Just in case you missed the news over the weekend: On Saturday, this year's Hugo Award shortlists were announced, and Strange Horizons is nominated in the Best Semiprozine category! This is the magazine's first Hugo nomination in the semiprozine category (the magazine was also shortlisted for the trial "Best Website" category in 2002 and 2005, and Benjamin Rosenbaum's "The House Beyond Your Sky" was on the Best Short Story list in 2007)*, and it's fair to say that all of us working on SH are thrilled and honoured and energised. Many thanks to everyone who nominated us – against such fine competition, too.
We are also grateful to LoneStarCon3 for allowing us to list so many of our staff with our nomination. In total we have nine editors listed – more individuals than any other nominee in any category. But we felt very strongly that we needed a list like this to accurately reflect how Strange Horizons is run. By the nature of the magazine, as an online entity with a widely dispersed volunteer staff, it takes a lot of people to make an issue of SH happen – if you look at our masthead, you'll see almost fifty names – so even listing nine means there are omissions. At the risk of self-indulgence, I'd like to briefly recognise some of those now.
We have, for instance, four fiction editors listed: the new team of Brit Mandelo, Julia Rios, and An Owomoyela, along with outgoing Senior Fiction Editor Jed Hartman. In an ideal world, Susan Marie Groppi and Karen Meisner should also be on the ballot, since they helped to select some of the stories we published in the first part of 2012 – and in a broader sense, I want to recognise them here because they did so much to build and define Strange Horizons as a magazine. And, of course, the fiction department couldn't function at its current level without our excellent First Readers, too many to list here individually.
Representing the poetry department is Senior Editor Sonya Taaffe; but part-way through last year, we said goodbye to Erin Keane, and welcomed AJ Odasso and Romie Stott to the magazine. All of them contributed to the poetry selections you read in SH last year.
On the non-fiction front, our official representative from the articles department is Senior Editor Dave Nagdeman; but Pamela Manasco, Phoebe North, and Vanessa Phin all worked on the essays and interviews we published in 2012. Abigail Nussbaum manages the Herculean task of keeping the reviews roster stocked, but her work is certainly made easier by the help of our US and UK contacts managers, Donna Denn and Dan Hartland. And the ninth and last name from SH on the ballot is Rebecca Cross, who manages our regular columnists.
Finally, I have to also recognise our Senior Webmaster Shane Gavin, who keeps the site running on a day-to-day basis and is working away behind the scenes on a new and improved version; and our team of copy-editors, led by Sharon K. Goetz, who are our last line of defence against embarrassing typos.
Of course we couldn't do any of what we do without our readers, donors and contributors; but the people listed above are the core of the team keeping Strange Horizons running, and I wish there was room for them all on the ballot. It takes a village, and I'm proud to be a part of it.
*The original version of this editorial did not mention the magazine's Best Website Hugo nominations. Thanks to those who pointed out this omission!