Science Fiction & Fantasy

Normally, I struggle to think of a topic for my editorials, but this month I have three things on my plate and none can really wait. I’m going to briefly cover all of them right now and cover some in detail when I have the luxury of some worry-free time.
Thing 1: That Whirring Sound From [...]

This month’s editorial was supposed to be about my adventures at a pair of science fiction conventions in China, but it won’t be. I’m sitting on the floor of my house, blasting some music by Infected Mushroom, and trying to work out how to tell you the story of how none of that came to [...]

For almost seven years now, I’ve been living with a mechanical friend who lives in my chest and  monitors my heart for any abnormal activity and who is prepared to zap me if necessary. Boxy, as my kids dubbed it, while reassuring, is a single-minded cyborg enhancement. When it was first discussed, I had asked [...]

October marks our thirteenth anniversary! To celebrate, we have a larger-than-normal issue this month, highlighted in part by a novella and an extra translation. Both works were made possible by a grant from LTI Korea. That funding has allowed us to substitute original Korean translations  in place of nine reprints in our 2019 schedule. We’re [...]

When Dublin first announced its bid to host a Worldcon, something weird happened: my family’s ears perked up. My parents were born and raised in Ireland—Navan to be precise—and immigrated to the US in the 1960s. While my grandparents were still alive, we made regular pilgrimages “home” to visit family and I have many fond [...]

In April 2015, I wrote a blog post about the most popular titles submitted to Clarkesworld after its first fifty thousand submissions. We started using that system in 2009, so it took about six years. Just under four years later, we passed the one hundred thousand mark, so I decided to jump back into our [...]

I have two anthologies being published by Night Shade Books this month: The Eagle has Landed—a retrospective of lunar science fiction published since Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the Moon—and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Four. Each project was a unique learning opportunity, one looking at history [...]

Last month, I had the opportunity to attend the Nebula Conference run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). The conference was in Los Angeles this year, so after an early morning cross-country flight and a long drive through the never-ending LA traffic, I arrived at the hotel and settled in. Over [...]

One of my favorite things about working in the science fiction field—even all the way back to my days as a bookseller—is the people I get to work with, be it staff, authors, artists, other editors, or fellow fans. Most days, I’m physically isolated from that world and as an introvert that actually works well [...]

On more than a few occasions, I’ve been asked to explain my interest in international science fiction—and in particular—works in translation. With this month marking the publication of the first of nine translated South Korean stories in Clarkesworld, I thought it might be a good time to dig into that and explore our journey.
Truth be [...]