On Editing My Science Fiction Magazine - Latest Thoughts

I have been browsing through my stories for ASIM 60, having sent off my editorial yesterday. There are still some book reviews to slot in,but that has to wait until Simon Petrie, our wizard of everything, has finished the layout and can tell me how many words we have left. There also has to be space for the advertisements that help keep us going.   I am still awaiting the art - the cover artist, Eleanor Clarke, emailed the other day to say she had done some initial sketches she would send on as soon as she got access to a scanner. Eleanor is a wonderful artist - I feel very old, because I remember when she was born.  Now she is the young mother of two bright little boys, and doing very well with her art.

Reading through my editorial, I have suddenly realised that almost half of the contents are space-themed. Oh, dear. I hope we don't get any rude letters about it. I remember when someone who loves horror fiction made an entire horror-themed issue and lost us some subscribers.

But there's fantasy. There's humour and serious. There's a little bit of horror, because we need it to balance an issue, though I confess to knowing very little about horror fiction. As I have said, I'm not a fan. I chose stuff that worked well for me, but wasn't too horrific.

 So it balanced, sort of. I could only work with the stories available to me, and I would receive a wonderful story, cry out,"YESSS!!!" and suddenly there's a full table of contents and about seven of them are about "strange new worlds" . Whoops! And yet, they're mostly about what people do on those worlds. Because when we're out there, we will still be human, with human faults and dreams.

 I have a confession to make:  my love of speculative fiction is based on something called "sensawunda", ie "sense of wonder", and for me, that means, "Space, the final frontier!"

But I think it's going to be a great issue and I am really chuffed at how many first and second sales I have among the veterans. When the cover is ready I will show it off here to my readers. Stand by.