From richard.horton@sff.net Mon Mar 15 23:41:29 2004 Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 21:45:29 -0600 From: Rich Horton Newsgroups: sff.people.richard-horton, sff.discuss.short-fiction Subject: Summary: Ideomaner, 2003 Summary: Ideomancer, 2003 Ideomancer is an e-zine available at www.ideomancer.com. It can be read at the site or downloaded in .pdf format. It is quite attractively put together. Ideomancer put out 12 monthly issues this year. Each featured 4 stories. In each issue, one story was a short-short ("flash"), and another was a reprint of a "proto-SF" story, called "Classic", from late last century or early this century. This year the "Classic" authors were George MacDonald, Edgar Allan Poe, Gertrude Atherton, Kenneth Grahame, Jack London, Oscar Wilde, M. R. James, Marcus Clarke, G. K. Chesterton (twice), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman (a reprinting of "The Yellow Wallpaper" in two parts). I have found these "classic" selections very worthwhile. Ideomancer selects a featured author, and publishes a story by that author each month for three months, two reprints and one new story. This year the featured authors included Robert Hood, Jay Lake, Tim Pratt, and Bruce Holland Rogers. Ideomancer published a total of 47 stories this year (not 4 per issue because of the one two part serial). Of these 28 were new. The total word count was about 135,000, with some 75,000 words of new fiction. All the stories were shorts (the longest 7400 words by my count). Of the new stories I would particularly mention "Nobody's Car" by Robert Hood, a nice horror story about a corporate drudge haunted by a mysterious car; "Bioplastic Blues", by Daniel Goss, an amusing story about near-future ecoterrorism and the increasing cynical news; Tim Pratt's "Robin of Wonderland Wood", a very strange fantasy about, sort of, Robin Hood is a weirdly different environment; Mark Rudolph's "Always a Bridesmaid", a sharp story about an alien marriage; and Christopher Rowe's "Relativity in the Gospel", offering an SFnal explanation of the Star of Bethlehem. In general, I thought this a pretty good year for Ideomancer, with a definite improvement in overall quality.