Yes, it is a new month, and therefore a new Clarkesworld hits the aether. What have we got for you this month?

Our lead fiction is from the very wonderful Catherynne M. Valente. From the title, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time”, you might deduce that Cat is writing science fiction, and in a way she is, but the story is mainly about a science fiction writer, and therefore about writing science fiction.

Cat’s story is, of course, also available as a podcast narrated by the wonderful Kate Baker.

The second story for August is “Messenger” by recent Clarion West graduate, Julia M. Sidorova. Julia has a PhD in molecular genetics, but the story is about something very different. This one will be podcast in a couple of weeks time.

Our regular interviewer, Jeremy L.C. Jones, has something slightly different for you this month. It is a group interview with members of the Altered Fluid writing group, including N. K. Jemisin, Matthew Kressel, and Saladin Ahmed. This should be absolutely fascinating for any young writers out there.

The cover art is “Watcher of Merlin” by David Melvin who is mainly a special effects guy but clearly has a lot of talent as an artist as well.

There is no non-fiction article this month. The simple reason for this is that if we don’t have anything we think is worth publishing then we don’t publish anything. Clarkesworld is, after all, paying for these articles. I’m very happy to work with authors to help get the sort of article we are looking for, but at the same time Neil expects me to keep up a standard. As someone who wants to pay for good quality non-fiction, I find it quite distressing that there is so little interest in providing it. I really don’t want to have to go the route of commissioning all the articles several months in advance just to make sure we have something good.

The good news is that in place of the non-fiction Neil has done a fascinating editorial about electronic publication and what it means to be a “magazine”. Traditional definitions are very much going by the wayside because of the new technology, and people who rely on categorization of publications (for example the cataloging work that Locus does, or awards such as the Hugos) are going to have to be flexible to keep up.

On the subject of electronic publication, Clarkesworld is now available in both EPUB (iBooks) and MOBI (Kindle) formats. #47 will be purchasable from the Wyrm Publishing store very soon now. We know that the magazine is available for free online, but if you would like to take it away on your portable reader we hope that $2.99 is a reasonable price to pay. Also that money helps us pay the many fine writers that we publish. (And UK readers, if you buy from the Kindle store you’ll get charged VAT on that, because our stupid government classes ebooks as “software”. Wyrm does not have to charge VAT. Also buying direct means that more money goes to our writers rather than to Amazon.)

Finally, as this month’s issue features a Cat Valente story, I should also mention that Cat edited the latest issue of Apex magazine, which features fiction from Nick Mamatas, Theodora Goss and Jeff VanderMeer. On Twitter Lavie Tidhar noted that it really doesn’t make sense for so many online magazines to target 1st of the month publication, and I think he has a point. Salon Futura #1 needs to be out in time for Worldcon, but after that I think I may drift towards mid-month publication so as not to cause too much of a reading log jam.