By Jean Asselin While I never intended “Don’t do ‘X’ in the fiction you submit” to become a continuing series, recent submissions point me once again in that direction. Let ‘X’ be: “Your main character just had the adventure of their life but in the process has to shuffle off this mortal coil.” Or: [...]
by Jean Asselin, Editor - Our namesake, James Gunn, says that fantasy and science fiction (SF) are literatures of discontinuity—the world of the story differs from the one we live in—with one essential difference.
A look at the outgoing editor's view of the past few years, and an introduction to the new era of the magazine.
Last year, there was a storm brewing over sexism and minority voices being underrepresented in the science fiction community. That debate hasn't gone away, but in the finest SF tradition, it has mutated.
by Issue Editor Isaac Bell If you're reading this, then you're a member of a minority. You're a fan of science fiction, or fantasy, or speculative fiction in general (and just knowing the latter term marks you as a member of an even smaller group). Despite the wide popularity of shows and movies we might claim [...]
By Jean Asselin A rant of the most eloquent kind about the way science fiction awards are being overrun by fantasy authors.
By Scholarly Editor Kathy Kitts Yearly from 2010, VIDA, a women in literary arts organization, has conducted a study on how women fare versus men in publishing. They totaled the number of female and male literary reviewers, reviews and bylines in approximately fifteen of the major literary venues from the Boston Review to The Times Literary Supplement. What they discovered is that men publish more than women nearly two to one.
By Fiction Editor Douglas McKinney Authors generally don’t need to be told how hard it is to get published. They have the rejection letters to prove it, after all. Even bestselling authors needed that first big break to get noticed. The second issue of James Gunn’s Ad Astra showcases fiction from three women this time [...]
What do we mean when we talk about "Communication and Information?" That's quite a broad topic, don't you think? After all, everything we say and write is information, and every act of sharing constitutes communication. How can we center the theme of Ad Astra around such a nebulous concept?
Have you ever wondered what an alien song might sound like? Would it even need to be transmitted by sound waves? What if the song is telepathic or carried by a bacterium directly to the audience member’s central processing unit?