For over two decades, the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, best-selling and beloved author, discovered and nurtured a grand generation of popular and acclaimed writers including Mercedes Lackey, Jennifer Roberson, and a host of others. Authors who have appeared within the pages of Sword and Sorceress represent the full spectrum of some of the brightest talent working today ­from C.J. Cherryh, Charles de Lint, and Emma Bull... to Deborah J. Ross, Diana L. Paxson, Steven Brust, and Laurell K. Hamilton.

We are proud to continue the classic and vibrant feminist tradition with this twenty-fifth volume of new magical adventures edited by Elisabeth Waters, secretary and co-editor to Mrs. Bradley. Here are twenty original stories of remarkable women of power, swashbuckling and magic, spells and duels, arcane sorcery and fabled heroism, written by familiar word-weavers of excitement and adventure, and bright newcomers who are sure to become favorites.

Enter a wondrous universe...

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress

Volume 25 includes stories by Dave Smeds, Amy Griswold, Michael H. Payne, Michael Spence, Elisabeth Waters, Deborah J. Ross, Catherine Soto, Pauline J. Alama, L. M. Townsend-Crow, K. D. Wentworth, Helen E. Davis, Robin Wayne Bailey, Steve Chapman, Steven Brust, Kate Coombs, Jonathan Moeller, Lauren K. Moody, Josepha Sherman, Barbara Tarbox, Jonathan Shipley, and Susan Wolven.

I was reminded of his talk every day of the reading period as I read through the slush pile. I would have to say that many of the stories I sent back this year were rejected because I didn't like the protagonist enough to care what happened to her. This does not necessarily mean that the story wasn't good; it's possible that another editor would like the character, and there are certainly wide variations between various markets. What all of us have in common is that we're looking for stories that provide what MZB used to call a "satisfying reading experience" for our audience.

I found myself remembering Randall Garrett's song "You've Got to Make It Good to Be a Seller" from his musical comedy Free Amazons of Ghor. (It was written in the 1970s, when Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books and John Norman's Gor books were DAW's top-selling series, and the premise was that the two authors should collaborate.) The song in question is a patter song (like Gilbert and Sullivan's "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" from Pirates of Penzance) sung by the Editor, and it starts with the Iliad and goes forward through time through five verses (at least two of which were generally cut in performance). The last verse contains a list of possible characters:

Use robots, monsters, demons, apes, or even a gazelle

(provided they are basically human personnel),

Then you will please your readers...

What Randall was saying in the line about "basically human personnel" was that the reader must be able to identify with the character, and -- as he pointed out -- this does not mean that the character must be human. I have bought four stories in which the protagonist is a squirrel, which certainly proves his point.

So here are the characters that grabbed my attention at the beginning, held it throughout the story, and made me glad I'd spent time with them at the end. I hope that you like them as much as I did.