A reminder that now until December 31 is your last chance to subscribe to Kaleidotrope at the current rate of $16 ($25 int'l). That's four issues of stories, poems and other various bits delivered straight to your mailbox twice a year. A terrific holiday gift for anyone eager to support an independent zine and its terrific writers!

Rates will be going up in 2009 ($18 US, $28 int'l), so subscribe now and save!

Richard Horton summarizes Kaleidotrope 2008:

Stories I particularly liked were, from #4, Ashley Arnold's clever and surrealistic short-shorts "Word Count: Negative 1", and Adam Lowe's moving treatment of the rights of synthetic humans, "Paradise". From #5, I enjoyed "The Wroeth's Grinding Bowl", by Bill Ward, a fable about the exploitation of the title creature and the title object, which can create anything you imagine -- including, alas, various ills; and Therese Arkenberg's sweet short piece about a potential love affair with an alien, "Fortune Cookie". Other nice stories came from
Michael Obilade, Flavian Mark Luminetti, Mark Rich, Brendan Connell, Eric Del Carlo, and Daniel Braum.

The percentage of women in each issue goes up considerably when you factor in the poetry -- which sadly most reviewers fail to do -- but I would love to see more stories by women overall.

A couple of new collections from Kaleidotrope contributors to announce.

First, Jennifer Crow (Two poems, April '07) has a poetry collection called Signs and Wonders, now available at Genre Mall

Signs & Wonders by Jennifer Crow {Sam's Dot Publishing} Come hear tales of angels and monsters, witches and sorcerers, and kings who fell. Listen close to the memories of abandoned gods and the tragedies of old ghosts. Discover poems of magic and myth, of lovers and death, and future legends yet to be told. Come quest over the seas, across the lands and in the skies, for hidden stories both dazzling and bleak. No tale truly ends, and no deed is without consequence. What is forgotten is never lost, and the greatest tales are bound in the questions never asked. Come find the answers; they are here, if you know where to look, scattered all around, in Signs and Wonders.

And Mark Rich -- whose stories and poems have appeared in the last three issues, as well as in the upcoming 6th issue in April -- has two new collections. The first is Edge of Our Lives, available now from Redjack Books

This collection of new and previously published short stories spans the width of Mark's considerable range of voices and themes. From the deeply poetic to the wryly humorous to the just plain bizarre, the stories take the reader to the edges (and depths) of the human (and inhuman) experience. ($10.00 US. 272pp, 4.75 x 6.5" ISBN 978-1-892619-11-2). Release date: November 1, 2008.

And the second is Across the Sky, available for pre-order now from Fairwood Press. The book comes out in January.

In nineteen ventures into the future, Mark Rich moves from a moving moment during human-alien contact, in "Across the Sky" ... to madcap conflict between Human and Vegetable, in the antic "Foggery" ... to a vision of life in Venusian orbit, in "The Apples of Venus" — the story SF giant Robert Silverberg called "science fiction in the classic mode, a contemporary version of the sort of work that makes old-timers speak with warm nostalgia of John W. Campbell's famous magazine Astounding Science Fiction of fifty years ago."

They're both terrific writers, so be sure to check these new collections out!