of-copyright SF classics to reprint. I posted the message to see if anybody would recommend any good short stories for the zine. I finally found one, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Artist of the Beautiful." Unfortunately, we cannot republish that fine novelette in Bewildering Stories because that story is just too good for our mag. Nevertheless, that is how Bewildering Stories is tenuously connected to Asimov's Science Fiction.

I am the newest member of the Editorial Triumvirate, and I must say that Bewildering Stories wasn't my idea in the first place. That credit goes to my two fellow editors, Don Webb and Jerry Wright. Bewildering Stories started out as a joke on the Analog Forum but now really exists (as you can see from reading this). We are dedicated to finding the stories that other editors reject, the ones that really shine inside but look ugly outside, you know, the ones that really strike you in the heart if you get through with them. Those stories. Those are the ones we'd like to publish. All the other editors out there just don't understand how much effort it takes to write a story, and every effort has to be commended. That's why we set up this webzine in order to publish this stuff that means so much to the people who write them. Thanks to you, writers, we can forever ensure that our magazine will never be nominated for any awards, whatsoever. We owe it to you.