Bewildering Stories celebrates...
The 1,000th Regular Issue
with Michael E. Lloyd, Gary Inbinder and Don Webb
In an episode of Garrison Keillor’s radio series A Prairie Home Companion, a family realizes that the odometer of their ancient but well-maintained automobile is very close to 100,000 miles. They all pile in and go for a Sunday drive, where they can see all the 9’s turn majestically to six zeroes. Of course, they soon begin enjoying their conversation and their views of the countryside. Suddenly, someone remembers to ask what the odometer reads. They all look. It’s 000007.
The Bewildering Stories family also enjoys the ride and conversation but pays somewhat closer attention to the numbers. Our 1,000th official issue (regular issues + quarterly and annual reviews, etc.) was marked with an appropriate celebration in issue 921. This one has a nice, round number. And, like Garrison Keillor’s motoring family, we return to a beginning.
Our first reminiscence comes from one of our early contributors, Michael E. Lloyd, the author of the Observation trilogy, Donna’s Men and Missing Emilie, whose cover images are displayed in the Bewildering Press collection on our home page.
For nearly two decades now, Michael has also been Bewildering Stories’ official index master, managing the invaluable Titles, Authors, Genres index. The Managing Editor consults it several times daily. And now Mike Lloyd brings another gift of amazing quality. We’ll tell you what it is and why it’s important, but in due course.
Let’s hear first from Michael E. Lloyd and then another of our early members, Gary Inbinder. Finally, Don Webb will officially roll over the numbers on the Bewildering chronometer.
[Michael E. Lloyd] My happy memories of Bewildering Stories and many of its Crew of the past twenty-one years are many and varied, and summarizing them here in a few sentences is a real challenge!
I shall be forever grateful to Don Webb and Jerry Wright for their original confidence in Observation One: Singing of Promises, for their undiluted support for the four novels that followed, and for Jerry’s willingness to print-publish the full Observations trilogy. And I am very grateful to Crystalwizard (Kelly) for her fine artwork for the covers of all three books.
I must pay immediate tribute to the ever-cheerful and multi-talented Bill Bowler for his unceasing and stalwart support as Don’s first lieutenant in those years.
Carmen Ruggero always gave me her unflagging support, and encouraged me to attempt a translation of a lengthy Spanish story for BwS, which I’m very glad I did, chiquita!
I want to thank our acclaimed novelist Gary Inbinder for his sustained faith in my work and his fine welcome when I visited him in Los Angeles, and also Sheila Murdock for her equally fine welcome when we met up on the Pacific coast near Encinitas.
Agnes Blom’s commitment to the Observation trilogy, and her professional help with key aspects of my novel Donna’s Men, were greatly appreciated, and our meeting for lunch on one of her visits to England was icing on the cake.
Charlie Cole is a man of great humour and wit, and we both enjoyed our dinner date, along with our wives, in London some years ago. And John Stocks is a man of deep sensitivity and common sense. Yes, John, we will finally meet up one day!
I especially want to record the great Bertil Falk’s unwavering appreciation of my work, and of my novel Missing Emilie in particular, and to remember his visits from Sweden to meet and interview me in London and Cambridge on three separate occasions. Fortsatt god hälsa, min vän!
And last, but by no means least: Don Webb’s devotion to the cause which he and Jerry Wright (RIP) established oh-so-casually on an Analog message board one day back in the summer of 2002, has been utterly remarkable. There is so much that could be said, but the only way to say it here is in a very few words. So..... Bravo, Don! Thank you for the patience and the understanding you have shown to me and to everybody, over all these years. You have met your magnificent goals. You can rest easy.
[Gary Inbinder] My long association with BwS began in 2006 when Don Webb accepted my short story “Exterminator” for Issue 186. I’ll admit Don’s acceptance followed several rejections by well-known magazines whose names I won’t mention. That’s something I like most about BwS: its willingness to give unknown, or relatively unknown, authors a chance and provide useful feedback to improve their work.
Of course, the quality of the material we read varies greatly, from over the moon fantastic down to sulfurous-pit awful. However, I can honestly say that reading and discussing the bad stuff has helped me avoid many of the common mistakes writers make, while reading the great stuff has been inspiring.
Shortly after the publication of my first contribution — there have been many since — Don asked me to become a reader for BwS and, not long after that, a member of the Review Board where I have been happily ensconced for the past seventeen years. That’s a long time, and the crew members, both past and present, whom I appreciate are too numerous to mention.
However, I’ll give special mention to the late Jerry Wright and our fearless leader, Managing Editor Don Webb. Thank you for making a concept first broached in the Analog forum into a long-running online reality.
[Don Webb] My thanks to you, Mike and Gary Inbinder. Your kind words and, especially, your long and pleasant memories are comforting. And I’m especially proud that Bewildering Stories is a home for your extraordinary stories.
I, too, miss Jerry Wright. Our initial meeting on the Analog forum was utterly coincidental and yet so timely that only a guardian angel could have arranged it. Jerry and I agreed with the premise of the discussion, that the many new science fiction writers had little chance of having their works published in the few print magazines available in 2002. Jerry and I agreed to work together in opening the door to as yet unrecognized talent by establishing a platform on the new medium of the Internet.
Jerry and I became good friends not only because we were united in a common cause. We seemed to understand each other instinctively. I showed appreciation for his work as an electrical contractor and instructor, which sometimes brought him east from Washington State to hold workshops in his field.
On Jerry’s third visit to Guelph, he was visibly tired. We both attributed it to his extensive travel by air and automobile. Little did we know then that an underlying illness was bringing him to an untimely end. I regret that he was never able to realize his lifelong dream of managing a small press. Its inception and an image of the dream, “Bewildering Press,” remains on our home page as a memorial and. inside, as a page of informative summaries.
Jerry and I realized that Mike Lloyd’s novel Observation One represented a double advantage. It was science fiction written in a refreshingly civilized tone. And Bewildering Stories’ weekly publication provided an ideal platform for serialization. So it was with the entire Observation series and with Mike’s other novels, as well.
In the meantime, Mike became a Review Editor and established a high standard for proofreading. Upon his moving full time to managing our official Index, the proofreading standard has been maintained by the indispensable work of Charlie Cole, who also quite clearly qualifies as an important voice in modern American short fiction.
Mike also rightly cites Bill Bowler, a thought-provoking author, who became our first Coordinating Editor and set the standard for that essential position. And all Review Editors, over the years, have not only had the privilege and pleasure of enjoying Gary Inbinder’s stories but also the ever-fascinating results of his indefatigable research in literary history.
To end at the beginning, I insist on publicly expressing my gratitude to Michael E. Lloyd — contributor, colleague and friend — not only for his invaluable work and kind recollections but for a surprise gift. Mike has compiled the “first print edition” of my critical translation of Cyrano de Bergerac’s The Other World. The book is ingeniously elegant and yet simple: the hypertext notes become insets along the right-hand margin of the text. The result is attractive and easily readable. Congratulations, Mike! You have provided a classic example of a Bewildering Stories motto: “Simplest is often best but seldom easiest.”
And there’s more, much more. Mike has wisely and to my applause included his own introduction to The Other World. It includes glowing praise for which I am grateful. But not only for myself; rather, Mike underscores Bewildering Stories’ mission in action.
Cyrano is a posthumous “contributor” from almost 400 years ago. This work of his no longer need interest only specialists in literary history. Now it is accessible to university-level literature majors and to intellectually inquisitive high-school students. Bewildering Stories brings Cyrano’s work, which was written for the intellectual elite of the 17th century, to modern readers in a manner intended to “keep them on the page with him.”
Bewildering Stories tries to do something of a similar nature for all contributors. Over the years, our many Associate Editors — i.e. review readers — and their Coordinating Editors have done outstanding work in helping to keep the readership “on the page” with the author. We know they have such a good effect because we receive thank-you notes every week from contributors who appreciate the real people who have actually read the work and provided useful advice in literary communication. We know the appreciation is genuine, because it also comes from contributors whose submissions we’ve had to decline.
From the perspective of what will soon be 22 years of weekly publication, I salute our Review and Associate Editors — and our Coordinating and Special Editors — as colleagues in the University of the Mind. Together, we have made Bewildering Stories a living community, one that has given me the opportunity at least to attempt to imitate the kind of professor and scholar I’ve always admired.
