Shortly after our Kickstarter ended (well, take time out for the much rejoicing), Ira (editor) Kermit (art director) and I (publisher) had a pretty long, destined to be the first of many, conference calls to line the ducks up, assign tasks, find agreement on philosophies and handle any (minor) differences of opinion.
I’m quite pleased over how well everyone is getting along; our individual opinions don’t seem to have deeply personal investments – they’re born of professional experience as opposed to desire – and good, logical counter-arguments seem to be respected and effective. This all bodes well for our future.
I’m tempted to get expository regarding our stated goal of publishing “positive” science fiction, as there has been a surprising amount of push-back on that concept. What’s become apparent to me is that we’ve not been sufficiently clear on where the positivity lies. We’re not talking necessarily about positivity within a story, we’re talking about how the reader feels after reading the story. Does it make you want to go out, get a PhD in rocket science and spearhead a NASA program to colonize Titan? If so, that’s the kind of positive we’re talking about.
But I intend to address that subject directly in my Publisher’s Note of the first issue, so will reserve further discussion on that subject until then. I promise, you’re not going to get treacle; that may be sweet, but its also smothering.
Elsewhere, we’re on track or ahead of it. We’re working on three different projects, all inter-related of course, but each requiring a slightly different expertise; we’re working on closing out the KIckstarter by distributing the rewards (if you contributed, you should have received a survey email from the KIckstarter. Please answer it as this is how we obtain the information needed to send you your reward).
We’re working on the first issue (which, if I follow majority opinion, will be titled Amazing Stories, as opposed to Amazing Stories Quarterly, and will be Volume 76, Number 1, Whole Number 614 (though that could change to Volume 77, Number 1, or, if the quarterly, Volume 9, Number 1, Whole Number 50). Decisions, decisions.
We’re a bit beyond our original intended word count (good for you, more pricey for us), but that’s really fine; we’d much rather publish more than less. These are the kinds of problems a fledgling publication wants to have.
And we’re working on our booth design and layout for Worldcon76. Visually, it is going to be stunning. We’re planning some additional give-aways and maybe some contests.
Most of our crew here are pushing “the second half of life”, and I’m beginning to really appreciate what that means. It means that collectively, there’s little we don’t have some experience with. We’ve each got a lifetime’s worth of education, job experiences and have demonstrated our evolutionary fitness by surviving this long. It seems that there’s very little we can’t handle.
And THAT bodes well for a POSITIVE future.
