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Issue #7 is nearing completion and should be out shortly. Also, I have organized a subscription option via a Patreon Pledge. You can subscribe for $2.99 for the ebook version, $3.50 ebook via Amazon delivery and $9.99 for paper delivery in the united states. Please contact me for details for other countries and I will organize appropriate pledges. The paper copies come with complimentary ebook versions to keep you going until the paper copies arrive. Check out https://www.patreon.com/sciphijournal for the details.
Also, I can tease all of the story header art in the next issue!

More news, as everything comes together for Issue #7. I have been asked several times for a subscription option and I can announce that it is coming together. The current plan for subscription is to use Patreon and pay on a “per publication” basis for the magazine. The price would be $2.99 for ebook copies for subscribers and $6.50 plus shipping (please email to determine the amount) for paper copies (that will include ebook copies). There will also be a mailing list for subscribers and other bonuses. Please stay tuned that will be ready to launch shortly.
Additionally, the submission pile slowly progresses. I must apologize for how slow the whole thing is going. There is just never enough hours in the day. If anybody else would like to come on board as a first reader we have room. Please email editor@sciphijournal.com to organize that.
Also i’m in the process of organizing a kick starter for the anthology. That turns out to be a lot of organization and I need to learn to video edit to do it as well.
Strangely my post about not judging things by the authors politics but on merit got a story pulled. You can’t make this stuff up!
Finally I can tease the next cover, which is an illustration for the short story, Pawprints in the Aeolian Dust by Eleanor R. Wood

Can you be good without God? This is one of those perennial questions that comes up in discussions between theists and atheists and never seems to go get anywhere. This essay was inspired by a discussion along those lines over at John C. Wrights blog and I thought I would set out an idea that I think may provide a solution to the problem.
First some preliminaries that need to be addressed to save on confusion. This is not a question of morality as such. Anybody can ascribe to the historic conception of the good and seek to live in accord with that, adopt a stoic vision of reality that provides a moral framework or adopt the 10 commandments and attempt to live in light of those precepts without regard to whether the origins of those precepts are coherent. That rather misses the point though. The question is, does an idea like morality make sense and can it be grounded in some fundamental way that makes moral behavior a binding duty and not simply an optional suggestion if I feel like it. The real question is, do I have an obligation to be moral even when I don’t want to be, or it would be to my advantage not to be. That is the real test of a moral system, when it costs me more to adhere to it than to abandon it. It is easy to say “I would never steal $10,000,000!” until the bag of money is there in front of you and nobody would find out if you did take it, and you are badly in debt and the money would solve all of your immediate and pressing difficulties. That is when you really find out if you would do it or not, whether your principles are real or just for show. Until the moment of testing it is all just platitudes.
That raises the question, can the atheist be good without god in this sense? Alone in the dark when nobody is watching and there would be no consequences to the moral transgression. I think the answer is no, but not because they don’t believe in God as such, that isn’t actually the problem, at least not directly. Interestingly, if this idea works it will present a problem for many theists as well in that they will have to rectify it by adopting something like Divine Command Theory ethics. It would seem DCT is problematic because it seems very open to charges of being arbitrary and based in the idea that you must be good because God carries the biggest stick.
So what is the problem for the atheist? It would seem that for the atheist the problem is one of a metaphysics. To make for a coherent moral framework that is obligatory, even when you are alone in the dark and no one is watching, you will need something very much like Aristotelian formal and final causes. Without final causes the is/out gap presents a serious problem. As Hume showed, you can’t really get from a descriptive statement about the world, “the way it is”, and from that observation derive an ought about what is the moral cause of action.
The way to avoid the is/ought problem is with Aristotle. There are actions that are in line with a way a being ought to behave, that work towards the good for the being, that operate in line with their inherent design and function and there are things that don’t. That man has an obligation to live in line with the good because that is mans final cause. That is the way he ought to live, it is a fact of reality if formal and final causes exist. Without formal and final causes, if you attempt to adopt the “mechanical project” as Edward Feser terms it, you encounter all of the problems of trying to derive an ought from an is, along with the problem of induction, the mind/body problem and everything else that the modern philosophical project has spawned with its rejection of formal and final causes. Efficient and Material causes wont let you construct a binding moral framework that applies alone in the dark. The problem is deeper than that, as Aristotle showed in Book 2 of the Physics. You can’t separate the causes, Efficient and Material causes are insufficient to explain causality coherently.
The solution to grounding morality effectively is a return to Aristotle’s robust understanding of causation, abandon the failed attempt to dispense with formal and final causes and a return to virtue ethics. The alternative is the moral nihilism that the mechanical project inevitably ends in. I would suggest it is worse than that and the mechanical project will end in full fledged nihilism that extends all the way to the merelogical but that is a bit beyond the scope of the question here.
So why is this a problem for the atheist? Can’t they just adopt the robust Aristotelian theory of causation, get a moral foundation of formal and final causes back and go on their merry way, able to answer he Christian who challenges them and says they cannot be good without god?
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, for the atheist the answer is no. If the atheist adopts Aristotelian causation he will have a new problem. A somewhat obscure monk named Tom showed why in his beginners book on theology. Tom showed rather conclusively that if you adopt Aristotle’s understanding of causation that you can’t avoid needing to adopt a fairly robust generic theism and that that conclusion followed logically from this basic understanding of causation coupled with some very basic observations about the natural world that nobody can really dispute.
I’m referring of course to that giant of medieval philosophy, the Dominican monk Thomas Aquinas and his mammoth volume The Summa Theologicae. Thomas’ 5 ways each build on a simple observation about the world that is difficult to dispute and then extrapolates from that observation, in conjunction with Aristotle’s 4 types of causes, to a proof for the existence of God that have been widely dismissed and misunderstood but never to my knowledge been shown to be wrong (See here for a typically abysmal example of the misunderstanding and see [easyazon_link asin=”B002QBNVAW” locale=”US” new_window=”default” nofollow=”default” tag=”superversivesf-20″ add_to_cart=”default” cloaking=”default” localization=”default” popups=”default”]The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas Lectures by Peter Kreeft[/easyazon_link] and [easyazon_link asin=”1587314525″ locale=”US” new_window=”default” nofollow=”default” tag=”superversivesf-20″ add_to_cart=”default” cloaking=”default” localization=”default” popups=”default”]The Last Superstition by Edward Feser[/easyazon_link] for explanations of the idea). The early modern philosophical atheists solved the problem by dispensing with formal and final causes, not understanding what they had given up in this bargain.
So where does that leave the atheist, or the modernist Christian? In something of a bind. You can’t avoid the is/ought problem if you try to only have efficient and material causes as the early modern philosophers tried to do. There is no way to bridge that gap and you will forever be looking for a moral framework that ultimately comes down to “Someone with a big stick says do it!” whether that person is God or the state or some appeal to some sort of anthropomorphized nature in the form of an “evolutionary imperative”. Whatever solution the moral framework generated in such a way will be somewhat arbitrary and will never solve the “alone in the dark when nobody is watching” problem. Even the theist is solving that problem by asserting that you can never be alone in such a sense, the cosmic policeman is always watching.
What can be done? For the modernist Christian they can just renounce this fools errand, return to a more robust understanding of causation and get on with it. This might sound simple but many a Protestant is going to struggle with this option. For the atheist it would seem there is no solution. They must either abandon their atheism and accept a robust understanding of causation with its attendant and unavoidable theism or perhaps engage with one of the greatest of the medieval minds and try to show where he made a mistake. No easy task as the typical solution to date has been to do an end run around Thomas and remove the Aristotelian framework he used as the assumption for his argument. Alternatively they can renounce the moral project and accept that the atheists enterprise, because of its reduction of causation to efficient and material causes only, is destined to be morally nihilistic.
Is a generic theism really all that bad given the alternative?

I had an interesting email from someone submitting a story, it concerned my stance on the recent Hugo controversy and questions about my politics. It seemed worth writing a few things to clarify.
First up, I am unabashedly in the “sad puppies” camp. I’m also probably many of the stereotypes of that camp as well, an orthodox Protestant Christian, white, male and straight. I’m also archly conservative, leaning strongly free market/libertarian economically and more straight conservative socially, pro-life, limited government, the whole nine yards.
Does this effect my editorial policy? Almost definitely, but certainly not in the way the author who submitted a story was concerned. The first readers for the magazine are almost nothing like me politically, religiously, etc. There is some overlap but probably a lot less than you would expect. Yet I think I have agreed to buy nearly every story they have passed through to me.
The contributor in question was concerned I would see his “anti-puppy” stance and immediately count that against him and penalize his story in the submission process. I can assure anybody contributing I wouldn’t do this. I really couldn’t care less about a submitter’s politics or position on issues like this. I don’t even know most of the contributors positions on these sorts of things and I don’t ask, it is certainly too much work to go and look them up. If I only worked with people I agreed with politically it would be difficult to find anybody to work with and besides that would be boring. I don’t know how those of that lockstep mindset don’t kill themselves from the tedium of it all.
That being said, where it might make a difference is in the content of the story itself. I’m interested in publishing good stories that make you think, so that is the basic criteria. However i’m also an orthodox Christian and political conservative. So if you submit a story that treats all religious people as brain damaged morons and extols Marxism as the panacea for all social ills, i’m going to be pretty unlikely to buy it. I have to spend my money on these stories and I want to be able to stand behind the stories I publish. I don’t have to agree with the ideas explored or the concepts presented, the intersection of differing ideas are some of the most fruitful places for discussion, but there are limits because I put my name on the cover.
Finally, one thing that was particularly interesting to me about the email. I have never rejected a story because I have discovered I disagreed with the authors politics, but I have had a number of submissions pulled because the authors didn’t like my politics or in one case the author seemed offended that I would dare deal with Castalia house and have them sell the magazine through their bookstore. So I have actually been subject to the behavior this author feared but I haven’t engaged in it myself.

So things continue to progress. Issue #7 is coming together ahead of schedule and II am actually ahead on planning future issues. The submission pile continues to be worked through, thanks everybody for your patience and the first readers continue to do a great job. I had some health problems over the last couple of weeks which slowed down my reading but I seem to be getting on top of that.
It seems the reviewer at Tangent Online didn’t much care for the stories in Issue #6 of Sci Phi, it wasn’t whizz bang kapow enough for him apparently. That’s alright, I know Sci Phi isn’t for everybody and i’m still learning in all of this, and the review wasn’t all negative so I can’t complain.
The much mentioned but only slowly progressing Sci Phi Reader is starting to come together too. I’m still planning to organize a kick starter for it to raise the money to pay the authors, with details to follow. I have to make a video to go with it, does anybody have any tips on that? I’ve lined up some good rewards and will see what I can do about more. Stay tuned for more on this front.
If you would like to help the magazine out please spread the word and write a review a Amazon if you enjoy it!

So a whole slew of news items.
First up, and most importantly, we are still running the competition to choose a name for our hero in Ben Zwycky’s serial, Beyond the Mist. It is not to late to enter so please get your submission in today! Details can be found at the end of his story in issue #6!
Also, we’ve had some feedback on a story in Issue #4, some comments about a particular passage. I’d like to assure readers I don’t plan to run a story with a graphic image like that in it again. I’m aiming in a relatively family friendly direction. I liked the story so I left that part in, in hindsight I probably should have exercised editorial discretion and asked it to be reworked. I’m releasing a slightly reworked edition of issue #4. Nothing substantive changed just the paragraph omitted and worked around. It makes the story PG-13 like I would prefer so I think the change is ok.
I know a number of people have been contacted about things going into the “final read by the editor” pile. I’ve read about 70% of those at this point and i’m just holding off on sending a whole bunch of emails. So expect answers shortly. For those with things still in the queue, the first readers are working on them, so we will get there.
Finally, the project to produce an anthology is still in the works, I’ve just been a bit snowed under. After some costing, it looks like I will need to raise about $5000 to buy 100,000 words at 5c a word and pay everybody up front. I don’t have this sort of money so the plan is to organize a kick starter to try to cover the costs. If anybody is interested in making some sort of private donation to cover some of it, please let me know, and I will take my chances with a kick starter. Cat has promised us some sci phi original art work for bigger donors.

Sci Phi is an online science fiction and philosophy magazine. In each issue you will find stories that explore questions of life, the universe and everything and articles that delve into the deep philosophical waters of science fiction universes.
This month we have a somewhat accidentally apocalyptically themed issue for you with
Flash Fiction

• There’s and App for That by Edward M. Lerner, a story about the changes we are experiencing as technology advances.

Stories

• The Frankenstein Project by Ellen Denton, a tragedy of cybernetics and monkeys
• The Bottle of Red Zinfandel by Bev Vincent, a tale of a turning point in history and the decisions that come with inventing something unexpected
• Whispers by David Hallquist, how do you coped with a haunted space station?
• TN-3970 by Olin Wish, what do you do when the world ends and you need to travel to a far off land?
• Stunted Re-Live E-Loop by L.P. Melling, what do you do when you can’t get to the exam in time?

Articles

• Understanding Freedom Through Science Fiction by Chris A. Peck, what does it mean to be free and what can future history tell us about it?
• We are Borg by Jasper Doomen, have we already been assimilated?
• General Directive #18 by Patrick S. Baker, is genocidal in self defence ever justified?
• Precious Games by E.J. Shumak, are we getting ahead of ourselves trying to discard tradition or does it play a valuable part in our lives?
• On Having a Soul: The Murder on a Beach Thought Experiment by Jerffrey A. Corkern, an interesting exercise in intuition about why you have a soul

Serial

• Beyond the Mist continues with our protagonist pushing ever onward and there is a contest at the end of the story for readers

And a book reviews by Peter Sean Bradley and Mike Phelps
Get it now from [easyazon_link asin=”B010GW6YI8″ locale=”US” new_window=”default” nofollow=”default” tag=”superversivesf-20″ add_to_cart=”default” cloaking=”default” localization=”default” popups=”default”]Amazon (Kindle)[/easyazon_link], Castalia House (MOBI/EPUB) or Createspace (Paper)

Check out the cover Cat has done for Issue #6 (complete with ISSN!). Also, I have a bunch of submissions to final read and I will be getting to them, i’ve gotten through some and will send emails on those later this week. Also I have received a bunch of submissions over the last week or so. They haven’t been processed yet, but will be gotten too as soon as Issue #6 is out the door.

So I know the site has been quiet for a little while. The sale will continue for a little longer. In other news, I am, as always it seems, a bit behind on submissions but making progress. I am pausing on reading them a bit (but first readers continue) while I finish Issue #6 off. I also tend to send emails and process submissions on a Friday night or over the weekend. Issue #6 is coming together at the moment and will be out soon.
Speaking of Issue 6, Cat has done some story heading art and here is a sneak peak at the story art

How many times have you been offered the chance to name a character in a published work? And how many times has that been for the main character of a work where a substantial portion has already been published?
As those of you who have been following Beyond the Mist know*, the main character has no memory of who he was, would like to recover his old name, but has the option of choosing a new one for himself. The instalment in Issue 6 has been tweaked so that it will end just as he is about to choose a new name, and I am inviting Sci Phi Journal’s readers to choose what that will be.
This will be done in the form of a contest; the winning entry will determine his legal name in the story world from that point forward, (and will remain so even if he later discovers what his old name was). This name will reflect what he has discovered about himself so far, as well as what kind of man he intends to become in the future.
The format of the contest is as follows:
1. Choose a first name and family name, and write a short justification for choosing those names.
2. Email your entry to feedbacksciphi@gmail.com with ‘Beyond the Mist Contest’ in the subject line (important, if you don’t do that, your entry will not get to me.)
3. The closing date for entries is 11.59pm GMT on the 14th of July (approximately two weeks after Issue 6 is published, so that people can adjust their suggestions according to what they learn about the main character in chapters 10 and 11). This will give me enough time to decide on the winner and incorporate it into the next instalment.
4. The winner (chosen by me) will be announced publicly in Issue 7, will receive a free printed copy of that issue as well as signed copies of Nobility Among Us and Selected Verse: Faith and Family. The printed copy of the journal may take a number of weeks to arrive, depending on the winner’s location in the world.
The contest is now open, good luck and spread the word as widely as you can, please!
*and if you haven’t been following the story, now is your chance to catch up, since chapter 1 can be read for free here, and the ebook versions of issues 1-4 of Sci Phi Journal are now half price for the whole of this month.

It is my 40th birthday so to celebrate, for the next month, Sci Phi Issues 1 – 4 are on sale for $1.99 at [easyazon_link cloaking=”default” keywords=”sci phi journal” localization=”default” locale=”US” nofollow=”default” new_window=”default” tag=”superversivesf-20″]Amazon[/easyazon_link] and Castalia House. Spread the word!

I’ve recently sent a bunch of updates about submissions, unfortunately a number of those were rejections. I’m sorry. I will be continuing to work through the first reader responses (and the stories they have passed on) and get notifications out to everybody. I normally get some time to sit down process stuff on weekends.
If anybody knows much about the Mantis bug tracking system, i’d like to make it visible to everybody so people can see where their submissions are but i’m not sure how to set up the permissions yet.
I have received a number of submissions over the last week. I haven’t done anything with them yet, which is why you wouldn’t have recevied a confirmation email. These aren’t lost, I will get to them in the next 48 hours.
Also, if you were interested in doing book reviews for the magazine we are looking for more reviewers.

Why is there never enough time for everything? We are working on submissions, I will be getting back to people soon. I know I keep saying that, but we really are making progress.
There are various plans afoot, including a new comic that we have a number of people working with Cat Leonard on making something happen. Expect it to come out on the off month of a regular issue. I’m not sure of the price yet, probably $1.99 for the ebook version.
I’m also interested in gauging interest in a Kickstarter to fund a Sci Phi Reader? I have more stories than I can use for the journal and am interested in putting together something like that but I don’t really have the money to pay everybody. The plan would be to put together about 100,000 words worth of material with introductions and themes for the collections of stories. What sort of rewards would people want apart from obvious ones like copies, journal copies, art prints and the like? Cat Leonard is going to make some of her original Sci Phi artwork for donors. What do people think? One stretch goal would be an audio version of it as well.
Also the magazine wont be using ISBN numbers any more as we have offical ISSN numbers. This will hopefully make organizing some sort of subscription option easier.
Finally, Brian had a poster up at a Con he went to! How cool do these look.

So, Issue #5 is out and plans are moving forward on Issue #6. I hope people are still enjoying the magazine. If you do like it please write a review on Amazon and let your friends know. Submissions are also proceeding and I have a pile of first reader comments to go through and send a bunch of yea/nay emails. So that process should be speeding up. Thank you everybody for your patience.
Also, Cat has found an artist to work with and a comic will be forth coming. We aren’t sure what to do with that yet, include the comic as part of the issue itself or perhaps make it a stand alone title.
FInally, I was contacted by a teacher who expressed some interest in using Sci Phi material as part of his teaching, and I havve a quite a few great stories that will take some time to run in the magazine. Would people be interested in a Sci Phi Reader? A collection of stories with food for thoughts and some other material with the aim of it functioning as a textbook of some sort?

As some people have already discovered Issue #5 of Sci Phi is now available for Kindle and Paper from Amazon and in EPUB and MOBI from Castalia House (Soon).
This month we have,

Fiction

• The Keresztury TVirs by Ivan Popov, his first English language publication and telling the story of a dark future when technology leads in new directions
• God Eaters by Joshua M. Young, a story about what it means to be human and the struggle to live up to it in us all
• George the Second by Gregory L. Norris, a tale about an unexpected consequence of cloning
• The Great Teacher by Scott Chaddon, can a deity learn from its mistakes?
• HMS Mangled Treasure by L. Jagi Lamplighter, a story that explores a strange realm of faeries, pirates and souls.

Articles

• Civic Militarism and Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” by Patrick S. Baker, that muses on the society of the future and miliatary service
• On Emotion Drugs by Jeffrey A. Corkern, the second installment of an exploration of the soul
• The Ring of Gyges and Cloaking Technology in Star Trek by Victor Grech, that looks at the what it means to be invisible
• Why we are here? by Roy Gray, an exploration of the nature of the universe and our place in it
• The Philosophy of Serenity by Anthony Marchetta, that explores that segment of the Whedonverse

Serial

• Our serial, Beyond the Mist by Ben Zwycky continues in this issue as well, with Chapters 8 & 9