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Welcome to the 50th issue of IGMS, which will be my last as editor. It's been a privilege and a pleasure working with so many great people--the writers, the artists, the assistant editors and columnists and everyone--but the time has come to pass the reins to someone else.

Having said that, I'm especially pleased to announce that the specific 'someone else,' the new editor of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show (personally selected by Orson Scott Card himself), is our own Scott Roberts, who has served IGMS as assistant editor for more years that I can count. He is a graduate of Uncle Orson's Literary Boot Camp and frequent contributor of great stories to IGMS (in fact, he had a story in issue #1, just like yours truly). Scott also guest-edited issue #41 back when I took a short hiatus to work on some writing projects.

So this is it, my last hurrah. Issue 50. Issue fini for Edmund. I think this is a good one to go out with.

Our cover story, by Jason Sanford, is "May Our Voices Sing Like Blood from Open Wounds:"

The vampire squats beside me, puzzled by my behavior.

"Who made you?" I ask.

"My master. Or more accurately, one of my master's predecessors. Who made you?"

I point at what remains of Siface's voice. I remember Siface giving me the opium and taking me in a daze to the barber. I remember the blazing star of the red-hot tongs before they cut my flesh.

Next up is James Maxey's "Cherry Red Rocketship:"

Remy was dead. Space Gorilla Max did not tolerate failure. The big ape barely tolerated success. The best Remy could hope for was that Space Gorilla Max would kill him by breaking his neck in one smooth, crisp snap, the way he had with Billy Big Lips.

Following that is "Jupiter or Bust" by Brad R. Torgersen:

Debra paused momentarily, closing her eyes and swallowing hard.

It had been stupid, to spend so much money to come all the way across the country for the sake of a dream. In the end, nobody had cared what her credentials were. Stanford or no Stanford. If the fish weren't biting, the fish weren't biting. Almost nobody seemed interested in space exploration anymore, except for the few, lone souls trying to get additional space probes pushed through the European Space Agency, across the Atlantic. And NASA? Gone. Slashed to nothingness by yet another administration more interested in buying votes than fulfilling dreams.

And wrapping up the regularly illustrated stories is our soon-to-be editor-in-chief, Scott Roberts, with the novelette, "Middle Child Syndrome:"

The scrap was crowded with writing. Symbols and weird little geometric designs covered both sides. Tara had taught Jack's Cub Scout den basic cryptography last year. Simple things like substitution cyphers. The writing on the paper wasn't anything like that. It looked more like Arabic or Hebrew... or maybe just really bad cursive. The longer she stared the more... dense the symbols seemed to become, as if every dip and peak held more than just a pen-stroke. The ink seemed to itch and crawl, somehow, drawing her vision down into them, to lose her sight in examination, and tangle her mind in...

Our audio, performed by Stuart Jaffe, is "The Silver of Our Glory, The Orange of Our Rage," by Jared Oliver Adams:

Hygeria, my left-mate, tapped her foreclaw against my neck. "No more will our race scrabble in the dirt," Hygeria said with the taps, gesturing at the dirigible with her mandibles.

I passed the message to Ryke, my right-mate, as was expected of me, but I kept my own thoughts unmoving lest I be suspected.

The dirigible lifted into the sky amidst a great clacking of foreclaws.

Lawrence Schoen brings us words from Diana Rowland, in the form of his as-always excellent interview, and this issue's reprint of Diana's "Schroedinger's Hummingbird."

And that's the end of that. I hope you enjoy this issue, and have found something enjoyable in each of the previous 49. I know I most surely did, and I'm grateful for every minute of it.

Scott, I am officially handing over the IGMS reins to you in 3... 2... 1...

Go!

http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=issue&vol=i50&article=_fromeditor