From the Overlords at Ray Gun Revival:
“Ray Gun Revival magazine was started in 2006 as a fun little side-project, an amateur token-payment ‘zine spawned from enthusiasm for Firefly and with the intention of introducing a new generation of readers to great genre fiction. In 2010, our publisher moved away from ‘zines and we intended to go on hiatus for awhile to consider our options and decide our future. While mulling things over, we were approached by a new publisher, Every Day Fiction. They volunteered to host us and pay our authors Semi-pro rates. All we had to do was keep doing our ray gun thing. Now, we may be haughty and mercurial Overlords, beholden to nothing and no one, but we’re not fools. We hit that generous offer with great vigor, like a (metaphor doesn’t translate well into English).
That was August of 2010. RGR re-opened our slushpile submissions in December and aimed for a site relaunch in February, 2011. In their enthusiasm to present space opera and golden age sci-fi to a new audience, our publisher put together this short teaser trailer to promote the relaunched magazine.
This trailer was shot over a weekend in Ellinger’s parents’ house for a budget of under $100. We shot with a Canon T2i SLR that cost under a thousand dollars and edited the whole thing together with Adobe Premier. Everything is hand made, and the blue screening was accomplished with blue tissue scotch taped over the window. The music was made available through Creative Commons by the St. Matthews Choir, and the image is courtesy of the Hubble telescope, also in the public domain.
Our publisher’s goal for RGR is for us is to go fully Pro. If we’re successful, this time next year we might find ourselves a SFWA-qualifying market. For our part, when not vaporizing puny planets, we’re just happy to take the next step publishing great character-driven space opera / golden age sci-fi short stories. We’ve always been known for our stellar (heh) cover art. Now the quality of the fiction is being elevated to match. Our authors for February are Larry Hodges, Mike Resnick, Michael Merriam, and Gerri Leen.
We’re very pleased with the teaser trailer produced by EDF. Please feel free to share it around with other space opera fans. And please do visit Ray Gun Revival magazine, a free space opera e-zine paying Semi-pro rates with larger aspirations. RGR – it’s where the cool (galactic Overlords) hang out.”
