Pulp Lit Tentatively Accepts Moons of Saturn as Reprint

It was a bit of a star-crossed submission.  “Moons of Saturn” was originally published in Algis Budrys’s TOMORROW in July 1993 as well as reprinted in THE TEARS OF ISIS.  Fast forward to this year and, following a second read, it had been rejected by PULP LITERATURE on January 7, though as sometimes will happen with an explanation that it just didn’t fit in with a particular issue.  In any event one doesn’t just send something right back again — except that I did, on June 20, having misread (or somehow skipped over) its previous trip on the story’s log!

So I did what one does in such situations:  the following day I sent an email with my apologies, asking that it be considered withdrawn.   And so life went on.  Except a bit over four months later an email came saying “Moons” had advanced to a second reading.

So you know what comes next.  Today an email arrived from Assistant Editor Genevieve Wynand:   Thank you for your submission.  I am pleased to offer you a tentative acceptance for ‘Moons of Satu[image error]rn’ to be published in 2020 (specific issue to be determined).  I thoroughly enjoyed your story and look forward to sharing it with our readers!

So . . . closure of a sort.   It’s not unknown that a story not right for one issue will fit exactly right for another.  But what, exactly, does a “tentative”acceptance mean?  So, roll with the motion, I sent a “thank you” email back but added the question of when we would know for sure.  And so it is thus far (the “tentative,” after all, may just mean pending signing a contract, which usually won’t come until at least a little while after).

As for the story, “Moons of Saturn,” here’s the description that had been asked for with the submission:  A man and a highly imaginative woman watch extensive TV coverage of the Voyager missions past Saturn while the woman grows progressively more ill.  More to be revealed here as it becomes known.