Editor’s Note – May 2011

“Spring has not always been kind to Redstone Science Fiction.”
–  Paul Clemmons

Last May, just as we were preparing to publish our first issue, Paul Clemmons’ Nashville home was flooded. He managed overwhelming difficulties with his usual aplomb and overcame a host of obstacles to return his family to his home in August. In fact, this weekend he led a ‘flood reunion’ in his local community.

As we prepared our twelfth issue, this past week more than one hundred tornadoes swarmed across the southeast, taking hundreds of lives and destroying thousands of homes and businesses. Along with a half million others we were without power for a few days, but my family experienced only a minor disruption to our lives, particularly in light of what occurred all around us. We encourage everyone to support the ongoing relief efforts in Alabama and other devastated areas through the Red Cross and similar organizations, as we will be doing in the coming days.

Despite spring’s animus towards us, we have a job to do here at Redstone: to bring you quality science fiction, and we’ve gotten it done again this month. The three stories this month are all excellent, and I asked Paul and Cassondra to tell you why they found this month’s stories so entertaining.

Enter Paul Clemmons: When I finished reading Party, With Echoes, I immediately reread it, and then started pressuring the rest of the team to read it as well. It was exactly what we’d been looking for. The speculative element (in this case, extraterrestrial life in the waters of Europa) is central to the story, the protagonist is well-developed, with meaningful motivations, and the writing is excellent. We look forward to working more with Patty, and I’d like to encourage new writers to look at Party as an example of ‘how it’s done’.

Enter Cassondra Link: The protagonist in Ask Not is exactly the kind of person one would want to be in a post-apocalyptic scenario: strong, brave, and competent. It is an excellent story, and it shows that a new writer can create an quality work. It is one of the things we want to do: bring our readers stories from across the spectrum of science fiction, both in terms subgenres and writers.

Me again. RL Ferguson’s Zeno’s Arrow jumped right out of the pile of submissions at me. He takes the concept of the ‘generation ship,’ which I already love, and then considers issues that I have not seen addressed before, but in a very personal story. He covers a lot of ground in small package. Good stuff.

These three full-length stories complete our Kickstarter-supported spring double (and triple feature). In March, April, and May we published over 24,000 words of new fiction, and have had the chance to bring you some top quality fiction, largely from new writers.

I have the honor of listing here the backers who all made substantial pledges of support to Redstone SF and our publishing efforts.

The Friends of Redstone SF
CB Ash
Sandy McConnell Athey
Chad Sessions
Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
Flying Pen Press
Sarah Einstein
Jennifer Brozek
Bart Lieb
Jim Isbell
Kelsey Gower
David Alastair Hayden
Nathan Dodge
Robert Hampson
Mandy & Michael Mendez (love)

Can’t thank all of you enough.

As always, we here at Redstone SF hope that you find something in this issue that you enjoy.

Your Friend,
Michael Ray
Editor
Redstone SF