This newsletter is being sent to members and non-members of the BSFA who have signed up to the newsletter. 

If you are a BSFA member your membership number should be displayed here:

This should be the last newsletter using the current system. Some membership details (above) may be out of date. We are updating those details on the new system.  

Please note: You may have a four-digit number or an eight-digit number. We are in the process of changing our records over to the new database, so all new members have been issued eight-digit numbers. Eventually all members will have eight-digit numbers.

If you are a BSFA member your renewal date will appear here (This section will be blank for Life Members):

If you are not a BSFA member nothing will appear above.

If you are a BSFA member and nothing appears in the sections above, please email me at Chair@bsfa.co.uk and I will try to sort this out.

Welcome

Hello everyone! Welcome to this month's newsletter from the BSFA. Welcome to our new members too. 

As mentioned above, this should be the last members newsletter using the Mailerlite system. We will be keeping this in place for now, but reverting it to a non-members list. The new website will handle the newsletters from now on and should enable us to do other exciting things as well.

For me, Mailerlite has been a trusty friend. When I first started sending out newsletters in the Summer of 2019 using Mailchimp we soon realised that there was something wrong. The 'chair@bsfa.co.uk' email used wasn't working correctly with Mailchimp. We did eventually fix the issue, but moving to Mailerlite was actually more successful and has enabled us to send out membership reminders and allowed us to track successful 'send' and 'receipt' of emails, which indicated the problem we had where a large portion of our signed up list of recipients weren't receiving the email.

Mailerlite does have its limitations though. The membership renewal dates have to be manually updated by our Membership Officer, Luke Nicklin and I. Occasionally we miss one or two and thank you to members who send us emails to sort that out. 

The new system should provide some welcome automation to this process. 

We are looking to 'switch on' the new website in the next few weeks. There may be a few teething troubles for a day or two, but hopefully everything will go smoothly. We have a complete download of all the old website content in an offline drive anyway, so if anything is missing when we change, we should be able to restore it.

The BSFA Awards booklet for works published in 2020 is on its way out to members now. 

This year has been a team effort managing the awards. The announcement and ceremony will be (once again) held mostly in the prestigious location of my spare room, notable for its hosting of the BSFA Awards for works published in 2019!

If you want to remind yourself of the proceedings from last year, you can find them here.  

This year we will be co-ordinating our efforts with ConFusion (Eastercon) over the Easter weekend.

BSFA members and Eastercon attendees are eligible to vote for their favourites from the published shortlist in the BSFA Awards booklet and on our website. If you have not yet received your voting link, please email membership@bsfa.co.uk and we will try to resolve this.

The latest issue of the BSFA Review, BSFA Review 13 is now available for members and non members. You can download it from the link here:

https://bsfa.co.uk/wp-content/...

Other editions of BSFA Review are available here - https://bsfa.co.uk/bsfa-public...

Issue 293 of Vector is also on its way to members with the Awards booklet. This issue focuses on Chinese SF. 

The issue is co-edited by Yen Ooi and CoFutures Ph. D. fellow Regina Kanyu Wang. It includes a series of essays, reviews, interviews and others on Chinese SF, not only from mainland but also from diaspora, not only about literature but also about arts, industry and more. 

Some samples of the issue as well as some online-only contents will be put on the website gradually. 

Find out more about the issue here: https://vector-bsfa.com/current-issue/

The first online-only piece is here: https://vector-bsfa.com/.../chen-qiufan-why-did-i-write.../

As previously mentioned, in 2021, in collaboration with Celsius, the BSFA intends to launch a new fiction publication, called Fission. This will be an annual anthology of submissions, one of which will be chosen to be translated and published in Celsius.  

We'll be collaborating to make the work of Spanish SFF writers more available to Anglophone readers, starting with Jon Bilbao's 'The Lego Calf'.

Submissions for the first edition of Fission have now been gone through. All writers who submitted work to us have been contacted. Thanks to everyone who took part, there are some excellent stories which were sent to us. Not all of them made it through, but we do wish every writer all the best in the future with their excellent work.

The contents for Fission #1, in no particular order, are: 

The Aminals Marched in Two By Two by Syeda Fatima Muhammad
A Pall of Moondust by Nick Wood
Lyonesses by So Mayer
The Lego Calf by Jon Bilbao
The Witch and the Elderman by Peter Haynes
The Trip by Michael Crouch
Etaerio by Rosie Oliver
The First and Last Safe Place by C. John Arthur
Here by Gene Rowe
The Blood Between Us by Katherine Franklin
Wanderlust by Eugen Bacon & E. Don Harp
Time Keep by Elad Haber
Power of Attorney by Louis Evans
I Love Google Maps/Death to Google Part 1 by Paul Beacon

The story chosen to be published in Celsius is 'Lyonesses' by So Mayer.

Congratulations everyone!

We've also been contacted by the new editors of Fantasy Magazine. This was relaunched in November and is publishing a great selection of short fiction. For writers, Fantasy Magazine is a pro rate publication and open to submissions.

You can find them here.

 The BSFA is a volunteer organisation with members of the elected committee supported by a selection of appointed officers from the membership. These appointed officers are volunteers who assist the association with many of its activities.

The following roles are currently vacant:

Awards Administrator

The BSFA Awards are run every year. The Awards Administrator is responsible for the co-ordination of nominations and the organising of the BSFA Awards presentation event, usually run at Eastercon, but for 2020, run online (see here).

BSFA Awards Publication Designer

Working closely with the Awards Administrator, the Designer is responsible for the the layout of our Awards publication. Skills and experience with Adobe Indesign are needed for this role.

If any of these roles interest you. Please contact Chair@bsfa.co.uk mentioning which role you would like to discuss.