The Joy of Reading in the First Quarterly Review

by Sari Friedman

Dear Don and your Fellow Editors at Bewildering Stories,

Thank you so much for picking “Climbing the Air” as an Editors’ Choice, and, of course, for publishing it in the first place. Bewildering Stories is a tremendous undertaking and fascinating in many respects. It must also be a labor of love. Thank you for creating such a generous platform for sci-fi and fantasy and for giving joy to so many readers, and webspace and publication credentials to so many writers.

I’ve been dipping in and out of Bewildering Stories on my home and other computers, and have enjoyed many of your stories. In the Editors’ Choice category that “Climbing the Air” is in, I especially liked ”The Walking on Water Cafe,” “Packing for the Moon,” and “Papa Jah’s Banjo.”

It was also fun marvelling at the correspondences between stories, at tiny similarities and intriguing juxtapositions, such as when one story about a Kosher authenticator is followed by another that contains a lot of German. That’s a coincidence, of course, though the two stories have something in common under the surface, a raised eyebrow at the human condition.

Big fan here.....

Sari Friedman
www.Sari-Friedman.com

Thank you for your kind words and the messages to your fellow contributors. It’s always gratifying to know that one’s work is being read, let alone appreciated. As I like to say, a good word goes a long way. That’s why I forward all messages of appreciation to the authors, and I include an invitation to reply directly to the sender.

And yes, Bewildering Stories (BwS) is a “labor of love” on the part of many people. We don’t trade in money because, as I like to say, nobody could be paid enough to do this job. (>grin<)

You are quite right that “The Shomer” and “Alte Kameraden” are juxtaposed by coincidence in the Short Stories list; the authors’ names both happen to begin with “A.” And I agree it would be only a short stretch — if it is one at all — to compare the moral implications of the two stories: they both answer the question “What makes life worth living?” in radically different contexts. I see them as arriving at a somewhat similar conclusion from opposite directions.

Don Webb
Managing Editor
Bewildering Stories