Welcome to the year 2000.
Friends of mine have already e-mailed me or called me to say they've received their subscription copies, and the date on which the issue was supposed to be released was last week, so I suppose this is the best time to send out this announcement.
I am delighted to report that the March 2000 ANALOG is now available. My short story, "Escape Horizon," is the featured story, with cover art by award-winning artist Bob Eggleton. I'll leave it to others to say what they will about the story, but the cover is absolutely gorgeous. It depicts a huge, spherical black hole, glowing with the radiation of the accretion disk. Hovering nearby are two ships with huge engines, and one of them is throwing a lifeline to the other. (And yes, the scene is one from the story.) In my wildest dreams, I never imagined something so beautiful, so I'd like to make a public acknowledgment to Bob Eggleton. Great cover, Bob; thanks for adding your imagination to mine.
If you don't have a subscription, the issue is most likely available in all the usual places.
I'm very pleased to note that four of my stories have made it to the current Preliminary Ballot for the Nebula Award. Those stories are:
Novella:
"Reality Check" (Analog, November 1999)
Novelette:
"Absent Friends" (Analog, September 1998)
Short Stories:
"In Space, No One Can Hear" (Analog, July/August 1998)
"Nor Through Inaction" (with Charles Ardai) (Analog, October 1998)
"Absent Friends" and "In Space, No One Can Hear" are currently available on my webpage (www.mabfan.com), and the other two stories are also available to SFWA members via information that has already been sent to them from other sources. Now, every single time I've had a story on the Nebula preliminary ballot, the story has not shown up as a nominee--but it's still hard not to get hopeful.
By the way, two more awards reminders, in general: First of all, if any of you are regular readers of ANALOG, don't forget that the deadline to vote for your favorite stories in the Analytical Laboratory poll is the end of January. You can vote from the web if you wish, by going to their webpage at http://www.analogsf.com. Anyone who votes is entered in a drawing for a free one-year subscription. Secondly, remember that if you were a member of last year's Worldcon (Aussiecon3) or of this year's Worldcon (Chicon 2000), you're eligible to nominate in this year's Hugo Awards, for stories published in 1999. My understanding is that Chicon has mailed out nominating ballots to Aussiecon members who are not Chicon members, and I presume Chicon members will get the ballots soon. More information is available on the World Science Fiction Society webpage, http://www.wsfs.org.
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For more frequent news, or to read some of the stuff I've written, check out my webpage at http://www.mabfan.com/
-- Michael A. Burstein