I went to the mailbox this afternoon half expecting a rejection from Paradox, but what pleasantness do I find instead? My copy of Shimmer had arrived! 

Now, my experience with buying small press stuff is mostly positive, but my expectations are always low when it comes to binding quality. I've bought chapbooks from Subterranean Press that were nothing more than pages bound together with some card stock (and payed a pretty high price for them), and that's really the highest quality I've gotten outside of Paradox, which is a very pretty magazine and obviously a labor of love. Naturally, I wasn't expecting anything fancy when I opened Shimmer's envelope. 

Boy was I wrong! Its cover is nice and slick (laminated!) with some of the coolest artwork I've seen on a mag (I'd seen the cover art online, but the quality and clarity of it on print is inspiring and worth the $5 cover price on its own). The interior illustrations are just as good as any I've seen in Asimov's or Analog. I haven't read the stories yet, so I can't speak about those yet, but if they're as high of quality as the art and the binding, I'm going to subscribe. I shall be taking it with me camping this weekend.

If you haven't checked Shimmer out yet, go do so now!