Editorial
Editor's Desk: The Roundup
Several quick things for you this month:
Annual Reader’s Poll
Our annual reader’s poll is currently open! Please take the opportunity to tell us about your favorite 2015 Clarkesworld stories and cover art. The poll closes on February 23rd and the results will be published in our next issue. Details can be found here.
Hugo Awards
The nomination period for the 2016 Hugo Awards is also open. If you are eligible to nominate, we urge you to participate in the process. If you thought something we did or published was worthy of nomination this year, please check our eligibility list to find the category in which it belongs. This year’s list can be found here.
Where’s the Translation?
You might have noticed that we don’t have a translation this month. It took over a year to run into a scheduling problem, but we finally hit one we just couldn’t avoid. In this case both sides decided that the best course of action was to move a story from another future issue into this one and run two translations later this year. I apologize for the sudden change, but it will all work itself out in the end.
Mailing List
I’ve created a mailing list for Clarkesworld, Forever, Best Science Fiction of the Year, and all the other projects I’m editing. New projects will be announced there first and I promise not to send out more than one or two newsletters each month. You can sign up here.
SFWA Bulletin
Last month, I was named the new editor of The Bulletin, the official magazine of of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). I’ve been working there as interim editor for a few months and look forward to the challenge of working on this new project. If you are interested in writing some non-fiction for me, you can find the guidelines here.
Future Stuff
The Bulletin announcement triggered some concerns about my fiction work, and I would like to reassure everyone that I’m not abandoning Clarkesworld or any of the other projects I’m associated with. In fact, I’ll be announcing at least three more in the near future. Which leads me to . . .
Working Towards a 10th Anniversary and 50th Birthday
I have two major milestones coming up this year: my 50th birthday in August and the 10th anniversary of Clarkesworld in October—or July if you want to go by when we started work on it. I’d like to celebrate. Both events fall around Worldcon time, so we may throw a party there. We’re also trying to work out what to do for the big 10th anniversary issue. I’d love to have some input from our readers. Email me with your dream issue thoughts at neil@clarkesworldmagazine.com. It takes a lot of time to plan these things out, so don’t wait!
As for birthday presents—since you asked—I only have one thing on my list. It’s time to give up the day job. My family and I are trying to work out how to make that happen, but we need help to do so. If you are already subscribing to Clarkesworld or Forever, then thank you, that’s keeping the option on the table. If you haven’t been subscribing, now’s the time that would make the biggest difference to the future of this magazine.
I’ve mentioned before that a small percentage of our readers converting to subscribers would do the trick, but that’s easier said than done. Experience says that Clarkesworld will only be part of the puzzle. The new SFWA job helps. Forever helps. The anthologies help. Nothing stands on its own, but like a crowdfunding project, all the little bits add up to take you to your goal.
I think this is going to be a good year.
Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, Forever Magazine, and several anthologies, including the Best Science Fiction of the Year series. He is a ten-time finalist and current winner of the Hugo Award for Best Editor (Short Form), has won the Chesley Award for Best Art Director three times, and received the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award from SFWA in 2019. His latest anthology, New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction (co-edited with Xia Jia and Regina Kanyu Wang), is now available from Clarkesworld Books. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two sons.
