Bewildering Stories News

A Look Back Up Ahead

Here’s a belated but timely news item, which we may repeat in some form in the next issue or so.

Our second anniversary issue — number 104 — is coming up soon. It’s time to party. In our first anniversary issue we celebrated by emptying the queue into a single “blockbuster” issue. For our second, Jerry has had the idea of featuring a “retrospective,” a selection of readers’ and editors’ favorites from issues 53-103.

It’s a great idea. But reviewing 52 issues for favorites? That’s a big job. But only if it’s done all at once. We’ve come up with a plan that promises to make the selection process enjoyable and much less time-consuming for everyone.

We won’t suspend operations just to look back; we’ll continue business as usual. But we will link a “retrospective” page to the issue index. It will list links to the “golden recent oldies” for all who may have missed some.
We’ll spread the celebration out over several issues. In issue 104 we plan to start with a list of readers’ and editors’ favorites from issues 53-60. Then, issue 105, presumably, would list selections from issues 61-70; issue 106, selections from issues 71-80, and so forth.

Accessing the back issues is simple:

Click on “Archive” in the menu.
Click on the number “60” in the little square box.
Go through the eight issues and make a list of the titles you remember liking particularly. This is also a good time to explore others you may have missed or not seen yet for some reason.

Please pick whatever you think deserves to be “anthologized.” In choosing serials, go by the issue in which the first installment appears. If it extends past the last issue in a set, that’s all right.

Finally, please communicate your list to us. Two ways:

By e-mail: click on “Contact” in the menu or use the e-mail link at the bottom of most pages.
In the forum: Talk About BW Stories —> Second Anniversary Issue. The forum topic is already off to a good start, and discussion is welcome.

Can contributors nominate their own works? By all means, but to avoid “ballot-box stuffing,” please choose one favorite from your own titles in each category in issues 53-60. That means you can nominate as many as four titles of your own for that set of issues: one each in the categories novel, serial, poetry and non-fiction. Any contributor can engage in “strategic voting” by nominating a second choice; the first choice will surely not be overlooked by other contributors and the readers.