M-BRANE 13 RELEASED!

I have beaten the storm (see previous post) and released the new issue before losing electricity and internet. So if disaster strikes, I will at least be able to rest assured that my readers can enjoy fine new fiction by Zachary Jernigan, Alan Baxter, Marshall Payne, Jay Swartzfeger, Janett Grady, Mark West and Garrin Bufo.  It's a really fine issue.  Oh, are there people reading this who are not subscribers yet? Well, that can be easily remedied by visiting Page 2.  Also, one can become a subscriber by other means, too, such as buying one of our books.  Purchases of the print and electronic versions of Things We Are Not, Ergosphere (M-Brane 12 Special Edition), and the forthcoming The 12 Burning Wheels by Cesar Torres, all come with complimentary subscriptions to the PDF edition of M-Brane SF.

Impending ICE STORM

A possibility exists that my operations may be knocked offline for an unknown length of time should power outages and internet outages occur here due the the oncoming hellacious ice storm. This one is predicted to be as bad as the December 2007 event which wrought much destruction and mayhem in this area, and is expected to be nearly as horrendous as the Christmas Eve blizzard in some respects. I will attempt to publish M-Brane #13 Thursday before the storm hits and tend to some other business, but if I go dark, then it is due to the storm, and I ask for patience from people who may have pending business with me in the coming days.

J's dad

[The following post is of a personal nature, and therefore one that might normally appear instead on my Region Between page on Live Journal, but I think more people happen to look at this site and the topic is very important to Jeff and me.]

Ten years ago today Jeff’s father, Hal Lund, passed away suddenly from a brain aneurysm. Though I did know Jeff at the time, we weren’t quite yet a couple, so I hadn’t met his parents and therefore never had the chance to meet his father. His legacy, however, is with us all the time both in the essence of Jeff’s own character and talent and in the beautiful artwork that Hal left with his family.

Hal Lund had a very successful career as a commercial artist, but he was also an inspired fine artist who created a fantastic array of portraiture, still life, illustration, and other works in many media including oils, pastels, pen and ink, and acrylic. We are fortunate to have displayed in our home a number of his pieces, a couple of which we took pictures to show here.

This romantic oil painting hangs above the mantel in our living room. It has always been the centerpiece of every living room in which we have lived in our time together. I usually refer to it affectionately as “The Lion” because I used to see, under certain lighting conditions, the vague impression of a boy cradling a stuffed lion toy (but that’s not what it is, of course). The fruit still life below is the one that we sometimes call “The Funny Face,” because if you look at it the right way those apples seem like eyes sitting above a mischievous smile.  We have frequently joked that perhaps all of Hal’s paintings might contain subliminal images. Further evidence is found in a gorgeous painting hanging in the home of Jeff’s mom Karen. I wish I could show that one here. It’s an image of a woman in a long black dress with white cuffs. In the background is a bed with a large headboard, and window with a dead tree outside, and the only intense color in it is a colorful checkerboard quilt on the bed. Jeff says that he always saw embedded within the headboard the faint image of either a “gnome” or a “hippy.” Of course he pointed out that imagined image to me and now, when we are at Karen’s house, that’s what I see, too. It’s spectacular.

Jeff says that, as a child, he would sit quietly for hours watching his dad at work, drawing storyboards and painting pictures, his dad never complaining about it or sending him out of the room. Given Jeff’s serene demeanor as an adult and his quietly burning creative flame, I can easily imagine it.

[The images below are highlights from the pics above showing more clearly the "Lion" and the "Funny Face."]

A year ago...January 20

A year ago today, I released issue #1 of M-Brane SF. It had been scheduled for February 1, but I felt like it was as ready to go as it ever would be. I just took a look at it, a year later. I am somewhat embarrassed by its technical ineptitudes (I was considerably less competent at the simple use of my computer back then), but not at all by its fiction content. It is as solid in that regard as most of the later issues, and a totally respectable debut for a new zine. Also, #1 was the first time that I published some writers with whom I've had ongoing productive associations such as Rick Novy, (published several more times in the zine, and guest editor of #12), and Brandon Bell whom I have also published several times and with whom I now collaborate on the Aether Age project. It feels like a lot longer ago than a year. In that time, I have learned, a lot has changed, a lot has happened. And I'm still here doing the zine a year later, so I'll go ahead and pat myself on the back for that, too. Several other publications that started around the time that M-Brane did are already gone. I don't know if making through one year, means I'll make it through a second year, but I strongly suspect that I will, and that it will be a better year, too.

A year ago today, President Obama's term began. This gave me some hope for the country, and still does despite some disappointments and setbacks since then. This presidency is probably the country's one chance in a generation or more to make some real progressive reforms and get to work on the deep-down problems that will wreck this country. The place is falling apart. It's not just the heath system or any of the other issues that people get crazy about. It's the whole infrastructure of America. It's getting rickety, and just waiting for something to happen isn't going to fix it. This is a time for a World War II-type remobilization and redirection of resources and ingenuity. Obama laid some groundwork for it in the stimulus package and his budget outline, but much more is needed. If none of this gets moving and progress stalls out again, and if the Teabaggers take over, then we've lost a world of opportunities for a long, long time to come. 

A year ago today, we also celebrated the twelfth birthday of my cat Maus. So today he's thirteen. Though he's getting to be an older cat now, he remains quite energetic and continues to direct our routines. Tonight, for example, I will probably doze on the couch. Later, Maus will wake me up, herd me into the bedroom and cuddle into bed with me. Then, just a few minutes before my alarm would wake me up anyway…he will. He'll observe as I get ready for the day job, see me out the door, then go roust J out of bed, and then start a new day of alternately napping and monitoring his brother Jack's behavior. It's quite a life.

Pre-order special! THE 12 BURNING WHEELS!

Writer of weird and spectacular fiction Cesar Torres has created an astounding 12-item cycle of stories that he calls The 12 Burning Wheels, and somehow it has happened that I have the great privilege of bring these stories into print under a single cover. This beautiful book's official publication date is February 22, but I am offering some pre-order specials on it starting immediately:

1) The print edition of The 12 Burning Wheels will sell for on Amazon for $7.99 plus shipping, but order it now from M-Brane SF for only $7.99, shipping included. Purchase includes a free subscription to the PDF edition of M-Brane SF.


2) Buy the print editions of The 12 Burning Wheels and the queer anthology Things We Are Not (TWAN) for only $18.99, shipping included. This is a serious deal, since TWAN by itself sells for almost that. This option, too, includes a free subscription to the M-Brane PDF.

3) Buy The 12 Burning Wheels and the print edition of Ergosphere (aka M-Brane #12, edited by Rick Novy) for only $15.99.  The M-Brane subscription is included with this option as well.

These offers will likely expire before the publication date for The 12 Burning Wheels, so act soon.  Here is the Pay Pal link for them (a drop-down menu) accommodates the three options. One does not need a Pay Pal account to use Pay Pal: one may use credit and debit cards, and checks by way of their e-check system.

Choose an option...

12 BURNING WHEELS $7.99 12 WHEELS/ TWAN $18.99 12 WHEELS/ ERGOSPHERE $15.99

Antonelli's FANTASTIC TEXAS released

Prolific speculative fiction writer Lou Antonelli, whose story "Good News for the Dead" appeared last year in M-Brane SF #3, has a new book out, titled Fantastic Texas, from Fantasic Books/Wilder Publications. It can be found by way of Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and some details about it are posted here as well. Lou's work has long been well-regarded by readers, and he has appeared in dozens of magazines and anthologies in recent years.

By the way, any M-Brane writers who have new stuff coming out are always welcome to let me know about it and I will try to put up a notice about it here. I used to make a better habit of keeping track by myself of new publications from writers who have appeared in my zine, but there are so many such writers and so many new publications anymore, that it's hard to keep up.

We did see it in 3D

I don't give a lot of coverage to movies on this page, mostly because I don't think there are very many of them of recent vintage that qualify as good sf, and the older ones that do qualify have been written about plenty elsewhere. But Jeff and I went to see Avatar in 3D last night, and it seems to warrant a few comments.

First, both Jeff and I feel irrationally guilty and sad that we did not like it as much as we are expected to. We feel like we're failing as movie-viewers somehow. We both acknowledged that it is a spectacular piece of filmmaking, at least as a technological accomplishment. But everyone's said that a billion times already, so I won't dwell on it here and instead move right into where we had problems.

I was having difficulty from the beginning with the 3D. My vision is pretty bad and I require glasses at all times to see. Even those sunglasses that I am seen wearing in pics fairly often are prescription glasses. My current Facebook pic shows me without glasses and it looks so strange to me that I hardly recognize myself every time I see it. So there was the simple discomfort of having to wear the 3D glasses over the top of my real glasses, but then I had visual difficulties that I don't think other people were having. Things were quite blurry most of the time, especially stuff way in the background or way in the extreme foreground, and especially during the action sequences when a thousand things were in motion at once. The whole effect of it started a low-grade tension headache and moments of vertigo, and my eyes felt effed up for a long time after the movie. Basically, 3D ain't my bag, and I really don't look forward to this being the way movies will always be in the future, as director Cameron insists.

Jeff fortunately did not have these visual issues, and he was able to appreciate the 3D more than I did. We shared in our assessment of the  story. As far as we could tell, the plot has two main strands: 1) the tale of the Marine Jake who translates into an alien body (the "avatar" itself) and has a saga of struggle, love and revelation among the people of Pandora; and 2) for some goddamned reason, Earth people are fucking with this alien world in order to mine a  substance called unobtanium. The first plot thread is solid, if predictable. Nothing surprises in it, but it's lovely anyway and pulled the emotional strings that needed to be pulled in such a story.

The second plot thread, however, is ri-frakkin-diculous. For one thing, the motivation of the Earthling douchebags, represented by a "Company," and the United States military, seems to be simple evil and douchebaggery.  According to some technical expert on this film, that was interviewed on Science Friday a few weeks ago, this unobtanium substance is all over Pandora and is even the reason that those floating mountains exist. I don't think all this was specified in the script itself, but if it's true, then why the hell do they have to mine it right exactly where the native population lives if the stuff is all over the place? Just to be assholes, evidently. Indeed, after they cruelly destroy the Na'vi's Home Tree, they come back later out of pure malice to try to destroy another even more important giant tree (Soul Tree, I think it was called). Also, if it was ever explained what they need unobtanium for, then I missed it. And I have a huge problem anyway with the notion of interstellar civilizations traveling the galaxy hunting for natural resources under almost any circumstances. More than once I have encountered (even  in the M-Brane slush pile) the absurd notion of aliens wanting to invade Earth for food and water even though water is one of the most commonplace substances in the universe and would certainly not be in short supply to a species that can send spacecraft between the stars. Whatever unobtanium might be, it beggars the imagination to think that Earth needs it and that they need to get it right at that one spot.

And what about the depiction of the military? I haven't heard much commentary on it myself, but Jeff said that he saw a TV program recently where someone was worrying that the film was meant to be taken as an attack on the conduct of the real US military in foreign lands and was calculated to make military people look cruel, racist and stupid. Well, if that was Cameron's intention, he succeeded. Really, James Cameron? In the 22nd century, a major military operation will be commanded by some kind of aggressively stupid, stereotypical, macho Southern asshole? I don't think that even goes on now. Yeah, I'm sure there are some macho assholes like that in the real military, but this dude in the movie would be equivalent in position to our theater commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those generals do not act like that even now in 2010. Of course the Colonel is supposed to be an irredeemable villain and we are supposed to hate him on sight and throughout, but we found the whole idea of him to be crap, shite, balderdash, and bloody awful. If this one character would have had some nuance, it would have gone a long way toward salvaging something out of the otherwise wholly lame unobtanium plot thread.

We do, by the way, "get" it that we are supposed to get from the Colonel an Apocalypse Now flavor, with him drinking coffee on the deck of his gun ship and speaking entirely in cliches, but…damn! A lot of the film is, of course, homage and re-hash, some if it good and some of it less so. The first thing Jeff noted when we left the theatre was that we had just seen Sigourney Weaver reprise the role of Ripley (even wearing a Ripleyesque outfit in her avatar guise) and that we had just seen a remake of the robot-machine vs. alien fight from Aliens. I swear I even heard a bit of the actual James Horner score from that Aliens scene as the Na'vi chick battled the robot-clad Colonel. Also, Jeff pointed out that he was constantly hearing something very much like the Celine Dion Titanic song through the whole thing. "Near…far…where-eeever you are!" Fortunately that did not set into my own brain during the movie.

Despite these gripes, there is a lot to like in it, at least visually, and much of it was lovely to behold even with my vision problems. So, even though, most of what I said here, and most of what Jeff and I said to each other during our discussion of it last night, sounds fairly negative, I will endorse the overwhelming chorus of "You gotta see it the the theater! In 3D!" at least for the novelty of it, for it being the first thing of its kind in its technical prowess. Normally, I am happy to wait until the Netflix rental for most any movie and will trade the "big screen experience" for the comfort of my living room any day. But Jeff and I agreed after seeing Avatar that we would not have wanted to have waited for the video, then had this same assessment of its storyline and then be told by everyone else that "You just don't get it because you didn't see it in 3D!" So, OK, we get it. We saw it in 3D. Unobtanium is still frakkin dumb though!

Post a story for Haiti

Our good friends at Crossed Genres had a nice idea today. How about writers put up online for free a story, and if readers like it, maybe they'll be moved to go ahead and pitch in some money for the Haiti relief effort? Obviously, millions of people in this country and around the world have already contributed without any kind of incentive other than compassion, but I think it's a great thing for people like us, who normally have something to sell, to instead give a bit of it away so people have a couple more bucks for a purpose way more important than any of the stuff that people like us typing on computers are up to. Starting right now,  and continuing indefinitely, my book Ergosphere (M-Brane #12) edited by Rick Novy and full of fantastic new fiction by the likes of Caren Gussoff, Maura McHugh, Tim Maughan, and many others will be available as a free PDF download by clicking here.

Also, I am posting some of my own fiction to my Region Between blog. So get some new stuff to read both here and there and consider a donation (even a single dollar is worth doing if enough people do it) to the Haiti earthquake relief effort. I am endorsing Doctors Without Borders and this is the link to donate there. But if you prefer a different organization, then there are plenty of other options. Crossed Genres has set up a site here where they will be aggregating links to other people who are also putting up free stories, and there are also links to some aid organizations. Everyone's stuff is not necessarily going to be up and linked right way, though, so check back there often during the coming days.

Also, while I hate to say anything that could be taken as negative in this situation, I feel that I need to tell the truth to United States readers: 1) no matter what you may have heard from politicians and media talking-head douchebags, you have not actually already paid for Haiti through "your" tax dollars; US foreign aid, while it somehow has a reputation as being a drain on the budget, is in fact such a miniscule part of the part of the Federal budget that it barely exists; so you've paid nothing through taxes so far. Nothing; 2) The rest of the planet pays a stiff penalty for the fact that the US, which amounts to about four percent of the world's population, uses about twenty-five percent of the planet's resources. That penalty is being paid right now in Haiti.

BEHOLD: The cover art for THE 12 BURNING WHEELS by Cesar Torres!

Any time now, possibly yet today, but maybe tomorrow, I will have the deep pleasure of announcing a pre-order special for Cesar Torres' stunning collection The 12 Burning Wheels. But right now, you can take a look at the beautiful cover images. This book will be offered in print and electronically.

One more day for Preditors/Editors vote

As many readers may be aware, the Critters Writers Workshop presents each year the Preditors & Editors Readers Poll where people can vote for their favorite stories, books, zines and artwork published either in  print or electronically. While I find it somewhat embarrassing to solicit votes, I will note that M-Brane SF and Things We Are Not are among the nominees for 2009 (in the magazine/e-zine and anthology categories respectively). And I really should try to get out the vote on behalf of the great writers who made the zine and the book possible, since I feel somewhat bad for dropping the ball on getting some more of the great writers nominated specifically.

Michael Griffith's novel published!

Just a shout-out for speculative fiction writer, frequent M-Brane contributor and general ally Michael Griffiths and his new novel...

The Chronicles Of Jack Primus by Michael D. Griffiths is set in a contemporary world, but one far different than ours. Evil is not a concept for philosophical debate, but rather a strong force, made tangible and real, when it darkens and corrupts killers and madmen. These Chronicles document Jack’s attempt to not only keep his life, but also his sanity as he delves deep into the realm of the foul Xemmoni who seek to increase their own ends by draining the life force of their Human victims.

Jack discovers far more than how stay alive. His journey exposes him to terrors no man should be forced to witness, but unlike some poor victim in a traditional horror story, Jack not only fights back, but also takes the battle to his enemy. Armed with only the small weapons he can fit on his motorcycle, what was once a man fleeing for his life transforms into a hero out to save whomever he can from these foul creatures that few ever realize exist. Travel with Jack as he embarks, not only on the road to survival, but also struggles to unravel the foul mysterious of the evil race know as the Xemmoni. Just released by Living Dead Press, this is Michael D. Griffith’s first published novel.

"The Face of Evil..."

Read this post on Brandon Bell's blog about the proposed anti-gay law in Uganda and the role of Christian right-wingers from this country in it. While I have of late been keeping most of my political comments over on my Live Journal in recent months, more people read this page, so I am mentioning it here.

SF in the age of the irrational: Shall we fight?

Writer Ian Sales recently posted on his website a thoughtful article titled Science Fiction: last bastion of the rational in which he examines whether or not sf as a genre ought to be didactic. He says he never subscribed to the Hugo Gernsback attitude that sf ought to be about "educating the public on the possibilities of science," and he also initially doubted the "Mundane SF" movement  of writers like Geoff Ryman as well as the call from Jetse DeVries to have sf be a deliberately optimistic genre.

"To me, sf is a literary mode," says Sales, "not a teaching tool, not futurism." But he goes on to discuss the continuous attack upon science, reason and fact by the right wing in the US and the UK and wonders if perhaps sf should take a stand against this and play a real educational role. He also takes a swipe at the fantasy genre and its current popularity as something that supports or is maybe symptomatic of the retreat from rationalism in our cultures. That may be overstating the case since, while there are currently a lot more avid fantasy readers than avid sf readers, the total reading population of all books of any kind at all is incredibly tiny in this country (I think reading remains more of a habit in the UK, but I'm not sure). The genre that is more popular by far than even fantasy is, sadly, right wing political screeds by douchebags like Bill O'Reilly and sociopaths like Ann Coulter. 

I wish I knew if there was a productive role that our genre could actually play in blunting the march of lunacy and denialism and bugfuck craziness that seems to be overwhelming every discussion in the US and (I hear) in the UK as well. We live in a world where not that many people do any long-form reading and where so many people are simply not interested in facts or reasonable arguments. People pick their facts, or simply invent them, to support their opinions. 

Here's a recent example of people making up shit: A few weeks ago NPR reported that some gun nut group (not the NRA, a different smaller one, can't remember name, something like Gun Owners of America) sent letters to all of the United States senators asking them to not support health care reform on the grounds that it would be an assault on gun owners' rights. How so? Well, first the evil Obama would presumably decree that having a gun in the house is a health risk. But how would the health system itself have knowledge of who owns guns? Because the Big Government would somehow enter this  information into the "national medical records data base" created  earlier this year by "the stimulus package." Senators who support this, these gun nuts warned, would face some consequences, because this groups next action would be to focus their efforts on those states with the best chance of recalling their Senators.  Ok, well, here's just some of what's wrong with that: 1) There is not now nor is there likely to ever be this national medical records data base. It doesn't exist and 2) it certainly was not created by the stimulus legislation; it's paranoid fantasy, delusion, totally made up, no such goddamned thing, and probably even impossible or at least discouragingly difficult to do; 3) And about recalling the Senators?  Can't be done. No provision exists in the Constitution to recall a United States senator. Very few ways exist to remove a Senator aside from death in office or losing an election, and one of those ways is not voter recall. 

So the entire thing is a fiction designed to shore up a ridiculous political position and insert still more hysterical propaganda into the "debate." It should be embarrassing to the people behind it. But it's not. They don't care. They're True Believers in their own made-up "facts." And now there are probably a lot more people running around this benighted land thinking there is a Big Government Medical Database with notes in it about their bloody guns. What can the remaining rational people do against a giant phenomenon like this? Will reason and fact perish forever or will there eventually be a backlash? Does science fiction have anything important to say about it? I hope so.

Submissions glitch!

Writers: I have discovered that two writers submitted stories to me during September that I somehow did not receive, nor could I find any record of correspondence with them between the date the submission was sent and the date that they queried me about the status of their submission. I suspect that a day or so of my email was lost in the aether somehow. I recently cleared out the slush pile and have no pending submissions dated later than about the last week of December. So, if you a writer who has submitted a story to M-Brane SF before late December and feel that I have not responded, please email me at mbranesf at gmail dot com, and I will look into it. My response time is admittedly a bit erratic, ranging from same-day to perhaps three weeks, but it is never three or four months. So something is wrong if you have been waiting that long.

MACHINA update

Check out this post on Derek Goodman's blog about the forthcoming collection Machina.  You can get a look at its terrific cover art.  I'll have more information about this book in the reasonably near future.

Format and content changes

What feedback I have received so far on the trade paperback format for M-Brane #12/Ergosphere has all been positive. So I think that I will go with that kind of design for both the PDF and print versions of future issues. I'm giving up something as far as the "magaziney" look of the thing, but I think it's probably easier to read it on screens with just a single column of text. You can view the PDF in scroll mode and just roll through it without having to move around on the page too much.

Another change is that there may be fewer stories per issue. So far I have run as few as eight and as many as thirteen in a single issue. I think I may keep it down to about six, and probably not ever more than eight. When I started this zine, I wanted to publish a very high volume of stories so that there could be a lot of room for a lot of styles and lot of voices. I still want that variety, but I've come to think it's just too much content considering that an issue comes every month. So I will try to achieve the goal with less. Also, I want to increase the payments to writers. I am not ready to do this yet, and haven't figured out the details, but it's much more likely that I can up the rate if I am not buying quite so many stories. The goal that I set last year of vastly increasing the zine's paid readership and ad income and becoming a real pro zine during the first half of 2010 is, honestly, not going to happen. This second year will be one of smaller steps, but I still think the general direction is right.

Writers guidelines updated

I put up a revised version of the M-Brane guidelines today, and I'll copy it below. Not much has changed but I tried to clarify a little bit where my taste in stories is nowadays.

UPDATED 1/1/10

First, the bullet points. I'll elaborate on them somewhat below.

GENRE: Science fiction (any variety)

NOT: Horror and fantasy unless it has a strong science fictional underpinning; paranormal/occult; In Seach Of...type myths-and-monsters stuff, UFOs, ghosts, Big Foots, Loch Ness Monsters, Yetis, chupacabras, etc.

WORD COUNT: no lower or upper limit, though be advised that I'm not the biggest fan of "flash" fiction

SIMUL-SUBS: Yeah, sure, who cares?

MULTI-SUBS: Ditto

REPRINTS: Maybe. Query about it.

E-SUBS: Only. I'll not look at paper mail (and won't even give out an address for such).

SUBMISSION FORMAT: Standard mss format is just great, though I don't really care so long as it's readable. All submissions should be sent to mbranesf@gmail.com as anattachment in .doc or .docx or .rtf form.

If you want to know more about my biases before dashing off your mss, continue reading below....

Genre: I've been getting a lot of straight-up horror and dark fantasy submissions lately. While I may welcome elements of these genres, the stories still need to be somehow science fictional. In other words, the speculative or weird elements should be grounded in some kind of development of science, technology, or society that has (at least within the context of the story) a rational basis. No magic or wizardry or supernatural evil, please. As for specifically what sorts of sf I like best, it's hard to pin down. My mood changes over time. Lately, I am not as excited as I once was about space opera and epic galactic empire stories. On the other hand, small-scale character-focused stories set in such a milieu might work. I  have seen scores of stories during the past year focused on the shenanigans of university professors and their students (usually involving time travel or some other secret lab project). I'd like to not see so many of those in 2010, thanks. And time travel in general, even without professors, is wearing me out.

Nowadays, I like hard sf with strong characters and softer sf with a literary bent. Weirdness is great if not supernatural in its origin. I like most of the "punk" subgenres fairly well as long as there's a story supporting the aesthetic. M-Brane has been characterized by at least a couple of readers as dystopian. If true, it's not deliberate; hopeful, positive-outlook tales are welcome, too, and I am personally very technophilic. M-Brane SF is open to fiction with queer/LGBT content. Also, this zine is not aimed at children, so adult language and erotic content is not excluded when it makes sense in a story.

Payment is still a paltry $10.00 flat per story paid on publication, with an option of taking instead a subscription to the PDF edition of the zine. For this meager fee, I ask for First North American Serial Rights, with all remaining rights reverting to the writer upon publication. Payments are made by Pay Pal.

Reprints: I will consider reprints, but query me about it first. I probably will not offer cash payment for reprints, however. Compensation will instead be the PDF subscription option.

Artwork:

I'm not offering any payment for art at this time. But I'll look at it and consider publishing it. I can offer some fairly good exposure for it on the blog as well.

NON-FICTION

I have not yet published much of this, but I would still like to see some. I am interested in thoughtful pieces about sf authors and books, interviews and scholarly criticism. I am not currently offering payment for non-fiction, but any that I take for the magazine will also get published on the M-Braneblog.

A note on manuscript format:

I run a "green" operation. I don't print anything. No paper or ink are killed in reading stories for M-Brane. I do all of my slush reading on my screen, and every submission I receive ends up getting reformatted into a style that suits me best for this, which is why I don't care much about manuscript format. If I accept your story for publication, however, I may ask you repair your document if it's formatted in web style with no indents and double spaces between paragraphs and if it resists for some reason easy reformatting on my end. I've been getting docs lately that have been causing me a lot of work in manually removing formatting weirdnesses. M-Brane looks like a traditional book with paragraph indentations, and with double spaces between paragraphs used only when there is a scene break.