As we near the end of July, a look back at recent changes:

We began our annual Kickstarter in late June. As of July 21st, we are FULLY FUNDED with all of the fund drive content unlocked. We are now well on our way through our stretch goals: a Strange Horizons podcast by Be the Serpent is already funded, and we are a mere 1000 USD away from a Mexican SFF special issue. Further goals include a climate change special issue and raising our fiction rate to 10 cents per word. If you haven't taken a look yet, please do! We have some new shiny things to offer this year, including autographed books and pins designed by Ness & yt. If we hit 20,000 USD, we unlock the rainbow snake! There's only one week to go to raise these funds, so spread the word and bring that purple planet around in style.

Another change is our recently welcomed new staff. Dante Luiz is joining our art department, Rebecca Evans and Fred G. Yost are joining the web team, Carey Ford Compton has joined the copy editors, and new first readers include Drew Matthew Beyer, A. Z. Louise, Emory Noakes, Ekpeki Oghenechovwe, Joel Oliver-Cormier, Abbey Schlanz, and Luke Tolvaj. We're excited to get to work with new folks and new insights in our purple planet collective.

We've also added more banner art from Tahlia Day! Tahlia’s visionary pieces are our default image for the magazine. We've picked up the following works: Amaranthine Chaos, Blue Cove, Muspelheim 1, Paper Topography 4, and Venus Canyon 2. See more of Tahlia's art on her website.