From Victor Frankenstein to Lex Luthor, from Dr. Moreau to Dr. Doom, readers have long been fascinated by megalomaniacal plans for world domination and the madmen who come up with them. Typically, we see these villains through the eyes of superheroes (or other good guys) as they attempt to put an end to their evil ways. This anthology, however, will explore the world of mad scientists and evil geniuses–from their own point of view.

Evil geniuses are always so keen on telling captured heroes all their fiendish plans. Isn’t it about time someone gave them a platform such as this one to reach the masses with their messages of hope death and prosperity destruction?

Featuring stories by: Carrie Vaughn, Alan Dean Foster, Daniel H. Wilson, L. E. Modesitt, Jr., L. A. Banks, Austin Grossman, Marjorie M. Liu, Ben Winters, David Farland, Mary Robinette Kowal, Harry Turtledove, Seanan McGuire, David D. Levine, Genevieve Valentine, Naomi Novik, Jeffrey Ford, Grady Hendrix, Theodora Goss, Jeremiah Tolbert, and David Brin, plus a new 40,000 word novella from Diana Gabaldon! Also featuring an introduction by legendary X-Men scribe Chris Claremont.

Anyone who has a supporting or full membership from the 2011 World Fantasy Convention, or the upcoming 2012 World Fantasy Convention may nominate works. If you didn’t attend World Fantasy last year, and you don’t plan to attend this year, you can still nominate by purchasing a supporting membership.

Already registered? Go and nominate your favorite works! Here’s a link to the PDF of the nomination ballot. (Note: You may email your ballot to the award administrator, Rodger Turner, to the email address listed on the ballot.)

Here’s a list of works published in Fantasy Magazine in 2011 that are eligible for the World Fantasy Award this year. (Note that the World Fantasy categories are slightly different than the Nebulas and Hugos in regard to word counts: World Fantasy considers a Novella to be 10,000-40,000 words and Short Story to be 10,000 words or less, whereas the Nebulas and Hugos divide those categories differently, and have a third category [Novelette] in between.)

Short Fiction (under 10,000 words)

March 2011

• The Sandal-Bride by Genevieve Valentine (Fantasy)
• The God Orkrem by Tanith Lee (Fantasy)

April 2011

• Choose Your Own Adventure by Kat Howard (Fantasy)
• The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon by Peter S. Beagle (first appeared in Beagle’s collection Sleight of Hand, reprinted in Fantasy)
• House of Gears by Jonathan Howard (Fantasy)

May 2011

• Study, for Solo Piano by Genevieve Valentine (Fantasy)
• The Devil in Gaylord’s Creek by Sarah Monette (Fantasy)

June 2011

• The Prince of Thirteen Days by Alaya Dawn Johnson (first appeared in Welcome to Bordertown, edited by Holly Black & Ellen Kushner, reprinted in Fantasy)
• The Immortality Game by Cat Rambo (Fantasy)
• You Have Been Turned Into a Zombie by a Friend by Jeremiah Tolbert (Fantasy)

July 2011

• Union Falls by J. S. Breukelaar (Fantasy)
• The Wolves of Brooklyn by Catherynne M. Valente (Fantasy)

August 2011

• The World is Cruel, My Daughter by Cory Skerry (Fantasy)
• Crossroads by Laura Anne Gilman (Fantasy)

September 2011

• Lessons From a Clockwork Queen by Megan Arkenberg (Fantasy)
• Three Damnations: A Fugue by James Alan Gardner (Fantasy)

October 2011

• The Secret Beach by Tim Pratt (Fantasy)
• Absolute Zero by Nadia Bulkin (first appeared in Creatures, edited by John Langan & Paul Tremblay, reprinted in Fantasy)
• Unnatural Disaster by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Fantasy)

November 2011

• Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western by Lavie Tidhar (Fantasy)
• Seven Spells to Sever the Heart by K. M. Ferebee (Fantasy)
• Christopher Raven by Theodora Goss (first appeared in Ghosts by Gaslight, edited by Jack Dann & Nick Gevers, reprinted in Fantasy)

December 2011

• Her Lover’s Golden Hair by Nike Sulway (Fantasy)
• Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage by Seanan McGuire (Fantasy)

Additionally, I published one story in Lightspeed in 2011 that I feel could be interpreted as fantasy, or at least is close enough to be considered for the award:

November 2011

• How Maartje and Uppinder Terraformed Mars by Lisa Nohealani Morton (Lightspeed)

And, finally, as usual, I am also eligible for:

Special Award, Professional

• John Joseph Adams (for editing & Fantasy Magazine)

Today, I launched a Kickstarter for a new online horror magazine to be edited by me, called NIGHTMARE.

About the Magazine

In Nightmare‘s pages, you will find all kinds of horror fiction, from zombie stories and haunted house tales, to visceral psychological horror. No subject is off-limits, and we will be encouraging our writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.

Edited by bestselling anthologist John Joseph Adams, every month Nightmare will bring you a mix of originals and reprints, and featuring a variety of authors—from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven’t heard of yet. When you read Nightmare, it is our hope that you’ll see where horror comes from, where it is now, and where it’s going.

Nightmare will also include nonfiction, fiction podcasts, and Q&As with our authors that go behind-the-scenes of their stories. Our planned publication schedule each month will include two pieces of original fiction and two fiction reprints, along with a feature interview and an artist gallery showcasing our cover artist. We will publish ebook issues on the first of every month, which will be available for sale in ePub format via our website and also available in other formats such as Kindle and Nook. We will also offer subscriptions to our ebook edition in a variety of formats. Each issue’s contents will be serialized on our website throughout the month, with new features publishing on the first four Wednesdays of every month.

About Issue #1

As described above Nightmare will typically feature two original stories and two reprints in every issue. For our debut issue, however, we will be bringing you four all-new, never before published horror stories. Issue #1 will feature stories by the following authors:

Laird Barron is the author of several books, including the short story collections The Imago Sequence and Occultation, and the novel The Croning. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Inferno, Lovecraft Unbound, Sci Fiction, Supernatural Noir, The Book of Cthluhu, Creatures, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, and Best Horror of the Year. He is a three-time winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, and a three-time finalist for the Stoker Award. His work has also been nominated for the Crawford, World Fantasy, International Horror Guild, and Locus awards.

Sarah Langan is the author of the novels The Keeper and The Missing, and her most recent novel, Audrey’s Door, won the 2009 Stoker for best novel. Her short fiction has appeared in the magazines Cemetery Dance, Phantom, and Chiaroscuro, and in the anthologies Brave New Worlds, Darkness on the Edge, and Unspeakable Horror. She is currently working on a post-apocalyptic young adult series called Kids and two adult novels: Empty Houses, which was inspired by The Twilight Zone, and My Father’s Ghost, which was inspired by Hamlet. Her work has been translated into ten languages and optioned by the Weinstein Company for film. It has also garnered three Bram Stoker Awards, an American Library Association Award, two Dark Scribe Awards, a New York Times Book Review editor’s pick, and a Publishers Weekly favorite book of the year selection.

Jonathan Maberry is a NY Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and Marvel Comics writer.  He’s the author of many novels including Assassin’s Code, Flesh & Bone Dead of Night, Patient Zero and Rot & Ruin; and the editor of V-Wars: A Chronicle of the Vampire Wars.  His nonfiction books on topics ranging from martial arts to zombie pop-culture. Since 1978 he has sold more than 1200 magazine feature articles, 3000 columns, two plays, greeting cards, song lyrics, poetry, and textbooks. Jonathan continues to teach the celebrated Experimental Writing for Teens class, which he created. He founded the Writers Coffeehouse and co-founded The Liars Club; and is a frequent speaker at schools and libraries, as well as a keynote speaker and guest of honor at major writers and genre conferences.

Genevieve Valentine is the author of the novel, Mechanique: a Tale of the Circus Tresaulti. Her short fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from magazines such as Lightspeed, Fantasy Magazine, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Escape Pod, and in many anthologies, including Armored, Under the Moons of Mars, Running with the Pack, The Living Dead 2, The Way of the Wizard, Federations, Teeth, and The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, among others. Her writing has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award.

About the Publishers

Nightmare will be a joint venture between John Joseph Adams (who is also editing the magazine) and Creeping Hemlock Press.

About John Joseph Adams: John Joseph Adams—called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble—is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as Armored, Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. Forthcoming work includes Other Worlds Than These (July 2012), Epic (November 2012), The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination (January 2013), and Robot Uprisings (2013). He is a four-time finalist for the Hugo Award and a three-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award. He is also the editor and publisher of Lightspeed Magazine, and is the co-host of Wired’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Learn more at www.johnjosephadams.com.

About Creeping Hemlock Press: Creeping Hemlock Press was founded in Gretna, Louisiana by the husband-and-wife creative duo R.J. and Julia Sevin (seh-VAN). As sometime writers, oftentime readers, they found themselves frustrated with the scarcity of generous-paying, atmospheric and bizarre short story anthologies. They took matters into their own hands in late 2004 when they began to accept submissions for their own anthology. Many months, one baby, two hurricanes, and one soggy home later, Corpse Blossoms was born to critical success and a nomination for the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker award. As their post-Katrina wanderings carried them to Texas and back, the Sevins published many fine editions from such authors at Tom Piccirilli, Adam-Troy Castro, Tim Lebbon, and Lawrence Block. In 2011, they unveiled Print Is Dead, an imprint devoted to zombie fiction and endorsed by none other than George A. Romero. After nearly a decade in the business, they’re just getting started. Learn more at www.creepinghemlock.com.

For more information, and to see the Kickstarter rewards, visit the Kickstarter page at http://kck.st/JPr0uu.

Cover Copy

What if you could not only travel any location in the world, but to any possible world?

We can all imagine such “other worlds”—be they worlds just slightly different than our own or worlds full of magic and wonder—but it is only in fiction that we can travel to them. From The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to The Dark Tower, from The Golden Compass to The Chronicles of Narnia, there is a rich tradition of this kind of fiction, but never before have the best parallel world stories and portal fantasies been collected in a single volume—until now.

Table of Contents

• Foreword — Lev Grossman
• Introduction — John Joseph Adams
• Moon Six — Stephen Baxter
• A Brief Guide to Other Histories — Paul McAuley
• Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage — Seanan McGuire
• An Empty House With Many Doors — Michael Swanwick
• Twenty-Two Centimeters — Gregory Benford
• Ana’s Tag — William Alexander
• Nothing Personal — Pat Cadigan
• The Rose Wall — Joyce Carol Oates
• The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria — John R. Fultz
• Ruminations in an Alien Tongue — Vandana Singh
• Ten Sigmas — Paul Melko
• Magic for Beginners — Kelly Link
• [A Ghost Samba] — Ian McDonald
• The Cristobal Effect — Simon McCaffery
• Beyond Porch and Portal — E. Catherine Tobler
• Signal to Noise — Alastair Reynolds
• Porridge on Islac — Ursula K. Le Guin
• Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut — Stephen King
• The Ontological Factor — David Barr Kirtley
• Dear Annabehls — Mercurio D. Rivera
• The Goat Variations — Jeff Vandermeer
• The Lonely Songs of Laren Door — George R. R. Martin
• Of Swords and Horses — Carrie Vaughn
• Impossible Dreams — Tim Pratt
• Like Minds — Robert Reed
• The City of Blind Delight — Catherynne M. Valente
• Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain — Yoon Ha Lee
• Angles — Orson Scott Card
• The Magician and the Maid and Other Stories — Christie Yant
• Trips — Robert Silverberg
• For Further Reading — Ross Lockhart

What if you could not only travel any location in the world, but to any possible world?

We can all imagine such “other worlds”—be they worlds just slightly different than our own or worlds full of magic and wonder—but it is only in fiction that we can travel to them. From The Wizard of Oz to The Dark Tower, from Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass to C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, there is a rich tradition of this kind of fiction, but never before have the best parallel world stories and portal fantasies been collected in a single volume—until now.

Voting is set to open today (Monday, April 9) and closes on July 31, which also happens to be my birthday. (And you know what would make a really great birthday gift? A HUGO AWARD. Just sayin’!) If you’re a full or supporting member of this year’s Worldcon, you can vote your favorites in each category. [Vote!]

My eligible works last year include my anthologies Brave New Worlds and Lightspeed: Year One, and, of course, Lightspeed Magazine itself. If you want to do some reading before you vote (and you should!), you can still read everything published in Lightspeed online, plus Worldcon will also have our July 2011 issue available for free as part of the Hugo Voter Packet, in a variety of ebook formats. Brave New Worlds will also be be available in the Voter Packet, so huzzah for lots of great free reading!

And if you still can’t decide whether or not to vote for Lightspeed after reading all that, please consider the environment; if Apex, Locus, or NYSRF wins the award for best semiprozine, the Worldcon committee will have to produce THREE Hugos for the winner, whereas if Lightspeed (or Interzone, to be fair!) wins, only one will be necessary. [I kid! Well, I mean, that's all true! But I kid about you basing your decision on that at all. :)]

Decades ago, Starship Troopers captivated readers with its vision of a future war in which power armored soldiers battled giant insects on hostile alien planets. Today, with the success of Iron Man, Halo, and Mechwarrior—and with real robotic exoskeletons just around the corner—the idea of super-powered combat armor and giant mecha has never been more exciting and relevant.

Now acclaimed editor John Joseph Adams brings you the first-ever original anthology of power armor fiction. Join leading SF authors Jack Campbell, Brandon Sanderson, Tanya Huff, Daniel H. Wilson, Alastair Reynolds, Carrie Vaughn, and others as they explore the limits of what a soldier of the future might become—with the aid of the right equipment.

Imagine power armored warriors battling at the bottom of the sea, or on nightmarish alien worlds, or in the darkest depths of space. Imagine armor that’s as smart as you are, armor that might keep on fighting even after you’re no longer willing … or able.

The possibilities are endless, but some facts remain constant: The soldier of the future will be fast. The soldier of the future will be deadly. The soldier of the future will be ARMORED.

Publisher: Baen Books
Publication Date: March 27, 2012

Saturday    10:30 a.m.    Reading
I’ll be reading from my new anthology, ARMORED.

Saturday    4:30 p.m.    You Are Not Your Rejection Slips
Learn techniques for coping with the inevitable ups and downs of a writing career. How can you maintain a sense of self-worth after a hundred rejection slips? How do you handle the feelings of being simultaneously the most brilliant writer ever and the biggest pile of s*** in the field?

Sunday    10:30 a.m.    Anthology Pitch-a-Thon
Editors with anthologies will sit on the panel, and describe their books-to-be, along with the hopes and fears of the slush pile; the audience will bounce ideas off the editors, ask questions, and learn about how each panelist makes their selections.