04.02.06

The Infinite Matrix reported yesterday that it had signed a joint operating agreement with the Port of Dubai and was resuming publication. We regret to inform you that this is incorrect, and resulted from an editing error by an intern, who has since been dismissed and will never work in publishing again.

The indisputable fact that the defunct webzine put up a whole new issue -- including new fiction, poetry, an audio file, essays, downloadable versions of a Hugo-nominated novella, and a Runcible Ansible column -- remains unexplained. "We've had some problems with zombification," said Eileen Gunn, who edited and published the magazine until its demise in January. "IM has been killed off more times than Buffy Summers. I don't know why it keeps coming back, but I'm going to lay off the fugu sashimi for a while. Apparently, the ingestion of tetrodotoxin could precipitate a near-death experience in which the victim appears dead but keeps publishing. Wouldn't want that to happen to me."

The April issue includes:

Fiction
Andy Hooper's Look Away, an original story that juxtaposes two irrational American ideals: baseball and the flag.

James Patrick Kelly's Burn, the Hugo-nominated novella, in several file formats (txt, rtf, pdf, and lit) suitable for downloading to handhelds.

Patrick O'Leary's unorthodox poem, The Yugoslavian Poetry Maker.

Ellen Klages's spicy Take-away.

And Mary Turzillo's rhapsody to Digital Love.

Music
Tenea Johnson's evocative jazz poem Silence is our first foray into audio files. We couldn't resist.

News and wit
L. Timmel Duchamps's report on the first Samuel L. Delany conference, A Delany Love Fest.

And of course David Langford is on board with The Runcible Ansible.

Eileen Gunn is the editor and publisher of The Infinite Matrix, and a member of the board of directors of the Clarion West Writer's Workshop. She also writes short stories. Her recent collection, Stable Strategies and Others, was short-listed for the Philip K. Dick Award, the James Tiptree, Jr, Award, and the World Fantasy Award. One of the stories in the collection, "Coming to Terms," won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story, 2004, and another, "Nirvana High," written with Leslie What, is nominated for the Nebula for 2005 (to be awarded in May, 2006).

Find out more (and read both stories) at EileenGunn.com. Her cryptic personal site, Imaginary Friends was a Cool Site of the Day way back in 1997. Its amiable and equally aged companion, The Difference Dictionary, offers clues to Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine.