In this issue, we have our regular supply of outstanding original stories for the first issue of our 25th year of continuous publication Thank you all for helping keep is going through the past quarter-century!

As you can see from the awards banner above, Aphelion racked up several Top Ten positions in the Preditors & Editors annual Readers' Poll. We took Top E-zine Cover Art - 4th place, Top E-zine Editor - tied for 5th place, Top Fiction E-zine - 4th place, Top Poetry E-zine - 5th place, andTop Writers Forum - 2nd place! Thanks to everyone who voted, and to all the staff for their hard work! Thanks also go out to our writers and readers here in the zine. Y'all are amazing!

Despite the recent nasty weather, we are steadily clawing our way out of Winter here in the Northern hemisphere. Spring, and its, hopefully, more clement weather is not long ahead of us. I am seeing a gradual trend towards having live conventions again--with whatever still-necessary measures in place to keep fighting the pandemic. New developments arise every day, so maybe we can get back to some semblance of normalcy before too much time passes.

As for personal news; I submitted another novel to my publisher a couple of months ago. It's in the editing pipeline now. I am very nearly finished with the first draft of the Tom Darby prequel novel, as well. It will go to beta readers as soon as I complete this last chapter I am working on. After that I want to finish the Fantasy novel. My publisher has asked me for a second collection of Mare Inebrium stories, as well as asking me to edit an anthology of Mare stories by other authors. If you have any way to get in contact with any of the writers of our Mare Inebrium Shared Universe stories, please do and tell them I need to talk with them. Most especially Bill Wolfe and Wishbone, but everyone else as well. I've gotten several positive responses from writers I am still in contact with, so things look fairly good at this point. If you're  Mare Inebrium writer still visiting Aphelion after all this time, please do get in contact with me through e-mail or Facebook Messenger. We have a lot to talk about!

The online streaming shows "Stupid O'clock" and "Last Man Standing" have been uploaded live to YouTube as well as several Facebook pages for almost two years now. They are basically live-streaming chat shows covering a range of topics, modeled on the types of conversations people have after hours at SF&F conventions. Joe McKeel and I have archives of past shows on our own YouTube channels. Check 'em out if that sounds like something you'd enjoy I've put links in our Features section that will take you to the YouTube archives of both shows.

With all that said, it's high time I shut up and let you get to reading. 

Enjoy yourselves,

Dan