From richard.horton@sff.net Mon Mar 15 23:48:27 2004 Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:03:12 -0600 From: Rich Horton Newsgroups: sff.people.richard-horton, sff.discuss.short-fiction Subject: Summary: On Spec, 2003 Summary, On Spec, 2003 Last year I didn't include the Winter 2002 issue of On Spec in my summary because it didn't come out until January, and this year it looks like the Winter 2003 issue is also not out yet. If it were me I'd change the date to Winter 2004, and still have it come out in January (which is after all more of a Winter month than December). So, this year I saw four On Spec issues, counting the Winter 2002 one. The four issues had 33 stories, 2 of them novelettes (and two close to the line at 7400 words). The total word count was just over 170,000. Stories I particularly liked included Patricia Rutale's "Cause for a Haunting", Steven Mills' "Chasing Goodbye", E. L. Chen's "More Than Salt", Kate Riedel's "Chasing Chickens", and Claude Lalumiere's "Njabo". There was also good work by A. M. Dellamonica, Wes Smiderle, Daniel Ksenych, and Melissa Hardy. Another solid year, perhaps not quite an excellent year, for Canada's best SF magazine.