Welcome to Issue #104! This is usually the part where I crow over our latest amazing cover (thanks, Tom Nackid!), our excellent interior illos (you guys rock!), fantastic stories (Harry Turtledove, what can I say?) and provocative poetry (so much talent in one place, oh my!) However, I’m keeping my geebling to a minimum this round, so that I can address a few issues.
As some of you may know, I work both sides of the fence — I edit and I write. So, I truly to understand the frustration of authors out there who send their work off to a market, wait with baited breath for a response, and wind up getting rejected — or worse, not hearing back from the market at all. Why is that worse? Because, at least with a rejection, you can mourn, crumple it up, and send the story to the next market on your list. However, when you don’t get a response within a reasonable time, you start chewing your fingernails. Did they get my submission? Did they hate it so much they’re not dignifying it with a response? If I contact the editor, will he/she think I’m nagging and reject me out of hand?
Here’s the official stance of Space and Time on this subject: if you did not receive a timely response, I WANT you to contact me. I will NOT consider it nagging and I will NEVER automatically reject you for “bothering” me. When we are open to submissions, we try very hard to adhere to a three-month turnaround, but the fact is that we are often deluged, so a response could take as long as six months. For that, I am truly sorry, but short of bringing on fifty associate editors and cloning Gerard at least three times over, there isn’t much I can do.
So here’s the deal: if you’ve submitted to Space and Time, and you haven’t received a response either way by the end of three months from your date of submission, please contact me at hildy@spaceandtimemagazine.com. No polite query will ever result in automatic rejection (although if you’re rude, that will most assuredly bite you in the behind — I can be cantankerous when provoked). The response might be, “Sorry, but we can’t use this, please try somewhere else,” but at least you’ll know where you stand.
Please note that we request electronic submissions and you have to send a query first if for some reason ou cannot submit via email. This is for purely practical reasons: I am located in New Jersey, Gerard and Linda in New York, Diane in Philadelphia, and our associate editors are all over the place. There is no practical way for us to mail around paper submissions, so you’d better have a pretty dern good reason — and have a pretty dern amazing story or poem — if you want to submit to us via snail mail.
Remember, we are not open year-round to fiction and poetry. Submissions received outside of our designated reading periods will either be sent back unread (if a self-addressed, stamped envelope is included), tossed in the circular file (if no SASE was included), or deleted unread (if emailed).
When are we open? Check the website: www.spaceandtimemagazine.com. That’s where all of our guidelines are provided and announcements as to when we will reopen are posted first. I also inform Ralan.com, Gilaqueen.com, and as many other listing services as possible ahead of time. In the meantime, if you want to submit to us, you’ve already taken the first step — you’ve picked up a copy! There’s no better method for figuring out what an editor likes than reading the publication end-to-end (and for artists, checking out the quality of illustrations and cover art).
As always, to all of Space and Time’s loyal subscribers, new readers, contributors, and hope-to-be contributors: thank you for your support. Without you, there’s no us.
Hildy Silverman
Editor-in-Chief
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