Welcome to the direct descendant of Dragon's Lair Webzine:

Cris' story finished #7 in the voting, while Aphelion finished as the #7 webzine. Aphelion also shares the #18 position with Dragon's Lair Webzine for Roger Bennett's story "Starshock". Thank you for your vote. So many good friends were in the running finally, that no one really lost the contest. Congratulations are also due to The Writer's Club and Dragon's Lair Webzine for their strong showing in the contest. I was proud to notice that several of the writers and stories nominated in the contest had previously appeared in Aphelion.

However, I received an e-mail January 13th telling me that Aphelion has been given a "Fiendish Best" award by Pro Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer Allan Cole's website!

Cole And Cash's Fiendish Best On The Web Award

Welcome back for our 12th issue! If you'd like to be on a mailing list for notification of the update or for the upload of new issues of Aphelion then click here to send me an e-mail. Be sure to put the words Aphelion Mailing List in the Subject line of the e-mail. This mailing list will only be used to notify you of new issues and will never be given out to anyone else... 'cause I hate spam as much as you do!

While our normal letter column is still down, and may need to be deleted, I've left the links to it at the end of each story intact in case Robert can correct the problem. It doesn't look hopefull though, so don't even try it. I have made arrangements with Pagecount and the company that used to be called LPage to give us two different substitutes for the old lettercol. By clicking on the "Leave Message" button on our Pagecount hit counter, you can leave me a private message, but be sure to chose the "private message" option or I may not be able to accesses it. There is now also a Guestbook provided by LPage for you to use as a replacement for the old Lettercol. Use the "Sign my Guestbook" or "View my Guestbook" links to access this feature. Thanks for being so patient. I'm still refining the look and options of the guestbook, so keep your eyes open for changes.

I'd like to thank those of you who have sent e-mails for your feedback. Keep those e-mails coming, folks! Without those messages we will never know what we need to improve upon. Hope you like the improvements so far!

Also, there is a banner link to a new website, where back issues of Aphelion will be stored from now on, at the bottom of this page. You can still see everything that has appeared in the Zine so far.

Starting with the February issue (#13), Aphelion is going to shift to a bi-monthly schedule. I'm sorry if this upsets anyone, but I'm going to have to do this for personal reasons;

1. I'm going to start working more overtime at my regular job so as to make ready to buy a house.
2. I've started submitting stories to the paying publishers again and need more time to write.
3. And I'm fighting a case of burn-out from the workload of producing Aphelion each month.

Thank you all, for you make everything that happens at Aphelion worthwhile.

If you miss the wavefile that played automatically at the start of our first two issues click here to hear it now.

And now, I'll shut up and let you get to reading. Thanks again for visiting. Enjoy yourselves!

• The Threat of Valleor Part 2 By Dan L. Hollifield ***An ancient evil vies with an Immortal hero while innocent lives hang in the ballance.
• Time and Time Again Part 12 By Cris Lawrence ***Danger leads to strange meetings. Nominated for a "Top 10 on the Internet" award!
• Time Matrix Part 5 By D.K. Smith ***People can get addicted to almost anything.
• Trigeminus Part 5 By Dennis Talent ***Aliens among us, what are they really like?
• Witness of the World Part 5 By Chad Cottle ***Memories of a telepathic child.
• The Universe Between Part 5 By Scott Reeves ***Action and adventure when universes meet.
• The Quality of Grace Part 5 By Vasilis Adams A. ***History as it might have been.
• Though the Dark Veil Part 3 By Allen Woods ***High Fantasy as an adventure begins.
• Zod Part 1 By Neil McGill ***A side-splitting sci-fi romp through the cosmos. Look out Douglas Adams! McGill may just steal your thunder!
• Dry Run Part 1 By Mark E. Cotterill ***Two youngsters on an epic adventure in space.

• Nightmares of Command By F. Geron Looney ***A wrong decision can haunt a soldier for a long time.
• Reset Devine By John Taylor ***You're better off not looking for the bugs in some programs.
• Language Barrier By Kate Thornton ***Sometimes you need a translator.
• Life Goes On By Andrea Talvan ***Disasters aren't permanent.
• A Man Shoots His Own Dogs By Bob Blacketer ***Sometimes the things that have to be done hurt like hell- or worse.
• Something's Wrong in the War By Larry Miles ***There's no such thing as an Ex-Soldier.
• Dark Soul By Joe Gensweider ***Some masters should not be served... But then again--.

• The Mare Inebrium shared universe project
  I open up my own Spaceport Bar to other writers! This month featuring two of my own stories and a story by Dragon's Lair Webzine's Editor, Roger Bennett.
• A Challenge to Writers A series of artworks that writers may compose stories about.
• A Word in Your Ear By Robert Wynne ***Rob Wynne holds forth on....whatever comes to mind. ***Poking fun at Micro$oft! The new national pastime!
• Starbase Update SFTV Schedules and News Compiled by Lee Whiteside.
• Dan Hollifield reviews:This month- George Carlin's CD "Back In Town".
• Excentrivial Musings The Aphelion Cartoon Page.
• Mare Inebrium Wallpaper Page 51 JPGs you can download and convert to Bitmaps for wallpaper. This is a slow-loading page, but well worth it.
• Click here to see the Links Page
• Click here to see the Submissions Guidelines Page.
• Aphelion Explanations and Thanks Where the name "Aphelion" came from and other info.

The replacement Lettercol/Guestbook!

Sign My Guestbook

View My Guestbook

You can e-mail the Senior Editor by clicking here.

Some folks have asked about submitting Poetry: While we do not publish poetry ourselves, there is someone for the poets to turn to-

Dragon's Lair Webzine is back! Way to go, Roger! I knew you couldn't stay away for very long.

Visit The Dragon's Lair Webzine, our sister publication!

Sideways to the Mare Inebrium, homepage of Aphelion's Editor: Dan L. Hollifield