Letter From The Editor - Issue 19 - October 2010
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.
http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=issue&vol=i19&article=_fromeditor
