A year. A full rotation of the Earth around the Sun. Winter and spring and summer and fall and winter again. It’s a long time to do anything, to be anything. And it’s how long AE has been publishing original fiction and articles on this site week in and week out. Inside, a retrospective and the official announcement of our Birthday Party!

A year. A full rotation of the Earth around the Sun. Winter and spring and summer and fall and winter again. It’s a long time to do anything, to be anything. And it’s how long AE has been publishing original fiction and articles on this site week in and week out.

On October 27, 2010 Damon Shaw’s short piece “A Little Thing” went online. “A Little Thing” was a story about how a small event can be a harbinger of a momentous change. Now we stand, one year later, looking back on all the things, some not so little, that we’ve accomplished since that time.

We can’t have a list of AE highlights without mentioning Matt Moore’s haunting story, “Touch the Sky, They Say,” which garnered an Aurora nomination. “Touch the Sky, They Say” was joined in our inaugural issue by “Disquieting Postcards I’ve Recently Received from My Future Self” by Mark A. Rayner and “Orange” by former Aurora nominee Susan Forest, which were both recognized as Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2010. We’re also proud of having published the first ever English translation of the French classic “La promenade du garçon boucher” (“The Butcher Boy”) by Jacques Barbéri, as well as dozens of other original stories by writers both new and established.

Fiction has always been our focus, but we’ve also had the opportunity to publish some great non-fiction, including interviews with Peter Watts, Robert J. Sawyer, and Nalo Hopkinson among others. We’ve examined the vanishing gap between science fiction and literary fiction, the phenomenon of the pre-apocalyptic story, and the ways in which science fiction finds its roots in the adventures of arctic explorers. Our guest contributors have enlightened us about practical ways to talk with aliens, the rise of “dark SF” and what makes Canadian science fiction Canadian after all.

We began this journey committed to providing a vibrant professional market for Canadian voices in science fiction. Crossing the one-year mark is a major milestone in that endeavour worthy of celebration. We’re throwing a party concurrent with SFContario in Toronto and we hope you’ll be able to join us. It will be held in the Ramada Plaza Hotel at
300 Jarvis Street and attendance is open to all, convention attendees and general public alike.

br />We’re excited about what the next year will bring for AE. We’ve got more fantastic fiction and thought-provoking articles, podcasts, and everything you’ve come to expect from us, all on our newly redesigned site. And we look forward to expanding AE even further with more eBooks and other surprises we’re not quite ready to reveal yet.

Thanks to all of our readers for coming on this journey with us so far. This is just the beginning.