IGMS Issue #23 is Online!

Just so. 

--Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor, InterGalactic Medicine Show

Issue 23 - June 2011

According to a recent press release, issue 23 has an unusual twist to it. Cue the news-magazine style TV music now…

Dateline: Greensboro, NC, June 8, 2011 — Six years after appearing in Writers of the Future XXI together, four of 2005's winners will have stories published in the same issue of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show (IGMS), a leading webzine of science fiction and fantasy. [http://www.InterGalacticMedicineShow.com]

Recent Nebula-winner Eric James Stone, Scott Roberts, Lon Prater, and Mike Rimar—each a 2005 winner of the ongoing Writers of the Future contest—were notified separately this year that the short stories they had submitted to IGMS would appear together in the June 8 issue of the award-winning webzine. "I noticed that we'd all mentioned stories coming out in the same issue and joked that we should call it a reunion," Scott Roberts said.

"It's not unusual for IGMS to publish winners of the Writers of the Future contest," fiction editor Edmund Schubert pointed out. "We regularly receive outstanding submissions from prior winners. What's really odd is publishing so many from the same year in one issue. I wouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be some kind of record."

Turns out it is a record.

Cover-story author and WotF-winner Scott Roberts brings us, "A Discriminating Monster’s Guide to the Perils of Princess Snatching," a tale of… well, I think the title pretty much sums it up: a tale of the perils of princess snatching.

Next up from WotF gang is "Four Wizards and a Funeral” by Mike Rimar. In it four wizards manage to make a poor mortician’s life miserably complicated with conflicting demands regarding the treatment of their recently deceased comrade’s corpse. Of course, the corpse has plans of its own…

“This Is My Corporation, Eat,” from WotF-winner Lon Prater is a short story about the evolution of one Christian man in a world where faith has been capitalized and commercialized to the nth degree. This story also serves as this issue’s audio feature, performed by Tom Barker.

And in case you’re not tired of hearing me say “WotF-winner” yet, "Into The West” is by WotF-winner and recent Nebula winner Eric James Stone. “Into the West” is an unusual tale of a one-way ticket to the end of the world. You just want to make sure your ticket is for a trip in the other direction…

Lastly, but by no means least, "The Hanged Poet” by Jeffery Lyman is a powerful recounting of a conversation between an exiled general and a woman who was hung by the neck and left for dead many years earlier for her seditious poetry. She can’t completely die until her poetry does too, but the general is a collector of poetry and man in need of a mission.

Also, Darrell Schweitzer brings us an up-close-and-personal look into the latest goings on with Larry Niven.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to repeat an item from last issue’s letter in case you missed it, because it’s simply too good to miss: IGMS for the e-reader -- Kindle, Sony, Nook, Kobo, whatever – any e-reader that you can name.

Currently we have issue 1, and issues 11 through 22 available for free for subscribers, and if you're not a subscriber yet, those same issues are available for single-issue purchase and Kindle-download at Amazon.

Plus, as each new issue goes up, it will be added within a few days to both Amazon and on IGMS for subscribers.

If you're already a subscriber, all you have to do is click on "My Account" (in the upper left-hand corner of any page (except, of course, the home page)) and you'll be able to email yourself a mobipocket file for your e-reader. If you bought even just a single issue back when that was the IGMS subscription model, you can still get that single issue for your e-reader, too.

So a big thanks to our web designer, Scott Allen, for making those issues available for the e-reader, and a big you're welcome to IGMS readers everywhere.

Edmund R. Schubert
Editor, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

P.S. As usual, we've collected essays from the authors in this issue and will post them right here on our blog. Feel free to drop by and catch The Story Behind The Stories, where the authors talk about the creation of their tales.

Why I Submit to InterGalactic Medicine Show

1) Moderate response times.  IGMS is not fast when compared with say, Lightspeed or the Magazine of Fantasy and Science fiction.  But according to Duotrope.com, IGMS’s median response time is about 30 days.  That’s fairly standard. 

I happen to like fast responses, even if they are mostly rejections.  I assume the editors know what works for their magazine; the sooner my story is out of the hands of an editor who doesn’t like it, the sooner I can put it into the hands of one who does.

2) Great editors.  Edmund Schubert (and Orson Scott Card before him) have improved both the stories that I sold to the magazine.  OSC made Eviction Notice less ambiguous and helped me see my way to dropping a useless epilogue; Edmund Schubert helped make the ending of The End of the World Pool powerful and affecting rather than maudlin and melodramatic.

3)Online distribution.  I love being able to post a link that goes directly to IGMS.  I love that IGMS is on Kindle and all the other e-readers.  It makes getting my story into the hands of readers much, much easier. 

4) The price is right.  $2.50 ($2.99 for a single e-reader issue) for an issue is the sweet spot for consumers.  While it ain’t free, it also doesn’t make my readers choose between buying lunch or buying an issue.  They can buy an issue of IGMS, stick it on their Kindle, and read it on their lunch break—and still have money left over to actually buy lunch.

5) Artwork.  Every story in IGMS gets an illustration.  That’s an enormous selling point for me, and is a GREAT marketing tool for gaining readership.  Most folks—be honest, even your best friends—are not exactly drooling to read even a synopsis of your SF-new-weird story about the boy who becomes an astronaut and saves the world from the capriciousness of magic.  But show ‘em this:

…and their eyes pop open, and their mouth drops, and they will be a LOT more willing to read your work. 

Artwork sells books—the publishing world has known it for a long time.  Artwork can work the same for short stories, too, if you’ve got it, and can show it off.  And publishing a story in IGMS means you do got it. 

For social media and electronic communication, a picture is invaluable for self-promotion. 

6) I like the stories.  The stories that IGMS publishes are the type of stories that I like to read.  This is a bit of an ambiguous element, I realize.  What it works out to is that IGMS is a market where I know my stories fit, generally speaking; they have a history of  publishing stories that are like the stories I write.

--Scott M. Roberts

SideShow Links: June 01, 2011

Can your house do this?  The Very Large Telescope in a beautiful time lapse film.

I heard a piece on NPR recently about the Crawler, the vehicle that transports the space shuttle and its booster rockets from their work-a-day sites to the launchpad.  This is a massive, massive machine.  It will be making its last run shortly, as the space shuttle program is being phased out.

The Muppets Meet Firefly:  Yes.  There is nothing more that need be said.

Side Show Links, 05/26/2011

That’ll do, Spirit.  That’ll do…: NASA gives up hope of reviving the intrepid little robot.

It’s full of stars…: The orchestra pit, I mean.  Better than American Idol, and easier on the eyes.

Peter Sellers puts the classic in classic rock

Nebula Awards Weekend

Members of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) gathered in Washington DC over this past weekend for four days of carousing, armored combat, and hedonistic abandon. 

That’s only a slight exaggeration.

Here are some InterGalactic authors making the scene:

Above, Assistant Editor Eric James Stone (left) shows off his T-Shirt of Ego +3.  In this case, the t-shirt is warranted; Eric had been nominated for a Nebula award for his novella, That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made (which (SPOILER)……he later won).

Genre Princess Alethea Kontis holds court in the mass signing on Friday evening.  Alethea’s delightful picture book, 'H is for Halloween’  will be re-released in October.

The luminescent Mary Robinette Kowal displays her wonderful Regency-style fantasy, Shades of Milk and Honey, which was nominated for a Nebula.  A rumor is circulating among cognoscenti that a sequel is upcoming; prudent individuals will show their superior breeding by purchasing both.

Alliette de Bodard flew all the way from France to be at the Nebula Awards.  Actually, no—she opened a gateway to the underworld, and sallied forth in a palanquin carried by jaguars and the honorable spirits of ancient Mexica warriors.  Which is fitting, considering her novel, Servant of the Underworld, pays homage to the myths and peoples of Central America.  Aliette was nominated for best novella for her story, The Jaguar House, in Shadow.

Brad R. Torgersen may not be a jaguar, but he does have a Cheshire cat-like grin.  And for good reason: Brad was this year’s winner of the Analog Reader’s Choice award for his story Outbound. 

--Scott M. Roberts

Assistant Editor, InterGalactic Medicine Show

Nebula Awards

Congratulations to IGMS Assistant Editor, Eric James Stone, for winning the Nebula for Best Novelette!  His story, That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made, took the prize against a very strong field.

-- Scott M. Roberts

Assistant Editor, IGMS

Genre Chick interviews Edmund Schubert, Editor of IGMS

Follow, follow, follow the link!

--Scott Roberts,

Assistant Editor, IGMS

Sideshow Links, 5-16-2011

…and people say that the government is ineffective and wasteful!

Nebula Awards Weekend

InterGalactic Assistant Editors, Eric James Stone and Scott M. Roberts will be attending the Nebula awards weekend in Washington DC, from May 19-22. 

Eric will be attending the mass signing on Friday, May 20, from 3:30pm to 5:00; he’ll also be a panelist on Short Story Plotting on Saturday, May 21, at 11:30 in the Jefferson Room of the Washington Hilton.

The mass signing is open to the public. 

Scott will be hanging about looking dodgy and blithe.

The Numbers Game

We have played this game before; as before, I’ll just note that these are my numbers, and that Eric and Sarah’s numbers are probably much, much higher.

GENERAL:

Total Stories: 622

Rejected: 506 (78%)

Recommended: 116 (22%)

DETAILS:

Submissions that were received prior to genre tracking are not included in the numbers below.  The number of stories that were reviewed prior to genre tracking is 230. 

Note that the Published numbers are as near as I can guess;

Total Stories considered: 392

Horror: 3 (.7%)

• 2 Rejected
• 1 Recommended
• 1 Published

Fantasy: 169  (43%)

• 128 Rejected
• 41 Recommended
• 6 published

Science Fiction: 202  (51%)

• 147 Rejected
• 55 Recommended
• 6 Published

Other: 18 (4%)

• 18 Rejected
• 0 Recommended
• 0 Published

Sideshow Links May 11, 2011

Aunt May and Ma Kent on Mother’s Day:  Ignore the conclusion; the fact that Krypto exists means Ma Kent loses.

That’s what SHE said…: Analyzing the joke to this depth kills it.  And possibly all of humanity, as computers come one step closer to achieving Singularity.

Ah, SPRING!  Cue the wah-wah guitar…: Male jumping spiders need no cheesy 70’s music.  Well…maybe they do.

Love, Cayce—Marie Brennan

I am very much a gamer -- to the point where (I kid you not) when I was in graduate school, my field of study was role-playing games. (They even paid me a fellowship to do it!) It's one of my favorite hobbies.

And yet for all of that, I've played very little Dungeons & Dragons.

This is largely because I like games for their narrative aspects: character, plot, and so on. D&D, as game systems go, is more oriented toward killing monsters and taking their stuff. If I want to do that, I'm generally going to do it in a video game, where the machine will run all the numbers for me and leave me free to enjoy the hack-n-slash.

But I did play in two D&D games for a while -- or perhaps I should say, two Forgotten Realms games, as they were much more about the setting, much less about the usual D&D dungeon-crawling. (Seriously, we sometimes went entire sessions where the only roll anybody made was to see if your character noticed someone checking him out.) In the first one, we played a group of adventurers bound together by fate to do Great Deeds . . . and in the second, we played those adventurers' kids.

"Love, Cayce" is not based directly on that game; the characters are different, and so is the story. But that is where the idea came from. We got kidnapped by Shar early on, and ended up in the Underdark somehow, and when we finally got a chance to breathe I wrote a letter home to my parents, apologizing for having vanished out from under their noses, and giving a rather alarming summary of what had happened since then. It got me to thinking about what it would be like to live in a world like the Forgotten Realms -- and, more to the point, what it would be like to have kids there. I mean, being an adventurer is crazy enough: getting hauled off to other planes of existence, dying and being resurrected, all the rest of the insane stuff that's a day in the life of a D&D player-character. But what happens when it's your daughter doing those things? And then writing home to tell you all about it?

And you thought sending them off to college was bad.

The opening line wandered into my head, and then I had no choice but to write the story and find out just what had caused one or more people to be dead in the first place. Not to mention how they got not-dead afterward. Figuring out how to manage the story through letters was the hard part, especially once it became clear that it would be divided up into several missives. Soon I was having to wrangle two narrative timelines, one telling the parents about what had happened between the send-off at the Rose and Crown and people dying, and the other following ongoing events. But once I settled into the style of the thing, it was a sheer blast to write, with me constantly looking for ways to make the events more outrageous.

In fact, I enjoyed it enough that I kind of want to write a sequel story. The ending certainly leaves space for one. And I even have an opening line:

Dear Cayce,

I know you're tired of receiving Well-Intentioned Parental Advice, but there are a few things every young woman should know before she goes to Hell.

I want to know what happens at the wedding -- and the only way to find out is to write the story.

-- Marie Brennan

Exodus Tides—Aliette de Bodard

"Exodus Tides" grew out of several conversations at last year's Eastercon about immigration: both about society's acceptance of massive influx of migrants, and of how migrants themselves dealt with leaving the homeland behind, and starting a new life in a foreign country. In many ways, it's about the experience of the second generation, who has no link to the homeland beyond the stories of the older generation, and who has to adapt from childhood to an environment that might not be kind, or welcoming. For Emilie, of course, there is the extra layer of being a mixed-blood, stuck between two worlds--which isn't always a simple thing.

More than anything else, I intended the story to be about the problematic relationship of migrants and their descendants to the homeland: the sense of nostalgia that's inevitable, and also a little misleading--for the land that is remembered might have no connection at all with the land the way it is now, especially if fifteen or twenty years have passed, and things abroad have moved on. The stories that are told to Emilie push this notion to the edge: instead of a real homeland, what she has are myths and fairytales, which come both from a desire to protect her, and from her mother's own nostalgia for the lost country (which, in this case, is very literally lost). It's very much a story about the cost of lies--they might help a small child, but when they run their course, the revelation causes a painful shock, with repercussions that might not have been thought out.

Unlike other stories, this one came to me in bits and pieces: I usually write chronologically, but this story actually started with the swimming pool scene and the strong image of the completely "Frenchified" mother picking up her conflicted daughter. The other scenes were gradually filled in afterwards, still without coherent order (I think the ending was pretty the second thing that came to me, for instance). The story also developed fast, with extra scenes filled in partly from a sense of what the story needed, and partly using the French headlines of the time, which were about "problems" caused by migrants (in reality, by rootless second-generations, who are actually French citizens by right of soil). The character of Jamila came from this last, and also from a need to have a foil for Emilie: someone also struggling with her own cultural identity, and her own family stories, which might or might not be true. The holidays in Brittany are also a mainstay of French culture (it's generally either that, or going to the beach on the French Riviera), and I had a lot of fun putting familiar settings to work for the story.

Another fun tidbit was working out character names for the mermen: I chose a pattern frequently used by Asian immigrants, which was to take a "safe", non-adventurous name in order not to stand out. Thus, every merman in the story has an old-fashioned French name--broadly speaking, they're a generation late, using names that suit, but are hardly cutting-edge.

When I submitted the story to Edmund at IGMS, he kindly pointed out that the ending as it was did not work: it dumped too much information on the reader in one go, and left Emilie no time to come to a decision of her own before the reader could work through their confusion. Accordingly, I moved some information upwards,, to have the reveal come gradually. The original ending turned out not to work so well after the new reveal, so I had to tweak it slightly in order to keep the effect. I kept it ambiguous, deliberately: I have my own opinion on what Emilie does, but it's a tough problem, and I can easily put forth arguments for one decision or another.

The big question a lot of you might be asking is how much of the story reflects my own experience. Mostly, I'm not saying--gotta keep some things to myself, after all. But remember: I'm a writer. I tell plausible lies for a living.

--Aliette de Bodard

SideShow Links, April 27 2011

 

Can soylent green be that far away?  Biofuel for jet engines.

 

Sharks, beware: fire ants have your number...  Fire ants making rafts of their own bristly bodies.

 

Die, Cadbury!  DIE, DIE, DIE! Exploding the disgusting, deplorable, and downright nasty Cadbury egg, which is objectively the worst confection on the face of the planet.

-- Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor, IGMS

IGMS Authors Nominated for Hugo and Nebula Awards

Congratulations to Aliette de Bodard, Eric James Stone, and Mary Robinette Kowal for being nominated for the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards!

Novellette:

“The Jaguar House, in Shadow” by Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s, July 2010) - Read Online (Nominated for Hugo and Nebula)

“That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made” by Eric James Stone (Analog, September 2010) - Read Online (Nominated for Hugo and Nebula)

Short Story:

“For Want of a Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s, September 2010) - Read Online (Nominated for Hugo)

 

The Hugo award will be awarded at the World Science Fiction Convention, which is being held this year at Renovation, in Reno, NV, on August 17-21. 

The Nebula awards are open to active members and associate members of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Good luck and congratulations, folks!

--Scott Roberts

Assistant Editor, IGMS

Exiles of Eden—Brad Torgersen

I consider myself a blue-collar writer. Like your father or your grandfather or maybe your great-grandfather, I never throw anything out. My writing garage is filled with bits and pieces, odds and ends, all sorts of debris accumulated over the last 19 years. Most of it hasn't seen the light of day in a long time. Frankly, most of it doesn't deserve to see the light of day. But there are occasional moments when I wander into that writing garage, looking for a specific part or a chunk of something -- and I find the kernel of what could be a good story.

"Exiles of Eden" started off that way. There was an old story I'd written in 1996 -- back when I was very brand new at this gig. Not a very competently-told tale, to be honest. Clearly the work of a green writer. It had made the rounds of the (then) markets, and gotten rejected. But I'd always been fond of the central character and his predicament: a human being whose mind has been recorded into the memory banks of an interstellar warship, then flung off into the galaxy to do battle with an overwhelmingly implacable alien menace.

So I did what I've done several times as of late: I threw the kernel of that old story into the machine parts cleaner, brushed off the corrosion and the rust and the old oil, then set about constructing an entirely new adventure around that lone, refreshed concept.

Only, this time Rordy the recorded human wasn't alone. I gave him friends. And a much longer history. And an alien foe so literally awful it had wiped humanity utterly from the galaxy. Or so Rordy had been assuming for too many years. Until his ancient friend Wanda showed up. Wanda, with whom there had been so many unexplored possibilities, in the time right before the Earth's sun went supernova...

Obviously, I like to play with "big" concepts. Virtual immortality. Replicant tech. Love and relationships that span centuries, or millennia. Invincible monsters hiding under your (galactic) bed. The end of the frickin' world, and so forth.

But I try to play with these concepts in ways that are accessible to many different kinds of people.

I think that's another aspect of being blue-collar: I sometimes flirt with literary word-smithing, but in the end I deliberately try to tell tales that a Private in the Army can digest. Me, the old Reserve Warrant Officer watching these something-teen year olds walk out the door to Iraq or Afghanistan. If only more science fiction writers understood how voraciously a lot of those Privates read. Especially within the genre. If I'm spinning sci-fi yarns those young Janes and Joes in The Box can't grok, I kinda suspect I'm doing it wrong.

So there's a lot of "voice" in this story. In all my stories, actually.

Dean Wesley Smith sold me on that concept, back a few years ago when I was barely writing at all, staring at a mountain of rejections, and wondering if it wasn't just a colossal waste of time. Dean smacked me on the head and said, "Stop re-writing your work to death, you're killing the voice!" So I don't re-write endlessly anymore. I usually give myself three passes, and I'm out. The story is either up to snuff, or it isn't. After three runs through the manuscript, it's as good as I can make it -- at this current time, at my current skill level.

For those stories that don't make it -- happens less often these days, to my great delight -- the writing garage beckons. Just take the story in and dump it out onto one of the (crowded) shelves. Maybe I'll come back for it in a few years, when I feel like it.

Of course, with the gleaming electronic freeway of e-publishing beckoning like an Eisenhower Interstate of 21^st century writing, maybe I'll put more time into bringing out all the old garage stories? Build me some kitbashed, Frankenstein hot-rods?

Tracy Hickman always says that stories that don't get read are stories that don't do anyone any good -- least of all the writer. Until the stories get read, they don't have meaning in the lives of the people who read them. So why let any of that material gather dust?

I think I'll go get my coveralls on...

--Brad Torgersen

We Who Steal Faces—Tony Pi

“We Who Steal Faces” isn’t the first story I’ve written with the Elect, near-immortals who name themselves after insects and use amber and silk to change shapes. Two other stories star Flea and are set in the modern day (“Metamorphoses in Amber” and “The Paragon Lure”). But the trouble with long-lived shapeshifters is, their past lives are as intriguing as their current life, and feuds among them could last centuries.

In exploring Flea’s past, I decided to write a story wherein he pitted his thieving skills against the greatest trapmaker among his kind. His foe would have been both Daedalus and Da Vinci, with the temperament of the former, the quirks of the latter, and the genius of both. And what better name than Antlion for a maker of traps?

In the earliest draft, it was hubris versus hubris: Antlion smug in the belief that his vault was unbreachable, and Flea eager to prove him wrong. I knew the story would be set in Venice, where the Silk Road met the Amber Road. But as a labyrinth under Venice wouldn’t exactly work, I looked to Padua on the mainland and started researching the locations and time period, picking out fascinating tidbits I learned to build the plot.

However, the initial idea of a wager between Flea and Antlion didn’t work. Flea’s motive came across as too self-serving. That’s where another nugget of research I saved came into play: the mithridate. Adding the poisoning, as well as a good dose of espionage, upped the stakes and gave Flea a more noble reason to challenge Antlion’s Labyrinth.

--Tony Pi

Writer’s Tools

The most important thing a writer does is write.  And really, to do that, all you need to have is a writing implement (pen, pencil, crayon…) and some paper. 

The next most important thing a writer does is try to get published, and to best enable that, one’s tools need to be a bit more complex.  This article is geared toward the new writer who is seeking adequate tools for both writing convenience and publishing.

Hardware

Laptop

In my opinion, a laptop is essential for writing.  I’m a pretty mobile guy; most of my writing is done when I’m not at home.  A laptop meets my needs: with a laptop, I can write on my lunchbreak at work; I can write while riding in the carpool, or at my kids’ soccer practice.  The portability of a laptop, for me, is 90% of its value.  I favor lightweight machines with good batteries and non-reflective screens over machines with powerful computing abilities and good graphics.  My laptop is for writing, not for playing video games: that means that I don’t have to have the latest model.

What I need in a laptop (from a hardware standpoint):

• Ethernet card (or USB hub with ethernet adapter).  Most places that provide internet access have gone wireless, but I’m reluctant to give up the wire.
• Wireless Card.  For connecting to wireless access points at the coffee shop, library, etc.
• At least two USB slots.  One for my iPod, one for any other USB peripherals (like a printer).  In addition, if your laptop doesn’t have an ethernet card, you can buy a USB ethernet adaptor to get wired.
• Non-reflective (or low reflective) screen.  For outdoor writing.
• Good battery (7+ hours of life)

Most of my research material is done on my laptop, and most of my research is done on the internet—that makes the first two bullet points essential.  I suppose I probably don’t need as hefty a battery as I have, but I like to be prepared for those long family roadtrips/campouts where there’s no outlet to recharge with.

I personally prefer PCs to Macs.  It’s all about the price, I’m afraid: no getting around it, Macs are too expensive.  I buy refurbished laptops to cut the cost even more.  My current machine is a Dell Inspiron 15, and it cost me around $400.  The screen is 15 inches wide, and is a little more reflective than I like, but it’s still within the range of acceptable.  It’s fairly lightweight, and the battery I bought ($80) lasts around 7 hours if I turn the monitor brightness to low.

Printer

You need a printer if you’re going to be trying to get published.  Alas, enough places still require hard-copy manuscripts that owning one is an unavoidable expense for the writer.  (I suppose that you COULD go to the library instead, if your library has a printer they allow individuals to print from…)

Thankfully, printers are cheap and most of them are hardy.  You’ll wind up spending more on ink than anything else.  An adequate printer will run about $80; ink cartridges run about $20/cartridge.

Software

Word Processing Program

What’ll it be?  Microsoft Word?  WordPerfect?  OpenOffice?

Most folks just use Microsoft Word.  I do too, but that’s because I use Word at work, so it’s the program I’m most familiar with.  It’s definitely not the most user friendly, and its quirks—especially with pagination and bulleting and numbering—can be downright mind-numbing.  Our publisher swears—literally—by WordPerfect, and he’s a best-selling writer, or something. 

I think that it comes down to what you’re familiar with, and what you’re willing to pay.  On that note, let me plug OpenOffice—a full suite of office applications (word proccessing, spreadsheet, slideshow, paint, database) that is available for free, and is developed under an Open License from Sun Systems.  In my opinion, the interface is not quite as slick as what you’ll find in Word or WordPerfect, but check the price: free compared to…well compared to whatever MS Office is selling for these days.  In addition, since the suite is maintained by an open community, you can just update your software occasionally rather than having to buy a new version when the software publisher decides he needs a new swimming pool.    OpenOffice is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems, too.

Development Software

By ‘development software’ I mean a piece of software that will allow you to quickly and easily build a story bible.  A story bible is a document, or series of documents where you keep all the details about your work in progress—plot, characters, names for characters, magic system, sciencey explanations…everything.  Word processors are just mediocre at this—generally, you want to have some sort of interface that allows you to navigate, index, and search in a more robust way than is possible with word processors.

Scrivener is a program that I hear a LOT about from my Mac-using friends.  It was raved about so much, a couple friends bought Macs on the cheap just to install it and give it a shot.  And now they’re confirmed, dyed-in-the-wool, true-blue-through-and-through converts to the program.  The good news (for me) is that Scrivener is trying to get a Windows port up and running; I’m eager to try it out.  The Mac version of Scrivener retails for $45; the Windows version may cost the same.  It’s scheduled to be released in June 2011.  One negative to Scrivener—there’s a learning curve to using it effectively.  But I hear that once you’ve learned it, it’s a real boon.

Wikipedia-style software is also popular.  I use WikiPad for my story bible, and it’s adequate.  There’s very little to learn, and the interface is intuitive and natural. 

Tracking Software

Tracking software allows you to track numbers on your work.  Some folks just use a spreadsheet program like MS Excel; others go in for designing a full database.  Tracking software is useful in a couple ways: if you’re actively submitting, tracking software helps you note when you submitted and where.  That way, you don’t submit stories to the same market (or agent, or whatever) twice. 

I track all my submissions through a Microsoft Access database application I created; that may be a little bit above and beyond what most folks are interested in doing.  The important thing for me is to be able to see, or find quickly, which markets have seen what work.

I also track my daily word count—that’s fairly simple with a spreadsheet and a couple formulas. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look into my toolbox.  Please put everything back where you found it.

--Scott M. Roberts

Assistant Editor, IGMS

The Long Way Home—G. Norman Lippert

“The Long Way Home” was written at Literary Boot Camp with Uncle Orson himself presiding. The assignment was to write something based on research conducted during that week, including street interviews with random people. This is harder than it seems, especially for famously introverted creative types. My interview was spectacularly awkward and uneventful, thus I had decided, of course, to write a short black comedy about a pregnant witch. I had formulated the story in my head and was about to begin the marathon of writing it when my awkward street interview came back to me, bringing a different idea with it.

   Suddenly, the man I had interviewed (accompanied by his son and dog) had a history. More importantly, he had a place to go, and it wasn’t just around the corner on his regular evening stroll. The man (I named him Henry) was going to confront some buried secrets in a rather fantastical representation of his childhood hometown. It was less a complete story than a Twilight Zoney “what-if” scenario. When I started writing it I didn’t know how it would end. When it did end (some nine hours later) it surprised me. It moved me a little. It's a bit cheesy and melodramatic, yes, but that’s true of the most prosaic truths in life, isn’t it? The trick as a writer isn’t to avoid the cheesy truths but to present them in such a way that the reader forgets, at least for a few minutes, that they are cheesy. Hopefully it works in this instance.

-G. Norman Lippert

InterGalactic Medicine Show - Issue 22

Now available: Welcome to IGMS Issue 22. Always a pleasure to see you here. Let's get right to business, shall we? Now available:

Our cover story, "Love, Cayce" by Marie Brennan, is an epistolary starring Cayce, the daughter of great adventurers, who is teamed her up with her parents' friends' children to have adventures of their own. She writes home to fill mom and dad in on the mayhem with typical teen, attitude-laced fashion.

Next up is "We Who Steal Faces" by Tony Pi, where an age-old feud between shape-shifters has secret agent Master Flea racing through Renaissance Italy to save the life of a poisoned friend.

"Exodus Tides" by Aliette deBodard is a unique tale of loss, self-discovery, and mer-folk, as a young woman seeks to find her place in a world that is integrated more in theory than reality.

"Exiles In Eden" by Brad Torgersen features the last of humanity, taken to the stars, finding more humans in an unlikely place -- with unanticipated, unpleasant consequences.

"The Long Way Home" by George Lippert is an Orson Picks (OP) from Uncle Orson himself, David Lubar offers another of his "Tales For The Young and Unafraid," and Darrell Schweitzer brings us an up-close-and-personal look into the latest goings on with Robert Silverberg.

Last but not least, we try to bring you a bonus of some sort with each issue, and this issue is no different. This bonus comes compliments of our web-designer Scott Allen. Scott usually toils in anonymity, but I have to make sure he gets credit for a job well done. What job is that, you ask?

IGMS for just about any e-reader -- Kindle, Sony, Nook, Kobo, whatever -- that you can name.

Thus far we have issue 1, and issues 12 through 21 available (for free) for subscribers, and if you're not a subscriber yet, issue 1 and issues 17 through 21 are available for single-issue purchase and Kindle-download at Amazon.

Plus, as each new issue goes up, it will be added within a few days to both Amazon and for subscribers.

If you're already a subscriber, all you have to do is click on "My Account" (in the upper left-hand corner of any page (except, of course, the home page)) and you'll be able to email yourself a mobipocket file for your e-reader. If you bought even just a single issue back when that was the IGMS subscription model, you can still get that single issue for your e-reader, too.

So a big thanks to our web designer, Scott Allen, and a big you're welcome to IGMS readers everywhere.

Verona Rupes

This image from Voyager 2 (found on NASA's APOD site) shows Verona Rupes, the deepest canyon in our solar system.

…and it’s not just the spawn-place of IGMS Assistant Editor Eric James Stone; it’s also the setting of the wonderful story, The Mystery of Miranda, by David Simmons.  The Mystery of Miranda appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show #18.

Brutal Interlude—Wayne Wightman

The title was the first piece to arrive. I have lists of titles in my notebooks and this one was entered decades ago, just in case. I am a thrifty person.

In the eighties I wrote an unfinished novel, Starkiller, which involved Sylvia Romilar (who, except for one line of dialogue, was in a coma the whole novel), Walter Roscoe, and Sylvia’s slinky sister, Wanda Paloma.

After losing interest in writing sf during the ‘90s and writing unseen screenplays in the ‘00s, I quit altogether. Then—

I moved to Oregon, where I have a quiet life. In 2007 I thought I’d give writing another shot, to see if it would be fun again. But with a different program:

1.) In the past, I would decide what I wanted to say and then put it in language accessible to 12-yr-olds. I wasn’t going to do that anymore. I had just been reading Watt by Samuel Beckett, Tristram Shandy and a few Jane Austen novels, and I liked what I read. So if I want to combine a lacy Austenian 80-word sentence with Beckett’s OCD, splattered with Hunter Thompson’s vocabulary, try and stop me.

2.) In my stories, stupid people should dance faster, because if they act up they are going to be punished, because they are most dangerous.

3.) I decided to write about life as we secretly know that it is: good people do bad things, bad people do good things, and some people are nasty and guilty and have fabulous lives.

5) I was going to characterize my people by showing or implying these contradictions and the complications they cause. For example:

“The next time I see you, if I'm different,

I want you to pretend you know me, even if you don't.”

“I will.”

“Tell me you'll never lie to me.”

“I won't.”

I recognize that this may be cryptic to literalists, pre-teens, and sociopaths.

I fully fully understand the ancient suspicion that muses whisper into the writer’s ear. I wrote the story, of course, but the cauldron that some of those things crawled out of is unfamiliar to me. After a few months’ separation from it, I read the story again and I had this creepy little question pop into mind: “What kind of person would write this?”

Grab-it music? “Enema Mama”? That whole tooth thing with Garith Glone and his obsession with hands? The doctor’s medical question to Lance on the back stairs? People being manually dismembered?

I don’t know where those come from. Twitchy amygdala?

Things You Wouldn’t Know Otherwise

• The Hotel Minérve is a real place in Paris where I’ve stayed a few times. In fact, get this: One morning I was in the lobby, and outside on the street was someone who looked like and then turned out to be the actual John Brunner. We had a few beers and a nice talk that evening. (I have always admired his title The Atlantic Abomination.)


• The movies Sylvia made, “Instruments of Torture and Delight” and “Triumph of the Flesh” are actual stories. “Adaptogenia” was in F&SF a year ago. (And when will a movie be made where Cate Blanchett plays all the parts?)


• “Walter’s Used Pets” seemed like an odd, funny idea at first. Then it seemed completely reasonable and I wondered why I hadn’t ever heard of anyone having a used pet shop.


• Diaz (a fellow contestant in the story) was an actual life-long friend — bipolar, hilarious, tedious, and inspirational. Currently deceased. He introduced me to weed.


• “Brutal Interlude” was one of those stories that opened up enough possibilities for a novel, so it was difficult to cut it to its current length. I left out the part where classic lit was rewritten in degraded form (Crime and Punishment: Russian motorcycle gangs; Moby Dick: nevermind...you’d have bad dreams).


• But I did not cut out that vile taxi ride. That was a “hello” to those of you out there who occasionally have those life-shouldn't-be-like-this moments. Happens to fine people daily. In the worst cases, to quote Diaz, “You maintain the plod, man, and wait for the light.”


• Finally, I also love Sylvia Romilar.

--Wayne Wightman

Breakout-Edmund Schubert

Several years ago the orbits of Earth and Mars came closer together than they had been in almost 60,000 years, and the planet was actually visible to the naked eye as a very large orange star. Viewed through an average telescope, it appeared about the same size the full moon does to the naked eye. There was a good deal of attention paid to it by the mainstream press, and one of the articles I read (in a magazine whose name I’ve long-since forgotten) was a piece about a professor teaching astronomy classes in a penitentiary, and they were studying the Red Planet.

As interesting as it was that Mars was so close, the idea of a professor studying it along with inmates was too compelling to ignore, and I wrote “Breakout” in one rapid burst. I do my best work when I write the first draft quickly , and was pleased with the way it turned out--except for one thing: In the first draft, the main character gets taken away in the end by aliens. Given the way the rest of the story went, I thought that was way too obvious. My favorite kinds of endings are those that make perfect sense, yet at the same time take the reader by surprise. So after a little thinking/tweaking, I hit upon an ending I thought was better (I’m not going to give any spoilers here; you’ll have to read the story yourself), and I showed my results to Orson to see if he had any suggestions. He liked the story and his sole piece of advice was to send it to Stan Schmidt at Analog. He said Stan liked stories with a sense of humor, and my quirky little “Breakout” (it’s only about 3,500 words long) would appeal to him. Stan did like “Breakout,” but not quite enough to buy it. He sent a very nice personal note, but that was as far as it went.

The next place I submitted it to was Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. From time to time I also write mysteries, and since “Breakout” was set in a prison, I thought it might appeal to them. Actually, I thought that the SF twist might make the story more appealing to them than a straight-up mystery, and although it took them three times longer to reject it than anything else I had ever sent them before, in the end rejection is what came.

I still felt good about the story, but at that point a lot of other things came up that demanded my attention and I all but forgot about quirky little “Breakout”…

…until a few months ago, when David Lubar emailed us at IGMS to say that he needed skip one turn in his usual rotation. Orson had arranged with David several years ago to write a short YA story (or two) for every issue of IGMS, and even though we switched that arrangement up when we moved from a quarterly to a bimonthly production schedule (at that point he started writing stories for us in every other issue), it’s still understandable that sometimes even that could be too much.

So what were we going to put in the magazine to replace David’s story? The issues when he’s not normally scheduled to appear are the issues when we have our audio features, but we didn’t have anything in hand that was short enough to fill that bill (audio pieces, for a variety of reason, rarely run over 4,000 words, and I prefer for them to be even shorter than that).

That’s when I remembered “Breakout.”

Normally I’m very hesitant to even suggest running my own material in IGMS. In fact, I’ve only ever done it once before (under very similar circumstances), and even then, I only suggest it; I never unilaterally decide. So I sent “Breakout” to our managing editor, Kathleen Bellamy, and to Uncle Orson, and with their unanimous consent, the story was then forwarded to Stuart Jaffe to record as an audio feature. Stuart did a great job, and frankly I was tickled to have another audio piece to add to my library. Publication is always welcome, but there’s something about having a story performed by a voice actor that really appeals to me, and “Breakout” is the third of my stories to receive the audio ‘treatment.’

The moral of this story? Well, let me put it this way: Mars may need women, but IGMS needs short science fiction and fantasy stories under 4,000 words. If you’ve written a good one (or more), please submit them to IGMS.

--Edmund Schubert

Pendragon—Interview with Edmund Schubert

Pendragon Variety, a podcast for aspiring writers, has interviewed Edmund Schubert. Check out the ol’ Android Were-Vampire himself HERE!

And none other than the incredible Myr Lafferty takes her chances with the cybertronic/lycanthromic/vampirc Ed-in-Chief HERE!

InterGalactic Medicine Show—Now Available on Kindle!

You’ve pined for it; you’ve whined for it. You’ve begged, pleaded, and howled for it.

And now you can have it: InterGalactic Medicine Show on your Kindle-compatible e-reading device.

MOREOVER: The Kindle version of IGMS is free to IGMS subscribers.

What's that you say? Don't have an IGMS subscription? You can also download individual issues to your Kindle for only $2.99 each, direct from Amazon. Issues #1 and #17 - 21 are available now, the rest will be there in a few short weeks.

Check out the InterGalactic Medicine Show for details!

-- Scott M. Roberts

Asst. Editor, IGMS

A Frame of Mother-of-Pearl- Cat Rambo

This story was, I think, the most heavy revising I've ever done, and it was (luckily) all good and happy collaboration. Edmund liked the original version but asked that I change a few things to make the conclusion more interesting. I did, and ended up changing it from a happy ending to an unhappy one, which made his head explode a bit. We back and forthed once more after that, and I think the story ended up being a lot stronger for the interaction.

The name (and inspiration) for the story came from a yard sale find, a housekeeping manual from the 1890s, which includes various gentle arts like constructing Aeolian harps and making crystal gardens from an alum solution. The label pasted inside the book names it as having belonged to one "Hattie Fender," who served as namesake for the heroine. I had started the story as an entry for a Codex story contest and ended up getting so carried away with the beauty of my own prose that I had 500 words describing Hattie, the tattoos on her scalp, the scent of bergamot in her wake, and so forth - and not much else. Edmund, happily, persuaded me to rearrange this big lump of verbiage and fold it into the story in a much more graceful way.

Taking a feather out of one's pocket is a tribute to a YA novel whose title I can't think of, where the heroine, who lives most of her life on roller skates in early 19th century NYC, does the same thing to determine where she'll go. Similarly, the pennies placed in the curio cabinet are an echo from All of a Kind Family, another YA novel I loved.

--Cat Rambo

http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog

Note from Asst. Ed, Scott M. Roberts:

The "Codex story contest" mentioned by Ms. Rambo is one of a number of contests held by the online writing group, CodexWriters.com

How To Write Magical Words: Finally on Kindle

Don't know what else to say; the book has been a hit, and now the folks who've been waiting for the Kindle edition need wait no longer.

The Devil’s Rematch—Spencer Ellsworth

"The Devils' Rematch" is a classic example of why I should nail myself to this laptop and write. It was an idea I'd had years ago, and written the first half until I decided that it wasn't working. I had no idea what I was doing with the Devil. A few years later, I had made the goal to finish a short story every month, and I pulled out this one and finished it. I decided I could keep the Devil as a generic MacGuffin who didn't do much besides stoke the fires that had been simmering in this little town. When I was done, I had a perfectly serviceable story, I thought, except it was the old cliche about the Devil coming to town. But of course, a year later I had a goal to send out more stories, so this one hit the mail and IGMS snapped it up. I've sent stories to IGMS that were supposed to explode the earth with awesome; instead they picked this one. Again, I guess I'd better keep writing because I'm not quite sure what works.

The story hit an interesting snag in that the original draft had a few instances of the N-word. When Scott Card declined to print the word, my first reaction was "Mark Twain said the N-word." My second reaction was "I'm not Mark Twain." My third reaction was "Cookie." That's always my third reaction.

Eric James Stone, brilliant assistant editor that he is, had the idea to make the mayor self-censor, hence the passages where he says "I'm not gonna tell you what he said, but it was something that shouldn't be said in polite company, or ever..." Once I implemented that, the mayor because a much more interesting character. He was always too polite to say the N-word and having him do so, when Elmer kisses his daughter, had rung hollow for me in the first draft. Now, when he says "you people," it communicates the subtle racism he's carried around his whole life.

--Spencer Ellsworth