OPW Pimping

I'm going to take a moment to pimp some Other People's Work, both because it's good stuff, and because doing so could indirectly help me as well. Here's the deal:

Baen's Universe Issue Two is now live. That means my story is no longer in the active issue, but in the archives. If you've thought about subscribing, but have held off because you didn't know what kind of value you could get for a $30 subscription, try this:

The first issue contained 22 short stories, including a Laundry story by Charlie Stross, a Tran-Ky-Ky story by Alan Dean Foster, a Hammer's Slammers story by David Drake, along with excellent stories by Gene Wolfe, Greg Benford, John Barnes, Elizabeth Bear and ME! It also contains the beginnings of 3 serialized novels by guys like David Brin, John Ringo and Eric Flint.

The second issue contains 16 short stories, including a new Dune short story by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, plus stories by L.E. Modesitt, Catherine Asaro (I'm not familiar with their series, but these stories do fit in with them), Cory Doctorow and Esther Friesner, plus some awesome stories in the Introducing Section: kick-ass military SF by M.T. Reiten and William Ledbetter, plus a great story called "Technical Exchange" by Kevin Haw that I had the great pleasure to read in the slush pile. All this, plus the continuations of the 3 serials.

By contrast, the three issues of F&SF that I picked up from the freebie table at Conestoga contained a total of 21 stories (of which 6 were technically novelets, but then again, so are some of the Universe tales). Which is not to put down F&SF, but to say that Universe gives you a lot of bang for your buck: two to three times the number of stories you get in an average issue of F&SF, with no ads. And they're downloadable in a variety of formats with no copy protection. I have an HTML copy on my desktop and a Mobipocket version in the Mobile Command Center, so I can read them on the go.

Universe is a noble experiment that deserves to succeed. I understand that they had an excellent initial response from Baen regulars when they first announced their subscriptions, but in order to succeed, they have to move beyond just their own regular audience. I realize that, out of the average of 6 people a day who read this blog, most of you either have subscriptions already or have decided not to subscribe. But if you're on the fence, please take a chance and subscribe. They are working hard to make science fiction fun again, and I would hope we can all get behind that.

In other news, I need to come up with a way to raise about $200 in ten days to make it to ArmadilloCon.