We would like to share an announcement for the opening of the third year of Daily Science Fiction. The very successful publication has been running on the sheer determination of two editors. Well, the weight of responsibilities of putting out a fresh story five days a week, and the reading of the enormous pile of submissions, has been much to bear for Jon and Michele. So they did what any wise and overworked editors would do, accept help.
We have another month of reviews for you! Thank you to those who helped me to smoke out find Mr Anonymous. His reviewing talents were desperately needed missed here. Now on to the good stuff.
Back in 1996, I asked the various editors — for an advice column I was writing — how many slush submissions (i.e., unagented, by writers they didn’t know) they received in a month. Asimov’s got about a thousand, F&SF about 750, etc. So the answer, of course, is that the editor isn’t going to give detailed feedback to 1,000 beginning writers a month. The meaningful feedback that he gives to every unsaleable story is a rejection slip.
Skyrim, the fifth entry in the Elder Scrolls RPG game series, has a lot to offer: it’s an enormous game with a breathtaking variety of weapons, abilities, loot, side quests, and strong visuals.
This marks the end of Daily Science Fiction’s first full year of publication. Speculative fiction’s first email service magazine has done well for itself. Although it has lacked the fanfare it deserves, its grass roots ascension in the market has not gone completely unnoticed. Two respectful award organizations (Million Writer’s awards and the Micro awards) have nominated several stories that debuted on DSF. Congratulations to Daily SF and its authors.
Month # 14. If you ever took the time to browse through DSF’s library and checked out the authors who have contributed, you’d see many of the same people who have had stories published at Daily SF are published in the same publications Locus and Tangent Online deem worthy to promote and review on a regular basis. I have pointed this out before but it is clear those two big boys could care less what I think. I can’t let that stand.
Well, StarShipSofa is still StarShipSofa. I said what I thought last year, and nothing much has changed, so I’ll just say “ditto”. I do have one thing to add: they’re not great at taking criticism.
Forty-nine episodes this year, with (by my count) 58 stories. On to the list!
I wanted to write a post to draw attention to a service that I am offering that I call “pet cartooning”, converting a photograph of an animal into a cartoon image. This could be a fun surprise present for an animal lover, or a loving tribute to your own pet. Here are a couple of examples of the results of this:
“Thief of Futures” by D. Thomas Minton demonstrates value in terms of wealth and talent; the story is only concerned with characters who are either rich or possess a very certain innate skill. Everyone else is consigned to the background. “Antiquities and Tangibles” by Tim Pratt examines value through connections and luck; the more social-oriented tools of achieving success and accruing value. Those without connections and luck have no chance of exploring happiness to the extent the main characters do.
Clarkesworld has published some amazing stories. Like all markets, I don’t like every one of their stories, but when they do publish a story that I like, the story’s not just good, it’s great. It was not hard to fill this list. It was so hard that the entire top 5 are equally worthy of 1st place in my opinion. But ranking them a 5-way tie for first place would be rather wishy-washy and would sort of undermine the point of having a list. So I thought about it long and hard to decide on particular aspects of each story that I liked more than the others to come up with this final ranking.
