Here we are, October 2010, and it's been five years since the inaugural issue of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show. Five years! In internet terms that's like a half-century. As with any publishing venture, we've had some ups and downs, some things we've done well and some things we wish we had done better. In the final analysis (up to now, anyway), I'm pleased with the way things have progressed, and with the things I see on our horizon.

But the past is gone and the future is never guaranteed, so today I want to celebrate the present, the moment, the here and now. To mark the occasion of the 5th anniversary of IGMS, we have a variety of goodies to offer you. Our line-up of stories begins with a new Orson Scott Card story, "The Expendables," which in some ways is a sneak peek at his forthcoming novel, Pathfinder, due out in November, and in some ways is a unique stand-alone piece that you won't find anywhere but IGMS. As a bonus, Orson even provides this issue's first audio story, reading "The Expendables" with his usual verve and panache. Cool stuff.

The rest of our line-up includes a magical fantasy, appearing "Right Before Your Very Eyes" courtesy of regular contributor Matt Rotundo; a disturbing SF story about the lengths future stand-up comedians will go to for laughs in "Schadenfreude" by Michelle Scott; a curmudgeon with the ability to cast killing spells in Pete Aldin's "Deathsmith;" and the tale of a defective clone - at least everyone else thinks so - in "The Ghost of a Girl Who Never Lived" by Keffy Kehrli.

Plus, there's another in David Lubar's YA series of "Tales for the Young and Unafraid," Darrell Schweitzer interviews writer Andy Duncan and, in case you didn't get enough OSC the first time, we also present Part III (the conclusion) of our serialization of OSC's novella "Eye For an Eye."

"But wait!" cried the editor in his best traveling Medicine Show call-voice, "There's more."

All of the things I just listed are fairly typical of what you'd find in an issue of IGMS. To round out the celebration, we also have an extra audio story, Mary Robinette Kowal's reading of Tom Crosshill's flash story "Express To Paris by Dragon First Class." That audio is free to all, whether you have a subscription (yet) or not. And if you need a bigger sample of IGMS, we've also made the entirety of issue 11, our first issue under the current format, free until the end of the year. Issue 11 has an OSC story and audio-production, as well as Peter S. Beagle's "Vanishing" as the cover story and several other stories, one of which was an Honorable Mention in Gardner Dozois's latest Year's Best anthology, and another of which won the WSFA's 2009 award for Best Short Story of the Year. Lots of great stuff, free for everyone's reading pleasure.

So step right up and see the show. Invite a friend or two and we'll make a party of it.

Edmund R. Schubert
Editor, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

P.S. As usual, we;ve collected essays from the authors in this issue and will post them on our blog (www.SideShowFreaks.blogspot.com). Feel free to drop by and catch The Story Behind The Stories, where the authors talk about the creation of their tales.