Letter From the EditorsHowdy, Boneyard! Thank you for checking out our fifth issue! We’ve crested our first year of publishing and are sailing into the second. With four of these issues now under our belt, it feels like we’ve finally figured out our flow. Getting everything together feels a bit easier now—filling out our checklists, hitting our deadlines, sending out emails—there’s a routine to it that we can sink into. I dare say that it’s starting to feel natural. Still, the past months have been as much of a whirlwind as ever (life keeps going, you know). We’ve had gnarly weather, power outages, protests and marches, as well as some travelling. Baubles also received its first award nods thanks to the Rhysling Awards! Congratulations to Deborah L. Davitt and Mariel Herbert for their nominations and to Amelia Gorman for becoming a Rhysling Award finalist!! We’re very very excited for them! Things have been good for SFF as a whole. The Last of Us is in its second season, Oblivion got remastered, and, by the time this is published, Murderbot will have begun airing (and I will be in need of an Apple TV+ subscription ugh). Sorry, but I need to talk about Andor. I cannot claim to be the head of BFB’s scifi department without shouting its praises (the lightsaber on my arm would itch otherwise). It is the best Star Wars has ever been—probably ever will be. Everyone needs to watch it so Disney may, someday, make anything else like it. The show does a fantastic job showing the all-controlling blight of fascism and the trials of hoping to exterminate it. Of course, as each arc releases, it’s difficult not to see the mirror the show holds pointed back at ourselves and the US government reflected in stark white and black. The immigration checks, controlled opposition, and unfettered loyalty to power shake the story to its core in harrowing and far-too-familiar ways. Stateside, we feel those shakes as ICE abducts students, our social systems are dismantled, and left-leaning politicians do frighteningly little to stop any of it. The show we can turn off, but the ground beneath our feet is rumbling. Are we feeling the earthquake itself or is this only the foreshocks (it is certainly not the aftershocks)? In Pittsburgh, the fissures can feel distant. As I write, the sun sets across Bloomfield while birds sing from the balcony. The trees are green again, and I can feel the airs of seasonal depression washing away with last week’s rain. Our frequented bookstores and cafes fly flags of acceptance and resistance alike, celebrating queer authors and Palestinian voices. Throughout the city, graffiti calls for the end of the genocide in Gaza, and the blue and gold of Ukraine are not uncommon to find in windows or on lawn signs. We’re a tight-knit city. I feel hopeful in our community. Not just in Pittsburgh but with Baubles, too. The friends we’ve made at conventions, the readers we’ve been able to connect with, and of course the authors who trust us with their work—all of them fill me with a sense of belonging that can be so so hard to find in our unsteady world. I hope you, too, feel that connection through these pages. Until next time, make some ~art~, enjoy the shade of a big tree, and take care of one another. Oh, and don’t forget to stream Andor! From my pond to yours, Joel Troutman |
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