A Final Farewell to the Starship

by Joshua Fagan

During the height of the pandemic, in mid 2020, I started contemplating the possibility of creating a speculative fiction magazine. I wanted a publication that embraced both science fiction and mythic, folkloric storytelling, hence the name, which gestures both forward to adventures in the cosmos and back to the depths of ancient legends. A few months later, among the bright stars and desert plains of Santa Fe, New Mexico, I launched Orion’s Belt. It first opened for submissions on the 1st of March 2021 with a guiding mission to provide space for literary speculative fiction: stories that were about people more than they were about robots and lasers, stories with intimate interpersonal stakes mixed with creatively daring ideas and structures. My five-year mission at the head of this starship is now ending, and I am deeply proud of what the publication has accomplished.

I felt deeply isolated when I started among those adobe houses and bronze sculptures. Partly, this was a shared experience. There was weary alienation in how the worst year of many of our lives was spilling into the next year with no immediate signs of respite. Yet partly, this isolation was personal and individual. I was separated from the few friends I had made at Columbia University, which forced its students to flee the city during March of 2020 and would not resume full in-person classes until autumn 2021. The writing ambitions that I had nourished from my adolescence had largely failed: I only managed to publish a few stories and poems, as opposed to an unceasing cavalcade of rejections. I had cultivated an image of myself as a creative writer since I was old enough to cultivate any self-image, and I was trapped in an unpleasant but necessary transitional stage of realizing that I would never be the next Pulitzer-winning novelist. My academic writing, which would gradually prove much more successful, was just starting to develop into coherent, publishable articles. I was greatly ambitious and greatly lonely. I had only recently turned twenty one, celebrating my birthday during the lockdowns.

Orion’s Belt thus emerged as a gesture of defiant passion as well as a conduit for connection. I wanted to create something that mattered, to demonstrate undeniably that the years I spent developing my taste and skills in creative writing were worthwhile, as well as to make a haven for the kind of speculative fiction I adored, the kind that is written and read by those with an eye for craft and for what William Faulkner famously called “the human heart in conflict with itself.” The nights are almost always clear in the desert climate of New Mexico, and I wandered the abandoned streets after sunset quite often, looking at the tinwork blanched and glittering in the starlight while thinking about the forthcoming launch of Orion’s Belt. In the quiet, I wandered whether anyone would submit to us. After I launched the publication, I was astounded at the number of submissions we received: about thirty or so in the first day. This volume was pedestrian compared to what we would receive in the future, but for an anxious college sophomore, it was overwhelming. I pledged to make Orion’s Belt a high-quality and reliably welcoming publication, and I pledged also to devote myself to it as Editor in Chief.

I did my research beforehand on what made successful speculative-fiction publications, studying their contracts and reading interviews with their editors. I was surprised and relieved at the relatively low “overhead,” to use a business term. In the old days, publications like Amazing Stories and Analog Science Fiction and Fact were not particularly expensive to produce, but they still needed to print issues physically. Pulp fiction still requires the pulp on which to print. In the electronic age, such a financial burden was no longer present. A prestigious magazine could be created at relatively low cost. The largest costs were for hosting the website and for paying the authors. The latter is particularly relevant. Any person with time and effort can theoretically create a speculative-fiction magazine, but in order to attract the top talent, payment is necessary. The SFWA rate of 8 cents per word is not that much, even for a frequently hardscrabble publication like Orion’s Belt, and it attracted attention to the magazine instantly from successful writers who had already published pieces in some of the most prestigious speculative-fiction magazines, such as Strange Horizons and Beneath Ceaseless Skies and the sadly now-defunct Daily Science Fiction. The payment offer, as much as the elegant website or our clear, ambitious ethos, made the publication seem professional and respectable.

Payment was also one of the factors that led me to decide to focus on flash fiction as opposed to longer stories. Not having a lot of money to spend on purchasing stories, I decided to focus on flash fiction, and I also decided to only publish one story a month. These choices made the publication a highly regarded and even prestigious venue for brief, artfully crafted fiction, but they were inspired at least partially by financial constraints. That said, economics were not the only impetus. I personally love reading flash fiction even though I am not particularly talented at writing it. The skill needed to convey a complete, succinct narrative in about a thousand words, creating vibrant relationships between characters and an inventive world, is simply astounding. Aside from a charming, comedic story called “Historical Fiction” that was published in Daily Science Fiction, I do not believe I ever managed to write fully effectively in that mode. Even another story of mine that Daily Science Fiction published, “Intergalactic Negotiations,” was to me relatively weak in comparison. Having studied and strived desperately throughout my adolescence and early college years to write flash fiction, I developed a lucid understanding of what made it work, even if I lacked the talent to apply that understanding consistently to my own writing. This development of taste helped me profoundly as I edited Orion’s Belt.

The final factor that led to me choosing flash fiction was time. Reading through the entirety of longer pieces of writing—seven or eight thousand words—takes a significant amount of time. There are thus two options for publications: either have a large team of readers in order to review every story, or else only read parts of stories and stop reading them after the first few pages if they do not seem interesting. Quite a few journals take the latter approach, which I find understandable but also rather unprofessional. When I was submitting longer pieces to certain speculative fiction journals, there were more than a few occasions when the reader reports demonstrated that they clearly had not read the entire story. I wanted to treat my submitters with more care and compassion. That said, I was only one person, and I operated Orion’s Belt with very limited help during that fateful first year of 2021. I knew that the short lengths of flash fiction would allow me to read the entirety of every story submitted, as long as I was committed to such a Herculean undertaking, and I impressed myself by succeeding. There were long nights I passed simply reading stories, first in the New Mexican desert and then among the mountains in Colorado when I returned home for the summer. The journey exhausted me, and yet I felt a deep and genuine sense of connection. Reading these stories submerged my mind into the imaginations of hundreds of people during a time when I still could rarely venture outside.

When I returned to in-person classes at Columbia, the stormy years of the pandemic slowly faded, to be replaced with the resurgent vitality of everyday life. The electric palpitations of New York felt even more pleasant and reaffirming now that I felt so keenly how tenuous they were, how the caprices of life could forcibly quiet them. No longer could I still focus so devotedly on Orion’s Belt, but I still wanted the magazine to succeed. I have received hundreds of messages thanking the publication, and not only from writers we have published. There are writers who simply read and adore the publication, and there are also writers who simply appreciate that we read their stories and respond with the kind of respectful detail that demonstrates that we have valued their work. Thus, I started assembling a team of editors and readers that would allow us to more effectively read and address all the submissions we received. When we re-opened for our second year of submissions in spring 2022, I was no longer alone on board our starship.

I have a special fondness for my two fiction editors that year. One was Rhonda Schlumpberger, who later founded Intrepidus Ink, a fellow flash-fiction magazine. She had a career in the military before becoming interested in this speculative-fiction space, and she succeeded in pushing me to be more clear and precise with my communication and more systematic in my organization. More than anyone, she helped me refine our publication process. The other was Ai Jiang, who later won a Nebula in 2024 for her novella Linghun. She is a truly prolific writer, always playing with ideas and concepts in a way that is both intellectually daring and deeply humanistic. Her warmth and ingenuity continue to inspire me, and she remains a good friend. Orion’s Belt was only a brief stopover in her exponential upward trajectory, but both she and I remember her time here fondly. Both these editors only stayed for one year, but Orion’s Belt is indebted greatly to them.

More recently, I hired as a first reader an Italian woman with a PhD from Durham, UK and a passion for folklore. Her name is Gessica S. Martini, and she rose quickly through the ranks because of her passion and care for the Orion’s Belt ethos. I elevated her to a fiction-editor position at the conclusion of 2023, and she will be succeeding me as Editor in Chief in early 2026. The “literary” focus of the magazine has always meant an elevated focus on prose and storycraft, as well as a preference for situating deeply human stories of yearning and heartbreak and grief among speculative ideas and conceits. Gessica knows that, and I trust her deeply.

I am not leaving the publication because of any personal catastrophes or because of any disputes with the editors or readers I hired. While I cannot say these five years I have spent at this publication have occurred without some hardship, these difficulties were ultimately minor. They do not matter much. My overall feelings toward these last five years are those of great gratitude. I had the chance to build a publication from nothing and transform it into a brand of quality, optimism, and poignant storytelling. William Wordsworth, in “Tintern Abbey,” reflects on the passage of five formative years in his twenties as being elevated by “a presence that disturbs me with the joy/ Of elevated thoughts; a sense more sublime/ Of something more deeply interfused.” My reflections regarding my time at Orion’s Belt are likewise. Reading and publishing stories dripping with pathos and pulsating with lush detail was both meaningful and delightful. Such a process gave pleasure to even nights of soul-adrift wanderings, and it added to my fondest days a glow of sublime joy.

Every story or poem published by Orion’s Belt over the last five years was chosen by me. I retained the final control over all workings of the publication. Stepping away from that process is a melancholy transition but a necessary one nonetheless. Partly, my departure comes from no longer having enough money or time to sensibly run the magazine I have constructed. Yet more important than practical considerations are existential ones. I started Orion’s Belt five years ago with a particular goal at a particular stage of my life. The goal is now accomplished, and the life-stage is behind me.

I am twenty six now, and I am midway through a PhD in English literature at the University of Washington. The pandemic and undergrad life recede further, day by day, into the past. I have succeeded quite well as a writer in the academic context. Orion’s Belt has triumphed far beyond my expectations, and I feel proud of my accomplishments as founder and editor. Because of the publication, a larger amount of literary speculative fiction has reached a receptive and thoughtful audience. I have nothing else to prove through my work with the magazine, and I have no remaining ambitions for it. With eager optimism, I await the future, yet I reflect fondly on the five years of memories I made at Orion’s Belt. Those experiences accompanied me through my undergrad, my masters in Scotland, and part of my doctorate, and they introduced me to an overflowing variety of wonderful stories and equally wonderful people. Great writing, made with care, unites people, and I had the delight of publishing an abundance of it aboard our Orion’s Belt starship.

Joshua Fagan is a writer and academic currently residing in Seattle. His creative work has previously been published in venues including Daily Science Fiction, The Fantastic Other, and Star*Line. As an academic, his work focuses on the intersection of literature and science, particularly the interpretation of evolutionary thinking in the aftermath of Darwin, and he has published a variety of articles on Anglophone writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as William Morris, H.G. Wells, and Robert Frost. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the literary speculative-fiction publication Orion’s Belt.