THE EDITOR’S WORD by Lezli Robyn
With a brand New Year starting, so begins a new season for the magazine. The 60th issue of Galaxy’s Edge marks several significant milestones. We’ve printed six issues per year for an entire decade, publishing an incredible 646 pieces of flash fiction, short stories, novelettes and novellas! Along with novel serializations, interviews, and regular columns, our magazine has published the first story sales of new authors in nearly every issue, staying true to Mike Resnick’s intention for Galaxy’s Edge to shine a spotlight on emerging writers in science fiction and fantasy.
With Mike Resnick at the editing helm for the first seven years of the magazine, he discovered and published many new Writer Children, as well as buying stories from Big Names in this field, until his passing in 2020. When I took over, I knew I had very big shoes to fill, and my last three years editing the magazine has been a highlight of my career. During that time, we created an online submissions system, dramatically increasing our international submissions, and have experienced the pleasure of publishing fiction by authors that became finalists or winners of major awards in the field (the Aurora, British Fantasy, BSFA, Hugo, Nebula, and Nommo Awards!).
But just as the publishing market is evolving, so are we. The magazine is published by Arc Manor, a company that has gone through significant expansion over the last two years, and these changes offer us some new and exciting opportunities.
Issue 62 will be last installment of Galaxy’s Edge in the format it’s currently published. Then the magazine will be converted into a bi-annual anthology book series, with the first volume being published at the end of 2023! Not only will we continue to bring you the fiction our readers have grown to love so much, but this new format will make it easier to get into brick-and-mortar bookstores through a full-service distributor. It will also allow us to raise the rates we pay our authors as well as give us greater flexibility to buy more novelettes and novellas, which has been restricted by the current format.
We’ll have a submission system that will open twice a year for the anthologies, and stories currently in the magazine system will also be considered for future anthologies. I have made some rewrite requests and selected to buy numerous stories in the past few months, and I will be contacting authors by February 1st with information about which issue of the magazine or anthology their story will appear in and will follow up with the edits or contracts applicable. We appreciate a little grace period as we transition to the exciting new format!
As the editor for the new Galaxy’s Edge anthology series, I cannot wait to spotlight new authors alongside some of the biggest names in the field. And all while increasing our audience base. The coming year is going to be an exciting one for us, and we cannot wait to share more updates with our authors and readers!
But first, let me tell you more about this milestone issue. In Alicia Cay’s short story, “The Lament Configuration,” we find out how parting with something sentimental during the heartache of grief can lead to a return gift of healing much more profound. The magic and heart Alicia infuses into her words are just so incredibly beautiful; this story’s end notes brought this editor to tears.
In Eric Leif Davin’s “The Last Man,” we are given a disturbing glimpse of human relations in a post-apocalyptic world, and in “The Gardner of Ceres” by Marc A. Criley, we are shown another example of what one woman would do to save the love of her life. Marc’s story is filled with such rich and beautiful world-building, I really wish for his future to come true—I would definitely board a colonization ship to move to his version of Ceres!
Alex Shvartsman deftly translates Yefim Zozulya’s fable, “Cain and Abel,” which for some readers will seem like a version of history, and for others pure fantasy, depending on your belief system. We round out the fiction in this issue with another incredible piece by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki that will stop you in your tracks with its profound message, the final part in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s serialization, and classic reprints by Mike Resnick, our regular columnist Alan Smale, and collaborators Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann, and Michael Swanwick.
Along with our regular columns by L. Penelope and Alan Smale, and a new list of Recommended Books by Richard Chwedyk, Jean Marie Ward interviews Nisi Shawl! As a lover of everything mermaid, their conversation is a pure delight and the perfect addition to this issue.
We hope our readers had a wonderful holiday season, and a successful start to the New Year. We look forward to including you on our new publishing journey throughout 2023! As always, happy reading! I can’t wait to see what this new season gifts us.
