Letter From The Editor - Issue 48 - November 2015
Welcome to this special 10th anniversary issue of IGMS. Yes, it really has been ten years since the
inaugural issue of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show.
One of the first professional online magazines to publish science fiction and fantasy, IGMS's
debut issue featured stories by a group of writers who had one thing in common: they had all
attended Uncle Orson's Literary Bootcamp. For those of you not familiar with Literary
Bootcamp, Orson Scott Card has been training new and young (and some not-so new or young)
writers via a week-long workshop each summer since 2001. Averaging between 15 and 20
students for the full week (there's a two-day class that easily sees 50+ students at the beginning
of each week, too), that's . . . well, that's more math than this writer is comfortable with. But it's
a heck of a lot of students learning a heck of lot about writing.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary then, I decided that we'd fill this issue with stories penned by
former Bootcampers, just like that first issue. And just like the first issue, it features a brand new
story by Uncle Orson himself, and one by little old me, too. Sandwiched in between the two of us
are more Bootcampers, old and new, a testament to the time and energy invested by Uncle
Orson for the love of the genre.
Before we get to the stories, though, there's one more person who needs mentioning; someone
who has also been onboard since the first issue: our managing editor, Kathleen Bellamy. You've
never seen Kathleen at a convention. You've never read about her in the industry news. But I
promise you that without her dedication and hard work, IGMS would not have survived to
celebrate this milestone. Kathleen is the unsung hero that every great enterprise needs; the crazy
glue that holds this crazy intergalactic medicine show of ours together. She works closely with
the artists who provide the illustrations that accompany each story. She ensures our authors get
their checks and contracts. She's formatted and proof-read and prepared every story in every
issue we've ever publish, and she's done it for ten quiet, fantastic, irreplaceable years. To which I
and everyone else who's ever had anything to do with IGMS can only say with gratitude, "Thank
you, Kathleen."
And now, I gives me great pleasure to present to you the 10th anniversary issue of Orson Scott
Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show:
The cover story, "Breeding True," by Orson Scott Card:
But of course the alien genome existed on thousands of computers, and thousands of scientists
found the alien genome tickling the back of their mind. They had not forgotten it, they would not
forget it, and with or without funding, they could not rest until they knew the answers to all the
questions.
"Like A Thief in the Light" by Alethea Kontis:
Normally shadow thieves were blind, led by temperature and feeding by soulsmell. But Sun was
not normal. His mother had not been a shadow. He wasn't sure what she'd been, exactly, but
she'd given him green eyes and a horrible skin condition to remember her by. His father had
given him a lanky build, a big bulbous head, and the ability to pop in and out of shadow without
having to suck souls.
"The Curie Priest" by Chris Phillips:
Before he left the apartment, he tossed all the toys back into his son's bedroom, cursing the
anti-grief counselors as he did it. It was a morning routine that defied mourning. Stepan shook
his head. His son might be dead, but thanks to his wife, and the counselors she had hired, the
memory of Jem lived on in a macabre ritual they all played day after exhausting day.
"The Price of Love" by Dantzel Cherry:
I miss those stolen nights, when I was alone in my chambers and he would step out from the
mirror. But over the course of the last fifteen years, as slowly and subtly as the dust settles on my
vanity table, his words have twisted my heart with an expertise that alternately cause despair and
admiration.
"For the Bible Tells Me So" by Edmund R. Schubert:
"What was supposed to be a 250-year, multi-generation journey to a planet known as Kepler 186f
has become a voyage of the damned, with no real end in sight, and not much hope of survival.
Welcome to our party."
Audio Story "Life With Slug" by Paul Eckheart (read by Stuart Jaffe):
And somewhere in the midst of it, they say -- and I'm alive, so it must be true -- I flicked my
lighter and inadvertently destroyed an entire species in one bright, fiery foomp.
Lawrence M. Schoen's InterGalactic Interview with Aliette deBodard:
Aliette is an alumna of Orson Scott Card's Literary Bootcamp, a winner of the Writers of the
Future competition, a finalist for the Campbell, Hugo, and Sturgeon awards, and the proud owner
of a Locus and a British Science Fiction award, as well as two Nebulas. Her most recent novel,
House of Shattered Wings, came out from Roc (in the US) and Gollancz (in the UK).
Reprint Story, "Starsong," by Aliette DeBodard:
There is a song, in the starlight, if you listen closely -- behind the endless lull of the stars, and
the distorted shapes, and the pull of the darkness, like that of a current waiting to sweep
everything away.
It was words, once -- human words, a prayer to the gods that inhabit the night.
Also along with this issue's stories, we're pleased to bring you the Story Behind The Stories,
where you'll not only find essays by many of our authors about the creation of their tales, but also
essays by former Bootcampers (Luc Reid, Rick Novy, and Alethea Kontis), about their
recollections of Bootcamp, about the things they learned, and about the friends they made in the
process.
Edmund R. Schubert
Editor, Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show
http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=issue&vol=i48&article=_fromeditor
