Here's another project within the Canadian science fiction and fantasy community that really deserves your support. A group of dedicated science fiction fans are working hard to bring back a famous science fiction magazine and... well, I'll let them tell their story:
We want to bring back Amazing Stories as a print magazine. And there's one simple answer to all of the questions that might be asked of this Kickstarter Campaign, the people behind it, their motivations and what they intend to do.
It's a simple answer, but a powerful one.
We love Science Fiction.
And you love science fiction too.
None of us can say exactly how and why that is. We've each got our own origin stories, our own definitions, our own understanding of that Sense of Wonder and the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Our own lists of absolute favorites and passionate dislikes, our own boundary lines for those things that do it for us and those things that don't.
In no small way, none of that would be possible had it not been for Amazing Stories. Yes, there have been more popular magazines in the field, more successful magazines in the field and, academically at least, the roots of science fiction can be traced back to the very first epic tales, but the publication of Amazing Stories in 1926 declared that those handful of progenitors, from Gilgamesh through Frankenstein, were not just a random collection of odd, imaginative tales They were the standard bearers for something unique and something very special. A genre called Science Fiction.
This group of dedicated individuals have set up a Kickstarter campaign in order to reach a goal of $30,000 USD. That covers the publication of two issues (Fall and Winter 2018), including printing, the commissioning of artists and the paying of writers. Another $30,000 guarantees a full year's worth of issues, and increments after that promise increases in payments to writers and illustrators. As a writer, I'm down with that, and I'm supporting this project by donating signed copies of all three books in The Unwritten Books sequence, and also Icarus Down.
So, if you needed an excuse to buy my books, here you go. You'll get good fiction from me (even if I do say so for myself) and you'll be supporting great fiction from the wider science fiction community.