Dear backers (and curious browsers who've stumbled across this post),

When you last heard from us, we'd hit a bump in the road on our way to becoming a new professional market for Canadian science fiction. But we didn't let it stop us. Today, we're proud to announce that AE is launching online. We can't put it better than the opening of the Letter from the Editors for issue 1:

It’s been a long and bumpy journey, with weather harsh and roadmaps faulty, but here we are. This is existence and it is sublime. This is AE – The Canadian Science Fiction Review. This is the new professional market for the fantastic, the prophetic, the speculative and the strange. This is a grand experiment in more ways than one. And this is all for you. Come on in.

The "you" in that paragraph is includes anyone intrigued enough to stop by our site, but especially all of you who showed your support from the very beginning. Our heartfelt thanks go out to you. We couldn't have done it without you.

AE is entering an exciting new phase and we hope to keep growing with the continued support of our community. Please join us at http://aescifi.ca to see what the future holds for our young publication.

This is a difficult update to write.

If you were following our project closely in the past couple weeks, you’re probably aware that more than half of our funding came in the form of a massive eleventh hour pledge from a benevolent stranger. We celebrated, and you celebrated with us.

But after the clock wound down, the pledge collection process kicked into gear. And that crucial pledge didn’t clear. We have contacted the backer, as has Kickstarter, politely and with thanks. No response was forthcoming to our inquiry. And as more information has become available, we have been forced to accept that this pledge is not going to come through.

We’ve been in touch with Yancey Strickler from Kickstarter. Our project is not the only one that has been affected by this backer. Kickstarter has given us the choice of refunding all the pledges to our project, or moving ahead with the money that we did collect.

It was a tough, tough call. We know we could do something great with the nearly $5,000 you have entrusted us with. We could make a stellar issue of AE, even if it was somewhat scaled back from our original vision, and maybe have something left over to keep us going for another issue or two. But that wasn’t what you signed up for, and now that we can’t fulfill our original promises, we don’t want to hold onto your money a second longer than we have to. So we’ve asked Kickstarter to refund everyone’s donations, as if we had never gotten that fateful pledge. The refunds have already been initiated and will take a day or two to go through.

Like a political candidate on election night, we had two speeches prepared. Here's the one we had hoped not to have to use.

--

Okay. Wow. The last two months have been a whirlwind. Our Kickstarter project didn’t reach its funding goal but, nonetheless, we feel you’ve given us a mandate. And despite the disappointment, we wouldn’t trade the past sixty days for anything. It has been quite a ride and we’re already looking forward to the months ahead. Before we put the chairs up on the tables and turn out the lights here, we have a few things to say:

First, we are so appreciative of your support, whether you pledged or helped us spread the word or participated in AE Micro. We are humbled by your generosity and buoyed by the new connections we’ve made as a result of this project.

Second, and most importantly, we want you to know that this is not the end for AE. We remain committed to our mission to become a new professional market for Canadian science fiction. Bringing you AE Micro has served only to whet our appetite. But we have learned a lot in the past two months, and we are going to take some time to absorb it, to reflect on the experience and refine our plans.

So what’s next for Team AE? We still have a few loose ends to tie up for AE Micro, notably the print edition and the balance of the story critiques. We also have a surprise in store that we hope to unveil soon. And over the next few months you’ll see us start to build a solid foundation for what AE will become.

Of all the outcomes of this process, the one we treasure most is the community we’ve begun to build around our efforts. We hope that you will continue to follow our progress. We will remain active on Twitter and Facebook throughout the next months, and we will also be expanding the scope and functionality of our Web site. We would like to invite you to sign up for our mailing list to stay informed about AE news. Before you know it, you’ll be placing your order for AE #1. You don’t want to miss that. We promise not to spam you and we will never share your email with anyone for any reason.

So, until soon, dear Readers, sci fi fans, AEmazing Aester Egg AErolites,
— Duff, Adam and Helen

For all the ups and downs, we still stand behind this wholeheartedly. For a couple days there, we were the editors of a brand new science fiction magazine, and it was awesome. We’re even more determined than ever to make that happen for real.

We’re sure there are going to be some questions. Please don’t hesitate to ask them. Though we officially opened up for submissions only a few days ago, we’ve already received a few stories for AE. If you were considering sending us your work: We would still love to see it, but we understand completely if you’d rather wait until you hear more about our future plans.

To those who have already submitted: As stated in our submission guidelines, we are open to simultaneous submissions, so please don’t feel that we have an exclusive hold on your story if you want to submit it elsewhere. And if you want to withdraw your story until we know what the next step is, we won’t hold it against you.

We also want to make it clear that Kickstarter has been incredibly helpful and supportive as we dealt with this awful situation. If this is your first experience with the site, please don’t let any of this put you off from supporting worthy projects in the future.

Thanks again to each and every one of you for all that you have done to help get us off the ground, and accept our apologies for the inconvenience of this false start. We’re still going make this happen, and we hope that you’ll be there with us when we do.

Sincerely,
— The editors of AE

How quickly things can change. It has been two months since we launched this Kickstarter project, and nearly a year since AE was first conceived. That time has passed in a flash.

But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about how, as the clock on AE funding ticked down, it looked like we weren’t going to make it, despite the boundless generosity of our backers. We’re talking about last-second comebacks and Act V, Scene V game-changers.

There are many people who need to be thanked, plans that need to be laid out and inexorable machineries that need to be kicked into gear. But all that is for tomorrow. Tonight we just want to tell you that, as of right now, AE – The Canadian Science Fiction Review is open for submissions.

Today, we’re proud to unveil the web and PDF editions of AE Micro. We’ve talked before about how pleased we are with the winning stories, and we’re excited to be able to bring them to you in this package.

Keeping with the theme, of course, AE Micro is itself quite small and as such doesn’t bear a long introduction. We would like to encourage you to download and print-out the PDF edition. It is a fun exercise in papercraft and the end product is, frankly, adorable. Download the PDF.

Alternatively, you can enjoy AE Micro in its entirety online. Read the Web edition.

Also, the winning Canadian story and the winning International story are now available as audio files:
”Denial of Service Attack” by J.J. DeBenedictis (as read by Duff McCourt)

“She Whispers” by Gabriel Schlesinger (as read by Helen Michaud)

Thanks again to all the entrants and to all of our readers.

(And incidentally, Duff’s “Denial of Service Attack” reading is also available in video.)

The last two weeks have been great for AE, but we need the next two weeks to be even better. This is the home stretch and we need your help now more than ever. In order to spread the word to anyone who might not have heard about us yet, we need to take this thing offline. Consider printing out and photocopying this poster. Post it at your workplace, your school, your church, your library. Post it in your clubhouse, or even just on your fridge. We’d love it if you emailed us photographs (editors@aescifi.ca) of the poster in action, along with a note about where it's posted. Help us get this in front of eyeballs in every province.

The printable PDF can be downloaded here: ae-poster.pdf

Shrink rays, microscopes, nanobots and scientific experiments gone awry! AE Micro closed to submissions on Monday, with 42 entries in total. We were thrilled with the overall quality of the submissions and the task of selecting the best was not an easy one. After careful consideration, we have a list of winners, all five of which will receive cash prizes and appear in the print and digital edition of AE Micro.

Best Canadian Story: "Denial of Service Attack" (#1) by J. J. DeBenedictis
This was the very first story submitted and it lay the foundation for the rest of the contest. And a sturdy foundation it turned out to be, indeed. This is a dense story that benefits from multiple readings. It has drama and tension, solid characters and good atmosphere. Not an easy task in just two hundred words.

Best International Story: "She Whispers" (#12) by Gabriel Schlesinger
Of all the stories submitted, this is the one that most fully engages the readers emotions. The sense of guilt and loss is tangible: "By the time I was cellular, she'd be atomic." It was one of several shrinking person stories (and not even the only one that will appear in AE Micro), but its approach and voice set it apart.

Runner-Up: "Tiny" (#23) by Richard Baldwin
"Tiny" is the second shrinking person story to be chosen as a winner. Arguably, of all the entries, this is the one that gives the most potent sense of scale. From the grand Himalayas to tiny pinprick stars, the story reminds us gracefully that size is always a matter of perspective. And the conclusion is pure poetry.

Runner-Up: "Detuned" (#24) by Shay D.
"Detuned" has the most relentless pace of all the entries. It reads sudden and violent like an action movie. We’re excited to include "Detuned" in AE Micro, though we’re a little concerned for the safety of the other stories.

Runner-Up: "Dear Jack:" (#40) by John Leavitt
Of all the stories submitted "Dear Jack:" delivers undeniably the most bang per word. It is a triumph of succinctness and, even at 38 words, it is layered and whimsical. It was refreshing to read a story that was not straining right up against the 200 word limit as though it were a prison cell.

#

Congratulations to all of the winners. If you are the author of one of these five stories, we will be in contact with you this weekend about your prizes.

If you submitted and your story was not among those chosen, know that our decision was not easy. There were several stories that it pained us to exclude from the final tally, particularly "Micro Management" by Damon Shaw, "μg" by A. Martyn and "Micro-World" by Kevin James Miller. We hope dearly that those authors (and, for that matter, all who participated) will consider submitting longer work to the first issue of AE proper.

At AE we believe that feedback is essential to the development of any skill, but particularly so with writing. Over the next week, we will be more than happy to provide critiques of any of the non-winning stories. If you would like to hear our thoughts on your story, please drop us an email at editors@aescifi.ca from the address you gave when submitting your entry. Any requested critiques will appear on Duff's blog.

You can expect the digital edition of AE Micro as well as the audio versions of the winning entries to be available as free downloads by Friday, May 7th. The physical edition will follow shortly thereafter. In the meantime, all the entries remain viewable at the original contest page.

Thanks again to everyone who participated and everyone who has been following along. We feel honoured to be at the center of such a great community and hope that you will keep spreading the word about our project!

Just a quick update this time. As of now, our microfiction contest is officially closed for entries. The final tally: a stunning 42 (forty-two!) extremely compact stories about the world of the very small. Congratulations to everyone who submitted a story — each one of you deserves recognition for stepping up to the challenge. And a big thank you to all who helped us get the word out about our little contest.

The entries will all be carefully considered and winners will be announced later this week. While you’re waiting to hear the results, why not take a moment to tell us a little about yourself?

By the way, if you entered the contest and want to be eligible for the additional benefits of being a backer should you win, you have until April 30 to pledge. It takes but a single dollar to qualify.

On a non-contest-related note: We would like to offer our sincere gratitude to everyone who tweeted, posted on Facebook, emailed a friend, called a family member, or chatted over coffee about our project over the past few days. It’s been a great week for our Kickstarter project, but it’s not over yet. Indeed, we’ve only just begun to show what we can do. If you enjoyed AE Micro, please keep the momentum going over the next few weeks. Help us meet our funding goal and make AE a reality.

We began this project with 60 days to raise $10,000 to change the landscape of Canadian science fiction. We were armed with a pile of ideas, a worthy mission, and a whole lot of passion. Let us introduce ourselves again, for those of you coming to us late:

* Duff, with his experience bootstrapping a small press operation to publish Lysergically Yours
* Adam, bringing the graphic design and typographical expertise to make AE a beautiful thing to hold and behold
* Helen, with her knowledge of how to turn manuscripts into books gained from years at publishing houses great and small

We know that between us we have the ingredients to make AE work as soon as we have the capital to get all this rolling. But here we are, with the clock ticking down to a scant three weeks left in our funding window, and we’re stretching to meet a quarter of our goal. If we haven’t reached $10,000 in pledges by May 15, our backers won't be charged a penny, but AE likely won't happen this year.

What we need right now is you.

Please take a little time to spread the word about our project and and what we’re trying to accomplish: We simply want to offer talented authors both the audience and the financial compensation they deserve. And at the same time we want to make terrific, stirring and thought-provoking stories available to as many readers as we can. We would be most appreciative if you mention our project on your blog, Twitter or Facebook. If you have your own site, you can grab our Kickstarter widget to show our progress. And we would be particularly grateful if you could think of just one or two people who would be excited about AE — someone who loves to read and is looking for a source of fresh new stories or a writer seeking a new market for speculative fiction — and tell them about us directly. And of course if you haven’t yet pledged, please consider throwing in a few dollars toward the cause.

Meanwhile, the AE Micro contest closes within just a few days. (Check out the entries so far and get those last-minute stories in!) Next week we’ll announce the winners and the digital version of the microzine will follow soon thereafter. We’re committed to producing the print edition of AE Micro — and paying our authors a professional rate for their contributions — whether our project is funded or not. We’ve had a blast running it and hope it is just a taste of things to come.

A final word: So far we’ve tried to anticipate the questions you might have — or to respond to those we’ve received offline — but if you have any questions or concerns about us or our project, now is the time to bring it up. We’ll do our best to address it before funding is over. Please feel free to contact us through comments here, on Twitter, via Facebook, a private message on Kickstarter or email at editors@aescifi.ca.

Duff here. I’d like to talk today about Creative Commons.

The idea behind the Creative Commons, that the world is a better place if information is easier to share, is a simple one to get behind for anyone whose line of work is not directly tied up in the creation of information. For those of us in the information business however (and make no mistake that all literature, all art, is information), the issue becomes a little more charged. Creative Commons licenses essentially give away for free certain rights that a content creator might otherwise be able to sell under a more conventional All Rights Reserved scheme. It can be hard at first to see how releasing work under a Creative Commons License can be anything other than self-limiting altruism on the part of an author.

Thus, one question we at AE have heard more than perhaps any other is: “Why Creative Commons?”

To answer that question we need to take a closer look at the specific rights involved. In doing so, I’m going to talk about the particular license AE will be using: the Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives license. With this license, the author retains the right to be credited for their work, the right to be paid when others make money from their work and the right to be the arbiter of adaptations of their work. The right that the author gives away is the right to be the arbiter of how the original work is distributed.

Let’s assume that the author doesn’t release their work under this license until after they have been paid for it once (by AE, for example). The remaining concern about giving away the right to control distribution is twofold. The first worry is that the free availability of the digital version of the work will result in fewer people buying the physical copy. The second worry is that the author will have hamstrung their ability to make reprint sales.

I think I’m in a particularly good position to address the first point. Over on my blog, I’ve talked about my earlier experience with having a novella of mine published by a small press in Toronto. One thing that I did not talk about very much in that blog post is how significant the decision to release the e-book under a Creative Commons license turned out to be. In the weeks following the release of the e-book, online sales of the print edition surged. It is a difficult thing to track, the reason people have for making a purchase, but I honestly believe that the decision to use a Creative Commons license generated so much interest and goodwill that it accounted for probably half of our total sales.

This same effect has been seen again and again. It seems that, for every person who doesn’t buy the book because they can read it online for free, there is at least one person who only finds out about the book because it is freely available online and then ends up buying it.

It bears further mentioning that magazines pay authors their full due up front rather than running, as the book publishing industry does, on a royalty system. The result of this is that, in the specific case of AE, we the publisher will be shouldering all of this risk. If Creative Commons licensing somehow results in us selling fewer copies, the author still gets paid just as much.

As for the reprint question, the simple truth is that there is very little money to be made for the author in reprint rights anyhow. If you are Margaret Atwood or Neil Gaiman, then you are going to be able to sell your reprints regardless; the magazine or anthology will just be happy to be able to put your name on the cover. But, for those of us who are neither Atwood nor Gaiman, getting the story in front of thousands of additional pairs of eyeballs is worth far more than theoretical reprint sales. For all the magic of money, exposure is an equally potent coin.

And free digital distribution provides a secondary benefit of protection from obscurity. A strict copyright model often results in brilliant work being lost to the ages. This is to the detriment not only of the culture at large, but also to the artist. Writing is hard work. It is a tragedy to see a great story live for only the brief window of time that a single issue is on the newsstand.

When you put it all together, the actual dollar value to the author of the rights given away under a Creative Commons license are quite low. By offering those rights freely, the author can dramatically increase their exposure. And exposure pays back directly with an increased potential for future sales. For that matter, it pays back with present sales. It seems to us at AE that the gains greatly outweigh the risks.

That said, we will not force Creative Commons licensing on our writers. All editorial content in AE will be released Creative Commons, but stories will be addressed on a case by case basis. The information I’ve presented here will be made available to every contributor to AE, and they will be free to decide on their own. Should they elect not to use the Creative Commons license, we will respect that. As such, it may turn out that the print edition and the Creative Commons edition will have differences in content. It is our hope, however, that most or all of our contributors will see the issue as we do.

AE Micro (the AE Microfiction contest, if you missed the announcement) is a week old. That means you only have two weeks left to enter.

Early entries are already trickling in. Over on the main contest page, there are eight stories at the most recent count. Some silly, some serious, and more than one that startles the reader at how much detail can be packed into a scant two hundred words.

Ever since Hemingway wrote his six word masterpiece, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn," the world of literature has loved to toy with the shortest stories it can find. Roll them over in its mouth like a piece of hard candy, looking for the air bubble that will turn into a sharp spot to run the tongue over.

A few years back, Wired Magazine managed to elicit six-word stories from more than thirty of the top names in science fiction. The results are fascinating, if underwhelming. Almost every author managed to turn in something of interest, but few of them really stand on their own as stories.

The best among them read as movie pitches ("Lie detector eyeglasses perfected: Civilization collapses." - Richard Powers) or as orphaned sentences from the middle of a more interesting story ("Kirby had never eaten toes before." - Kevin Smith). In the end, it has to be acknowledged that the form is just too limited. It may well be that Hemingway explored the full limits of the six-word story in the same breath as he invented it.

The reason that we chose two hundred words for AE Micro was because it seemed to us a robust enough length to allow for proper story telling, while remaining short enough to hold in the mouth all at once. And there is a certain pedigree to the length, as well. in 1977, the very first issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine carried a short story by Arthur C. Clarke entitled "Quarantine." It ran to just 190 words, including the title. And the second issue carried a story of roughly the same length by Asimov himself ("About Nothing"). Interestingly, the latter story had apparently been written first, with the idea of distributing it to fans on a physical postcard. Hearing about this plan and Asimov's story is what inspired Clarke to write "Quarantine" in the first place.

So it is a storied tradition that you are building upon by submitting an entry to AE Micro. You have two weeks left, let us see what you've got.

At AE HQ, we’re pretty excited about making AE happen. So excited, in fact, we can’t really wait for autumn to put out our first issue (that's months away ...). So we’re going to do it right now, on a small scale.

Presenting: AE Micro — A very small book of very small stories about very small things

So far we’ve promised to write more than 20 postcard stories, each based on a word that one of you provides to us. We thought you might like to get in on the fun. So we're asking you to write postcard-sized stories based on the word of our choosing. We’ll pick the best of the lot and publish them in a special edition microzine, a forerunner of AE proper.

Intrigued? Here are the details:

THE SIZE
Our notional postcard is sized to contain 200 words and not one more.

THE WORD (OKAY, THE MORPHEME)
We’re offering you just a bit less than a word: “micro.” Contest entries do not have to contain “micro” within them, as long as we can tell that the story was inspired by the word.

THE SET OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ELIGIBLE
Everyone. We mean everyone, including but not limited to:
* Canadians
* non-Canadians
* backers of our Kickstarter project
* non-backers of our Kickstarter project

We’re pretty sure this covers the widest possible range of people who might enter, but let us know if we’ve missed anyone. The bottom line: We’re looking for people who can tell great stories, no matter what other category they fall into.

THE WINNERS
We will pick five stories for publication in the microzine. In keeping with our mission to support Canadian SF, three of those will come from Canadian authors, and the other two from international submissions. In addition, we will choose one Best Canadian Story and one Best International Story.

THE PRIZES
For all winners
* We will pay our standard rate of $.06 CAD per word for each of the five stories published in the microzine, with a minimum of $10 for any one story
* Each winning author will receive five print copies of AE Micro.

For the winner of each category
In addition to the above:
* The authors of the Best Canadian Story and Best International Story will each receive a six-month subscription to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Online Writer's Workshop. We can earnestly say that the Workshop is one of the best tools a burgeoning or developed science fiction writer could have in their toolbox.
* The two category winners will each also receive a one year's subscription to AE.
* We will make a recording of one of us reading the winning stories and post it here on Kickstarter and on our Web site.

For Kickstarter backers
* If you are a backer whose story is chosen for publication in AE Micro, you get the option of commissioning a postcard story from us, even if you haven't pledged at a level that includes it (even if you only pledged a single dollar).
* If you are a backer and win the Best Canadian or Best International category, your year’s subscription is added to the end of any issues that you are entitled to receive as part of your backer reward. Alternatively, you can choose to gift your prize subscription or your reward issues to a friend. Don’t worry, we’ll work something out.

THE MICROZINE
The real AE is going to be available in both print and digital editions, and so will AE Micro. We’ll do a very small print run of very small issues, and we will also provide a free PDF that will enable you to roll your own issue of the microzine. The digital version will be available before our funding deadline.

THE TIMELINE
Contest opens for entries: Now
Contest closes for entries: Monday, April 26, at 23:59 Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4)
Winners announced: Friday, April 30

THE MODE OF ENTRY
When you are ready, ENTER HERE. When you submit your story, it will be automatically posted on our site.

THE FINE PRINT
Stories must be no more than 200 words, including the title. They must be recognizably science fiction and inspired by the word “micro.” One entry per person. All entries must be previously unpublished in print or online.

By entering, you agree to license your story under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives license. You also specifically grant a non-assignable license to AE to display (for purposes commercial, promotional and otherwise) the story online.

By entering, you further agree to accept the following terms and payment should your story be chosen a winner: You grant first print and digital serial rights to the story to AE, these rights to expire twelve months after submission of the entry if unused. You also grant AE license to edit your story as necessary for print, as well as to create and share an audio recording of your story online.

THE QUESTIONS
Please post any questions you have as comments below, and we will address them.

THE EXCITEMENT
Should be everywhere! Please do your part to spread it.

THE LAST WORD
If you like what we’re doing with this contest, remember that we’re doing this on less than a shoestring. Just imagine what we can accomplish this fall — if you back this project.

So: We’ve told you a lot about us so far, but we’re dying to learn more about you. We had this dream, actually, that we would find you guys through this Kickstarter project, or you would find us — we would find each other — and together we would get this thing off the ground. We imagined this ship being borne upon your metaphorical shoulders. The three of us may be doing the heavy lifting, but AE, if it becomes a reality, will belong to all of you too.

You might have noticed, there at the tail end of our project description, that we have a name for you already. It’s not a great name, though. It was just a placeholder until we met you. We’re sure, now that you’re here, you can help us think of a better one.

So please, tell us a little about yourself — whatever you want us to know. But if you can’t think of anything in particular to say, consider the following as suggestions:

1. 
   
2. How did you find out about AE?
3. 
   
4. What is on your computer’s desktop background? You can describe it in words, link to your Flickr stream, upload it as your Kickstarter profile pic ...
5. 
   
6. Which of the following words excites you the most?
   
   Canadian Science Fiction Review
7. 
   
8. Tell us something about the future. Ten seconds or ten billion years from now — how far into the future is up to you. Don’t worry, we won’t check whether you were right or not.
9. 
   
10. Finally, what should you, the supporters of AE, be called?
11. 
    

Here at AE headquarters, we’ve got a lot to say. We’ve been thinking and talking about what we’re doing for a long time, and we have more to tell the world than any one project summary can possibly cover. Besides, we want this to be an ongoing conversation, not a one-time blast of information from us out to you. With that in mind, here is your comprehensive guide to AE-related goings-on across the vast Internet.

Kickstarter updates: You're already aware of these, we hope. We want you to know that we have a steady stream of posts planned for the coming weeks. They won’t always be as frequent as they have been during our opening days, but over the course of this project we’re going to post much more information about our plans, motivations and current activities. We also have contests, challenges and other surprises planned — watch this space for more!

Hey, I've Got an Idea for a Magazine: Duff’s blog at http://duffae.blogspot.com/, an arena of discussion for science fiction, publishing and Canadiana.

Incantations: Helen’s blog at http://incantations.wetmachine.com where she writes about topics including but not limited to: writing, books, software, writing about software, writing as software and links (hyper and otherwise).

Our Web site at http://aescifi.ca/ provides a central location for the latest posts from all of the above venues and our Twitter stream (@aescifi) is also a great source of information about all of the above as well as other AE news. If you don't follow either of these, rest assured we’ll post any major milestones here as well.

In the spirit of openness, we want to make all of this available to anyone, whether you’re backing us or not. We hope this will be a fun ride for everyone involved, and will do our best to make that happen. We value your interest and attention as much as your dollars, and we don’t want to waste your time any more than your money. In return, if you have questions, comments or encouragement for us, don’t be shy. We truly want to hear from you, whether via Twitter, Facebook, a comment here or on one of our blogs. And if you ever want to contact us directly, our inbox is always open at editors@aescifi.ca.

One of my most treasured possessions is a first edition copy of Frank Herbert’s “The Dragon in the Sea”, which I inherited from my grandfather, a talented draftsman and tool-and-die man from Detroit. I hardly knew about it when he was alive, but when he died, he left behind a wealth of Herbert and Heinlein and their ilk. I suppose I felt that it confirmed that I had come by my literary tastes honestly, but mostly I was encouraged by the idea that I had a line back into his life. In my hands were pages that his hands had turned and in my mind were ideas that had held him as rapt as I.

My earliest memories of literature were reading the likes of Richard Adams and Kenneth Grahame with my parents. These were authors who captured the sensibility of the Atlantic ocean and Canadian countryside I lived on, and emboldened my own imagination within them. For a child, being introduced to worlds of such fantastic joy (and sometime misery) was rain on the fertile soil of an active young mind.

It was not, however, until I started to read Frank Herbert on my own in the 7th grade that I began to attribute to fiction the ability to bestow upon our world the second depth of human profundity. To imagine, beyond even one’s own secret imagination, what the human race (or any conceivable race) might be capable of. What joy and misery our as-yet-untold stories might contain! It became clear to me, even at that young age, that whatever the future might bring, there were already immense futures within all of us, but especially, perhaps, within George Orwell, and Robert Heinlein, and Octavia Butler, and Neal Stephenson.

Science fiction has been fortunate enough to have been born of both frivolity and depth. Between the raygun serials and the most serious social commentary, there is something that allows us to speak to power on our own terms. In the great hypothetical, truth comes easier. Outside of topical political and social agendas, we can figure the universe in greater strokes. We can encourage the future to be bright, even while painting it darkly.

My hope is that AE will allow me to be able to contribute, in my own way, to the picture that the Canadian science fiction community can render for the world.

I want to tell you a story. I kinda want it to be an origin story. I was thinking it would begin like this:

When I was fifteen or so, I was going to be an architect. My high school had a pretty good graphic arts program, and I took Mechanical Drawing and then Architectural Drawing — slanted tables, T-squares, triangles, the whole bit. I was a pretty good draftsman, if I do say so myself. What I was not good at was designing a house, when we got to a project where we had to invent something new rather than faithfully copying something that already existed. At age fifteen or sixteen, it did not occur to me that I wasn’t very good at this because no one had taught me how. Or that maybe it was a skill you developed over time, with practice. I thought it was something that you just had in you, like telling stories.

I missed the fact that telling stories — if you want to be good at it — is also something that most people have to practice a lot, probably because by the time I was discovering that I was not a natural born architect, I had been writing stories for most of my life. I also was editor of my high school literary magazine, which meant that most of my friends had been writing for most of their lives, too. We would meet weekly at someone’s house to read a handful of submissions, discuss them, and vote. At the end of the year, we’d enlist one of the school newspaper editors to help us lay it out, then print and bind it ourselves.
But back to me in the drafting room, my hopes of being the next Frank Lloyd Wright dashed. I remind you that this is not an ending; it is a beginning. Because the graphic arts teacher walked over to me one day and said, “I want to ask you a question.” Sure, I said. What is it?

It wasn’t about drafting. It was about whether I wanted to run the school’s offset printing press.

That was how I acquired firsthand experience of how books came into being. It took more than an author bent over a desk dreaming up grand ideas; there was a whole art to creating the physical artifacts that I treasured so much. And I realized that what we were doing with our little lit mag was a microcosm of the whole publishing industry. And I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, this time for real.

There’s another story I want to tell, though. This one’s more like a bridge between the place where the last story left off (with me about to go to college, get a lit degree, and start a career in trade publishing) and where I am now.

Soon after I arrived at college, my best friend from high school introduced me to a text-based online game, a descendant of DikuMUD to be exact. If you have any experience with MUDs, you can probably imagine the all-nighters that followed.

But there was more to this than getting addicted to a game. This was a game you could change. The DikuMUD license was remarkably open — in many ways a precursor to the Creative Commons model that we want to encourage with AE. The best MUDs would allow players to create their own areas, objects, and creatures within the game. And once I got the taste of world building, I naturally wanted more. I even started a project to write a MUD-like game from scratch. It was going to be great. We were going to transcend the boundaries of the genre. And we were going push the boundaries of the licensing model, too — we were going to make it Free Software it under the terms of the GPL.

What happened to that dream of creating the best text-based game you’ve ever seen during a time when the World Wide Web was ascendant and when one of the main developers was learning Java in her spare time is a story for another day, but the point is that we did release something. We put it under the GPL. And via what was then called the Open Source Development Network (OSDN), I found what was a very special Web site in that time and virtual space. (Not Slashdot; the one whose color scheme is based on #006699, “the color of community.”) That was where Duff and I first crossed paths.

The last story, and the last beginning I want to tell you about, happened a couple of months ago when Duff asked a simple question: Does anyone have a Kickstarter invite?

He gave no further details about the project, but having known Duff and his creative output for years, it took me about two seconds to reply, “Whatever you have planned, I want in on it.”

At the time, I was only thinking about my personal Kickstarter account standing ready to pledge to whatever he had in the works, but then he came back with: It’s a new science fiction magazine, one that’s going to fill the need that currently exists for a professional science fiction market in Canada. And we’re looking for a third person for our editorial board. Someone with a love for literature, a willingness to do something just because it's awesome and, ideally, a little experience with the messy underbelly of the publishing industry. Know anyone?

I thought: Hey, I’ve been an editor. I’ve shepherded books from manuscript to the bookstore. I’ve managed publication schedules and hired freelancers. I’ve been a proofreader and copyeditor. I’ve written style guides. I know how to publish in print, where you have to get it right the first time, and in digital format, where you have to be flexible. So I said, “It sounds intriguing. What’s this thing called?”

He told me: AE - The Canadian Science Fiction Review. Our logo is going to feature Æ as a ligature.

And I said:

“I’m in.”