Just as we're going to press, the news comes in: Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died.

This isn't the place for an obituary, or a personal reflection on the importance of Clarke's life, his writing, his approach to science fiction, his literary accomplishments, or his scientific influence: but all of those things have an enormous importance to me personally and, in my opinion, to the whole field of science fiction in general. Within the next 24 hours, I hope to hustle one of our almost-done new features into place, and dedicate it to this fallen giant.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

It's that time again.

Not just a new IROSF, although obviously it is that, but it's also the time at which I call for your most insightful essays, your penetrating reviews, your interviews with amazing people, your critical dissection of important works, your entertaining evaluations of conventions. Yes, a call for submissions.

Welcome to Issue Number 2 of the New and Improved IROSF, and less than one week late! At this point, we believe we have caught up with all the prior material pending in various inboxes from before the new system. That means if you haven't heard from us on a query or a submitted article, it's probably lost. But with the new system you don't need to worry about email boxes anymore: just submit from your My Account page, and keep tabs on where your article is as it passes through our editorial workflow.

Please do read our guidelines, of course. We don't take fiction. We only accept electronic submissions.

One thing that's new in this issue is the compound review of female-oriented fiction by Cynthia Ward. In the past we have not published compound reviews or short reviews in general, preferring the in-depth review of a single work. But it's become clear that, in just two, three, or four reviews a month—even if they are the most "important" books of the year—our coverage is just not as broad as we would like. So, if you are interested in putting together similar thematic review articles, please propose an idea. Note that in general we don't accept from queries alone, but we can give you a good idea as to whether the theme will receive a welcome reception, whether there are other reviews of particular works in the pipeline, and so forth. We will also have some features coming within the next two weeks that will make it easier than ever for established reviewers with IROSF to select works to review that have been offered to us by the publishers.

In any case, our standard for material is the same as it has always been: we want intelligent stuff that really explores the material. Whether it's reviews, criticism, essays, or what-have-you: we're looking for articles that provide real meat to the reader. Technically the 'I' in IROSF stands for "Internet"—but given the global nature of the Internet we're interested in International insights on Science Fiction as well. What's happening in Japan? In Australia? In Germany? In China? In Israel? (We're still exclusively English-language, however: sorry!)

So spread the word! If you know people who have intelligent stuff to say about the speculative genres, send them our way.

And, for that matter, spread this word as well: the free sign-up period is almost over. As I have promised, there will always be a free option that comes with some limitations, but sometime within the next six weeks we'll be introducing our paid subscription model. So if you know any readers who you think would get something out of this publication, save them a few bucks and send them our way now!

In conclusion: I'm excited about this issue, and I'm even more excited about all the new stuff that's in the works. I only wish I had even more great stuff to read and to publish.