Bewildering Stories’
Third Quarterly Review, 2009

Bewildering Stories continues Year 8 with the Review Editors’ selection of favorites from the Third Quarter of 2009. New readers will have easy access to the recent best of Bewildering Stories, and veteran readers will have a chance to catch up on anything they may have missed.

Special in this quarter: a veritable flowering in the Departments, especially the Interview, the Challenge Responses, The Critics’ Corner and Discussions, as well as in the Reading Room’s book reviews and excerpts.

The Quarterly Reviews are Bewildering Stories’ honor roll. While they’re not a contest or competition in the strict sense of the term, we’ll match them against any contest in terms of fairness: in the past 12 weeks, the Review Editors cast 606 votes on 103 titles. And there are no quotas: everything or nothing in any genre may qualify for a Quarterly Review. The Review Editors vote according to their estimate of each work’s success on its own terms.

As always, the Review Board’s discussions have been extensive and lively. A big Thank You to Agnes Blom, Bill Bowler, Bertil Falk, Gary Inbinder, RD Larson, Michael E. Lloyd, Marina J. Neary, and Lewayne L. White.

We also express special gratitude to our Coordinating Editor Bill Bowler and the Associate Editors. Their insightful and detailed critiques of submissions help us set what we like to think is an Internet standard for editorial practice and for service to our contributors and readers.

Finally and foremost we congratulate the authors represented here. They and their works have well earned the honor. We hope they will inspire all our contributors.

Regular publication resumes with issue 355 on October 5, 2009.

How discriminating is the Quarterly Review? The figures tell the story.
The following tables also serve as a linked index to all the genres and sections in the Review.