Adaptation and Creation
This issue is not only our biggest, but also our last in this lovely format.
Our success in crafting a well-received periodical of positive science fiction and fantasy has not been matched with the financial resources needed to sustain it. COVID-19, a tough market, and set-backs at our day-job have all played their role.
Life, of course, is always an adventure, a dance of adaption and creation. When Jane and I started our business together, we taught clients how to use Windows 98 and take advantage of the first PDAs. Had we no heart for moving beyond PalmPilots, our entrepreneurial days would be long behind us. Our love of teaching tech morphed into web and software development, digital marketing, and graphic design. Even today we offer lessons to clients in maintaining their own online presence and branding.
In this way, we’ve persevered through decades of change, of finding new avenues of service and survival.
And so, for DreamForge too, we’ve decided to acknowledge our changing circumstances and move on to the next phase of our publishing adventure: DreamForge Anvil.
To learn more, visit our unfolding reveal at www.dreamforgemagazine.com/Anvil.
In 2021, we’re going to focus on some things we loved about creating DreamForge, most especially working with our Authors and First Line Readers in trying to understand what makes a good story. Toward that end, we’ll be taking a monthly look, online, at new stories where editor and author have agreed to changes, modifications they believe strengthen the tale and make it a more engaging read. We’ll also examine stories that captivate us without calling on our editorial skills, pointing out the qualities and techniques which impressed us the most.
Our monthly offerings, including essays on writing, will be free online; subscribers get a behind the scenes look at the thoughts and concerns that go into evaluating a story for purchase. They’ll see the concerns and conversations that revolve around character, setting, plot, pacing, and conflict. During the year, we’ll be using our monthly experiences to create an eBook on short story writing, one we’ll make freely available to our subscribers at the end of the year.
Along the way, our goal is to assemble one or two print issues of out most polished stories during the year, volumes of DreamForge to be made available as a separate purchase on Amazon.
Though our goal is not to teach beginners how to get published, we’ll open the black box of mystery and give insights into what happens once a manuscript hits the editor’s inbox. We want to talk about realizations rather than rules, perceptions rather than right vs. wrong. In the end, we hope our writers and readers alike will benefit from a new and passionate attention for the stories that enrich their lives.
We hope you’ll continue to support DreamForge and to enjoy the positive, hopeful approach we’ve brought to science fiction and fantasy.
The Times Upon Us
It needs to be said. Pandemic, political chaos, climate change, and economic adversity are not the signs of impending doom you may consider them to be. The end of civilization is not at hand.
We are a species that has seen the deep ice come and go. When we could, we walked or sailed to every continent and to islands remote in the vast and trackless seas.
During the ice we were tens of thousands. By the time of Egypt, the Imperial Dynasties of China, and the march of upstart Rome, our numbers had swelled into the hundreds of millions. By 1800 there were almost a billion names to know.
For most of that time, starvation and poverty were the overwhelming norm. A cruel and quick mortality ruled our perception of life. By every reasonable measure, things are better now.
I was born into a world of less than 3 billion, in a pandemic year. Now, 63 years later, we are approaching 8 billion, and the children born this year will get to say the same. During that short span we’ve set foot on the moon, explored Mars, and tracked distant worlds around other stars. We’ve fed billions, electrified continents, conquered diseases, and taught almost 90% of the world to read.
Though we are proud of our tribes, often unreasonably and destructively so, we have also built an interconnected world. More than half of the world’s population now talk to one another and share information across all walls, through all barriers, and in spite of all enmity. These connections serve to accelerate our already exponential advance.
Even in the midst of the most unimaginable adversities, no previous generation has turned its back on life and the potential of being. And neither shall we. The times ahead are not about following leaders, but about living exemplary lives. They are not about assuring victory for our individual visions of the world, but about embracing the humanity of those with whom we most heartily disagree. Amazingly, this evolution is happening, for there is no surer sign of change than when all the forces of ignorance array against it.
Though we are often our own worst enemies, as humans we are also the future of the universe unfolding. When we, as a species, at last and fully apprehend the fathomless realms that surround us, we shall, I wager, find we have both the strength and the wisdom to cast away the bonds of our most petty and demon haunted misbeliefs. Then at last we will truly know…
“We are very, very small, but we are profoundly capable of very, very big things.” Stephen Hawking
