One Year Reflection and Forward Gaze

Allow me (Aimer) to wax sentimental and reflect on Radon Journal's first year and what's to come.

First I would like to thank all twelve of you who currently support us monetarily. Together you pledge $78 each month, bringing us to 72% of our funding goal. Thousands visit our site, but you select few have gone above and beyond to help us the most.

If you did not catch our annual budget breakdown on Twitter or Mastadon from early January, I happily give a truncated edition:

Funding Radon for a year costs $1,868. With your help we managed to fundraise $353.34 in 2022.

This includes web costs, author payments, design & business tools, and professional  journal affiliations.

Since we did not publish in January 2022, the actual cost for 2022 was ~$1,500. In 2024 our web hosting cost will double (but that's a future problem).

This money comes directly out of the bank account of Renee and me. We are happy to announce that we will be married in May this year, one week before our fourth issue releases. Even more than paying for a wedding, we are most happy for our money to go to authors. 

It's a hard world out there for writers, especially anarchist science fiction ones. We (and the entire editing team) are proud that Radon has quickly become known as an "author-first" publication. It's why we put so much effort into nominating authors to every possible award. It's why we put weeks of effort into editing each story and offering developmental + line edits. We do our best with the online tools available to offer spotlights and a growing community.

Speaking of–thank you for your engagement on Discord and online. To echo annoying YouTubers: every like, subscribe, and comment does help us reach more people.

When we launched Radon, we hid our identities. We assumed the world would hate a blatantly anarchist sci-fi journal. But we did it because we were passionate about this niche. They are the two things we love most in the world. Thank you for proving us wrong. The idea for Radon came years ago, but we did not have the tools, experience, or money to make it as we wanted.

So we spent the last 10 years each being our own writers, doing the grind ourselves. Others got advanced degrees in English, literature, and publishing. We found full-time publishing jobs in the industry to support ourselves first. In the end it has worked out, letting us offer the best possible rendition of Radon.

2023 we will focus on honing our journal-creating craft. Our editors have become a cohesive team and we intricately understand our editorial direction. The author interviews are a smashing success and each issue warmly received. Our dual subscription is lauded and engaging. We don't foresee launching new additions to the site this next year. Part of this is I don't have the bandwidth to re-design the back-end of the website again! It should now be future-proofed and good to go for many years.

I've said it before, but our goal is to be here forever. Our direct inspiration is Clarkesworld, Uncanny, and Asimov's. In 18 years we hope to win our own Hugo award for Best Semiprozine or Best Editor (Short Form).

But for now we want to focus on our issues and put into the world the best anarchistic science fiction this side of the milky way.