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I wouldn't normally post a "We're caught up to X date" update until we catch up through the end of a month, but we've seen a distressing number of people not receive our responses to their submissions in the past month or two. So I'm posting a little early.

We in the SH fiction department have replied to all submissions dated 25 April and earlier. If you submitted anything to us on or before 25 April, and haven't received a response, please query immediately.

And as always, please query immediately whenever either of these circumstances occur:

• You send us a story but you don't get an autoresponse within three days. (It usually takes only a few hours for the autoresponse to go out; three days is an absolute outside maximum, and happens only when I'm on the road and without Internet access.)
• It's been sixty days since you submitted, and you haven't received an acceptance or a rejection. (Our average response time is still about 25 days; we often go over the average, but we almost never go over the 60-day maximum, so if you haven't heard from us after 60 days, it almost certainly means our response got lost in the mail.)

I suspect that part of what's going on is that people's spam filters are getting more aggressive; I suspect that a bunch of our responses look like spam to the filters, and get thrown away. But that's just a guess; I have no real idea.