Bewildering Stories News
Scheduling
Current status | Simultaneous installments | Links news
Whew... that took some work, but at last we’ve got a handle on the backlog. Some of it is scheduled all the way out to issue 156, which is one past our Third Anniversary issue, if I’ve counted on my fingers correctly. It now looks like a sail flash just over the horizon.
Issues 132-137 are full but not closed; that is, they each have the standard seven fiction titles, but we intend to keep our options open. In issue 138 and beyond we have room for short fiction, especially. Flash fiction stands to be treated as a special case: our present inclination is to schedule it as received, one per issue wherever there are no multiple-part short stories.
Just a reminder: non-fiction (art, poetry, articles, etc.) and the Departments (esp. reviews, guest editorials, letters, Challenge responses) don’t count against the space quota in any issue. However, Ye Editor will keep an eye on overall issue length.
Tala Bar’s “Minstrel in the Forest,” in this issue, looks like one of Star Trek’s famous “space-time anomalies.” A short story in three simultaneous installments? Say what? Why isn’t it a serial? Well, “Minstrel” is a special case: the story could have appeared in two consecutive installments of standard length or a little less, but Tala Bar divides it neatly into three shorter parts, an arrangement we thought it best to follow. And we have a precedent with Tala Bar’s “Sibyl,” in issue 87.
We intend to adhere to our 3,000-word page limit, but, from now on, short stories between 3,000 and 6,000 words in length will probably appear in simultaneous installments. We like serials, but we don’t want to get too top-heavy with them.
Bewildering Stories is being cultivated by link farms. At first we were reluctant to exchange links with websites unrelated to our specialty, but we’ve reconsidered and decided it can’t hurt. And some of the pages contain other links that may interest our readers; who knows? The Links page has been updated to link to an auxiliary page, which is tastefully titled “Complimentary Links.”
The menu bar now includes links to the Anthologies and Reviews pages. It now stretches to three lines and has been reorganized more or less thematically. It may look a little less compact than before, especially since inaccessible links on some pages are dimmed or blanked out, but I’m sure you’ll get used to it.
Copyright © 2005 by Don Webb for Bewildering Stories
