2009 Nebula Award Nominees from Semiprozines

The 2009 Nebula Awards ballot is now available and includes the following works originally appearing in semiprozines:

Short Story

  • Non-Zero Probabilities” by N. K. Jemisin (Clarkesworld, November 09)
  • Spar” by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, October 2009)

Novelette

Novella

Congratulations to Clarkesworld, Interzone, Nora, Kij, Eugie and Jason!

Brain Harvest: an Almanac of Bad Ass Speculative Fiction

Established: 2009brainharvest
Editors: Caren Gussoff, Shane Hoversten, Eden Robins

Overview:
Brain Harvest: An Almanac of Bad-Ass Speculative Fiction is the creation of a brooding Minnesotan neuroscientist, a zombie-obsessed sexpert, and the ex-burlesque dancing Jewish mother you never knew you wanted. We all write and read speculative fiction, and we share a dream: to deliver whiz-bang spec fic you can swallow in a mouthful, but that outlives all of us. Brain Harvest will publish electronically and can be read right here, or dispatched to your iPhone, Blackberry, or whatever other mobile device–and maybe, one day, straight into your brain.

Awards and Recognition:
Mentioned/endorsed by BoingBoing, Tor.com. No awards…yet. We’ve got our eyes on the prize, though.

Other Items of Interest:
We will be holding our first annual contest this summer. Stay tuned for details.

Website:
www.brainharvestmag.com

Clarkesworld Magazine

clarkesworldEstablished: 2006
Editors: Neil Clarke (fiction), Sean Wallace (fiction), Cheryl Morgan (non-fiction)

Overview:
Clarkesworld Magazine is a free online magazine that publishes a healthy balance of fiction from both up-and-coming and established authors like Jeff VanderMeer, Elizabeth Bear, Caitlin Kiernan, Jay Lake, Catherynne M. Valente, Ken Scholes, and Mary Robinette Kowal. Each month, we also produce audio fiction which can be found directly on our site or available for free download through iTunes. In his summary of Clarkesworld in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Gardner Dozois describes our taste in fiction as “stylishy written and usually faintly perverse.”

Our non-fiction is split between interviews with authors and artists like Gene Wolfe, Steven Erikson, Kage Baker, John Picacio and Margo Lanagan, and articles on science, art, or literature. We’re also quite proud to be able to feature the works of new artists as a virtual cover to each issue.

Awards and Recognition:
Nominee: 2009 Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.
2006 Million Writers Award for Best New Online Magazine.
2006 Million Writers Award for Best Short Story.
Stories reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Fantasy Best of the Year, Unplugged, Wilde Stories 2008: The Best of the Year’s Gay Speculative Fiction, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, and Horror Best of the Year.
Stories appearing on the recommended reading/honorable mention lists in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Unplugged, the Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List, Nebula Awards Short Story Long List, and the Million Writers Notable Stories List.
A complete list with links to winning, recommended, and nominated stories is available here.

Other Items of Interest:
In an attempt to reach a broader audience and fund the free edition, all the original fiction in Clarkesworld is collected annually in a print anthology series called Realms. Volume 1 is currently available and volume 2 is scheduled for release this summer.

Website:
www.clarkesworldmagazine.com

Information provided by Neil Clarke.

The Edge of Propinquity

Established: 2006edge
Editor: Jennifer Brozek

Overview:
The Edge of Propinquity is a series of short stories from four different authors in four different universes exploring the world that lurks just beneath the surface of everyday life. It is the world of the unexplained, supernatural, magic, horror, duty, responsibility, black humor, conspiracy, unknown heritage and power. Each month, a guest author story is included in the literary offering. New issues are published on the 15th of every month.

Each year we have a new theme. For 2009, the theme is ‘compromise.’ In order to be accepted for publication, stories must fit the webzine’s theme and setting. The setting is a modern day story focusing on a character deep within the hidden world that surrounds mundane society.

Awards and Recognition:
Editor and Preditors 2008 Readers’ Poll: 6th Place Fiction Magazine, 15th Place Publication Editor

Other Items of Interest:
We buy 12 guest author stories a year.

Website:
www.edgeofpropinquity.net

Information provided by Jennifer Brozek.

Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show

Established: 2005igms1
Publisher: Orson Scott Card
Editor: Edmund R. Schubert

Overview:
A blend of science fiction and fantasy, emphasizing good old fashioned storytelling; fully illustrated, and published online, bimonthly. Stories range from short-shorts to 20,000 word novelettes, and include hard and soft science fiction, as well as high, urban, and contemporary fantasy. Also publish interviews with established and up-and-coming authors. The stories require a password to access ($2.50 per issue); however the magazine’s website also includes free book, game, and movie reviews, writing advice, and other free monthly columns.

Awards and Recognition:
IGMS stories have been reprinted in various Year’s Best anthologies. In 2008 we saw, “The Tale of Junko and Sayuri” by Peter S. Beagle, which will be reprinted in Rich Horton’s Unplugged (best stories published on-line); “Silent As Dust” by James Maxey will be in Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Fantasy; and “From the Clay of His Heart” by John Brown will be in David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer’s Year’s Best Fantasy. Additionally, six stories published in IGMS in 2008 received Honorable Mentions in Gardner Dozois, and four more received HMs from Ellen Datlow. Previous year’s stories have been nominated for the Locus Award for Best Novella, and multiple stories have been on Locus’s Recommended Reading list and on the Top Ten list for the Million Writers Award.

Other Items of Interest:
Coming soon: IGMS forum.

Website:
www.InterGalacticMedicineShow.com or www.oscigms.com

Information provided by Edmund R. Schubert.

Fantasy Magazine

Established: 2005fantasymagazine1
Editors: K. Tempest Bradford, Cat Rambo, and Sean Wallace

Overview:
Fantasy Magazine
is a free online professional magazine, devoted to providing readers with a mix of features and fiction on a daily basis, all drawing on the broad wealth of sexualities, politics, and cultures in our world. The magazine has published stories by both established and up-and-coming authors, including Peter S. Beagle, Jeffrey Ford, Theodora Goss, Caitlin Kiernan, Nick Mamatas, Lisa Mantchev, Holly Phillips, Tim Pratt, Ekaterina Sedia, Catherynne M. Valente, Jeff VanderMeer, Marly Youmans, and many more.

In 2009 we’ll be expanding our coverage of fantasy entertainment and literature, looking to become a destination for reviews, interviews, and engaging, in-depth discussions of genre news. In addition, we’ve just become a SFWA professional market; inked deals to bring FM to readers through Fictionwise, Kindle, Mobipocket, PortableReading, and Sony editions; and, towards the end of the year look for our print anthology, Worlds of Fantasy:  The Best of Fantasy Magazine, edited by Cat Rambo and Sean Wallace.

Find out why Locus thinks “Fantasy Magazine is one of the most promising new publications to launch in the field in years” and what prompted Strange Horizons to say, “It is quite wonderful and very exciting.”

Awards and Recognition:
FM stories have enjoyed nominations from both Aurealis and Ditmar Awards; been listed on the Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2007 list; adapted into a number of audio productions by PodCastle; and the website itself was SciFi.com’s Site of the Week, for February 13, 2008. Stories have been reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow, Gavin Grant and Kelly Link; The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, edited by Jonathan Strahan; and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, edited by Rich Horton.

Numerous honorable mentions  have been awarded over the years, mostly in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, but also in The Year’s Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois, along with those listed as recommended by Best American Fantasy, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.

A number of stories have placed on Locus’s Recommended Reading List for 2006 and 2008; with others on the monthly Locus recommended summaries; and the magazine placed placed 11th and then 10th in the Magazine Category for the Locus Poll for 2006 and 2007, respectively.

Other Items of Interest:
Fantasy Magazine is published by World Fantasy Award-winning Prime Books, which is best known for publishing anthologies, collections, and novels by up-and-coming and established authors.

Website:
www.fantasy-magazine.com

Information provided by Sean Wallace.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Established: October 2008bcs
Editor-In-Chief: Scott H. Andrews

Overview:
Beneath Ceaseless Skies publishes “literary adventure fantasy”–short fiction with traditional fantasy elements, such as secondary-world settings, but written with modern literary flair. We pay SFWA pro rate for short stories and novelettes of all lengths. We publish two stories online every two weeks.

Our authors include established writers such as Marie Brennan, Yoon Ha Lee, S.C. Butler, and Richard Parks, as well as new writers including five winners of Writers of the Future contest. Authors appearing in BCS have elsewhere won the Hugo Award (David D. Levine) and have been nominated for Nebula Awards (Charles Coleman Finlay), World Fantasy Awards (Holly Phillips), and the 2009 Campbell Award (Aliette de Bodard, Tony Pi).

Other Items of Interest:
BCS also publishes selected stories as audio fiction podcasts,
with a new episode every two weeks.

Website:
beneath-ceaseless-skies.com

Information provided by Scott H. Andrews.

Ansible

ansibleEstablished:1979, taking over from the former British SF newsletter Checkpoint.
Editor: David Langford

Overview:
Ansible began as a subscription-based newsletter whose issues became fatter and increasingly irregular as circulation grew past 600. After a period of suspended animation from 1987 to 1991, it reappeared as a free one-page news sheet handed out at London’s monthly SF pub meetings (until 2001) and widely distributed by mail. The monthly schedule continues, unbroken.

Current availability: printed copies can be had for stamped self-addressed envelopes in the United Kingdom and via agents overseas: Janice Murray in the USA, Alan Stewart in Australia. Most readers prefer the email edition (circulation 3,500+) or the website — which, thanks to heroic rekeying efforts by volunteers, includes all the back issues and virtually every supplement and flyer mailed with Ansible.

Ansible prefers the quirkier aspects of science fiction, SF professionals and fans, and outsiders’ quaint or annoying perceptions of SF. The “Thog’s Masterclass” feature, showcasing “differently good” prose from our favourite genres, is regrettably popular. “Author Sells Book” and “Publisher Acquires Book” stories are generally banned unless they provide opportunities for the editor’s deplorable sense of humour. The rival newsletter File 770 wrote of Ansible in 1987: “As a newszine, it is the Emperor’s New Clothes”.

Awards and Recognition:
Ansible won the fanzine Hugo in 1987, 1995, 1996, 1999 and 2002. It was then switched by editorial declaration to the semiprozine category, which (frankly) began as a Hugo acceptance-speech joke but became a device to remove it from Best Fanzine. The unexpected result was a string of semiprozine nominations up to 2008 — though not 2009 — and a 2005 win in this category.

Other Items of Interest:
Thog’s Masterclass has spun off its own website at Thog.org, but let’s not talk about that disgraceful business. Some favourite inclusions — articles and speeches by SF notables — are listed on the Site Map web page. I’m also pleased to have goaded people into scanning/rekeying every issue of Ansible‘s predecessor Checkpoint, extending the searchable archive of British SF news back to 1971 — and indeed further, because others have since done the same for the earlier newsletters Skyrack and Futurian War Digest.

Website:
news.ansible.co.uk

Information provided by David Langford.

Abyss & Apex

Established: January 2003abyssapex
Editor-In-Chief: Wendy S. Delmater
Associate Editor: Jude-Marie Greene

Overview:
Our mission is to publish the finest in speculative and imaginative fiction and poetry, with special attention to character-driven stories that examine the depths and heights of emotion and motivation from a broad variety of cultural and social perspectives. We want to publish powerful stories with emotion that resonates in our minds and hearts long after the first reading and makes us want to read them again and again. We look for the unique: stories that stand out in a genre that pushes the envelope of unusual. We take special delight in detailed world-building, and we enjoy reading about the realms and inhabitants of your imagination.

We have no subject/topic preference, beyond a requirement that the work have a speculative element. We are happy to read high fantasy, magic realism, hard science fiction, sword and sorcery, and genre-bending stories that don’t quite seem to fit elsewhere. Our tastes span the gamut from classic Golden-Age SF to modern nontraditional formats.

Awards and Recognition:
Since 2004, Gardner Dozois has awarded honorable mentions in The Year’s Best Science Fiction to ten of our stories. Honorable mentions have also been received in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens (ed. by Jane Yolen and Patrick Nielsen Hayden) and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (ed. by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin Grant.)

Tony Pi’s “Metamorphoses In Amber” was on the ballot for the 2008 Prix Aurora Award. “Snatch Me another” by Mercurio D. Rivera featured on the 2008 Locus and SFWA Recommended reading lists. There are three Rhysling Award nominations for A&A poems in 2008 (voting not final). In 2005, Greg Beatty won the Rhysling Award for his poem “No Ruined Lunar City” and took third place in the Dwarf Stars Poetry Award for “Prayer Causes Stars“.

Other Items of Interest:
On April 22, 2009 we will be releasing THE BEST OF A&A VOLUME ONE, Edited by Wendy S. Delmater, published by Hadley Rille Books.

Website:
abyssandapex.com

Information provided by Wendy S. Delmater.

The Internet Review of Science Fiction (IROSF)

Established: 2004irosf
Editors:
Editor in Chief: Stacey Jannsen, Reviews Editor: Jaq Greenspon, Features Editor: Bridget McKenna, News Editor: Scott James Magner, Editors-at-Large: Marti McKenna, Corie Ralston, Publisher: Blunt “Bluejack” Jackson

Overview:
The Internet Review of Science Fiction started in 2004 with the goal of creating a forum for the serious exploration of the literature of the fantastic. IROSF publishes intelligent articles, essays, interviews, reviews, and criticism to illuminate the most interesting and important work in the genres of science fiction and fantasy.

Along the way we have also added elements that explore the history and culture of the genre, including convention reports, obituaries, and bibliographies.

With our sister-site, Red Rocket Station,the Internet Review of Science Fiction continues to build a community and a substantial body of work around the goal of a thoughtful and serious approach to the larger literary genre of speculative fiction.

Other Items of Interest:
We are active participants in the small press culture of the Pacific Northwest, regularly participating in events with Fairwood Press, Bizarro, and others. We can be found at NorWesCon, RadCon, OryCon, and usually a few other conventions each year.

Website:
www.irosf.com

Information provided by Blunt Jackson.