Hello, and welcome to the new look for Aphelion!

As you can see, we've made a few changes to the layout and format. Rob Wynne sweated and slaved over the changes for several months in order to bring you this updated layout. Everyone at Aphelion is very pleased with the result. We hope that you will be pleased as well.

Also, one of the biggest changes is that all the sections of the zine are now on separate pages, accessible from the navigation bar over to the left of your screen. That means that there are no longer any huge delays in page downloads. No more endless index page, either. Everything should be faster, cleaner, and less confusing on each page.

Along with the changes to the layout, I hope to resume writing book reviews within the next couple of issues. I have a huge backlog of things that have been sent to me, with more arriving every day. Also, I hope that we can start up the Interviews section again, as well as other sections that have been overlooked in the past.

By the way, how did you like the cover for this issue? Aphelion has attracted the attention of pro artist William R. Warren, Jr. who whipped out that little "crowd pleaser" of a cover as a sort of audition. He said that he'd be open to contributing cover art as often as his schedule permits. And he offered to do a few story illos, on the condition that he be allowed to read the story ahead of time. He would rather make his artwork fit the story than just offer up "generic" bits that might or might not actually fit with a given tale. He also came up with a wonderful suggestion for a new story series that would be based on the spacecraft he invented for the cover, and their mission. There will be more details available on a new page just as soon as we can whip one out. So be forewarned, Aphelion is about to add a third shared universe series to our featured  Nightwatch and Mare Inebrium series. This will be tailored to the hard science crowd and will feature near-future tech in an exploration of our own solar system. This series will fit in between the strict structure of Nightwatch and the "anything goes" structure of the Mare Inebrium series. More details to follow as they develop.

ApheliCon 3 will be happening in the next week or so. The date will be May 12th, the place will be here at Casa Vila, and the time will be from whenever the guests begin to arrive until the last guest reluctantly departs. Directions are as follows: Chose your best route to Athens, Ga. and get on Highway 29 North towards Danielsville. Roughly five miles from Athens you will find the turnoff for Moons Grove Church Road on your left. Casa Vila is roughly 7/10s of a mile from that intersection. Here is a link to a page of photographs of various landmarks between Athens and Casa Vila: Landmarks to Casa Vila Lyn and I hope to see you here!

Other news: There has been some talk in the Lettercol about running flash fiction - and other types of story - contests inside the forum itself. Most of the details are in a folder of the Administrivia section and seem to have the support of many Lettercol contributers. As the publisher, I'm not in the least opposed to the idea. I don't have time for it myself, but this one seems to be self-regulating so I'd say go for it. If it becomes a bandwidth problem, I'll have to call a halt to it, but otherwise it sounds all right with me. My only objections are that it'll take up some time that writers would usually spend on longer stories for the main part of the zine, not all readers of the zine read the Lettercol and thus won't get in on the fun, and that I'd like the winning entries to be included in a special section that the staff and I would have to add to the regular monthly issues, somewhere. This will all have to be worked out in the near future, of course.

Dan

Cover art by William R. Warren, Jr.