EDITOR UPDATES: August 2013

The thing you're really going to hate me for, after reading how good the stories in this update are, is the fact that I accepted the earliest of these about a year ago. It's been a very, very busy year at the Chicago desk of Silverthought, but here they are in all their sci-fi glory. We're very pleased to bring you new stories by Marcus Day, Brenda Kezar, Steven L. Peck, and Blake Ervin. If the July update was all about social science fiction, this one is all about fear: a vicious time-stopping cyborg is caught in a trap and will kill anyone and anything to get away, a space cruiser to Mars finds itself the subject of an unpleasant infestation, a meteorite brings terrifying visitors to your hometown, and the new store across the street knows what you need, and what you'll do to get it.

Some new exciting things are happening at Silverthought as we move toward the Fall: our intern Mickey Kellam, who assisted with editing of this latest round of online fiction, will also be helping us conduct a long-awaited reading period of the full-length manuscripts in our submissions queue. If you've sent us something in the past 12 months and still haven't heard back from us, stay tuned.

I've also written a column called "How to Write Dystopian Fiction" that I'm going to be sharing with you over the next few months. It consists of a 10-part series of explorations of several lesser-known dystopian novels, fiction collections, and writers, and how their books can inform (or not) sci-fi writers that are creating new work today. Some of it is very new, and some is very old, and plenty of it falls somewhere between. These will be posted independently of our major site updates, so check back at Silverthought or follow us on Twitter for details. Likewise, there may be rolling updates to our website and backend happening between now and our next update that will make Silverthought.com easier to browse, read, and submit stories to.

That's about it for this update, though more new projects and updates will follow as soon as time allows and the projects take shape enough to share with you. Keep writing, and we'll keep reading.

—Mark