Editorial Matters

By Cheryl Morgan

I’m delighted to be opening this issue with an essay by Gary K. Wolfe. Gary’s review column in Locus has been required reading for me for, gosh, decades. Although Gary is a literature professor and perfectly capable of holding his own in amongst those people who never use one common word when ten obscure ones will do, he also has the happy talent of being able to explain academic ideas in a very approachable way. Here’s hoping that lots of you found his essay as interesting as I did.

This issue is a little light because February is a short month and I’ve had more long books to deal with that usual. If you check back with #125 you’ll note that there are books I had planned to read for this issue that I just haven’t had time to get to. I’m therefore very grateful to Juliet and Mario for providing two reviews each this issue.

The pile of books I really want to read is growing steadily. What I need is some travel, which means it is probably a good thing that I’ll be flying back to California in just over a week’s time, and very soon after that turning back to fly to Florida for ICFA. Lots of time to read.

Which means what? Catching up on backlog is a possibility, but I also have this huge pile of April releases that I have committed to. It includes books by Liz Williams, Chaz Brenchley, Sean Williams, Amanda Hemmingway and Theodora Goss. Mike Carey, who is scripting the Neverwhere comic, has a debut novel due out. The latest in Gwyneth Jones’s Bold as Love series, Rainbow Bridge, is also due out, though I’m not sure if I’ll get that in time for next issue.

And if that wasn’t enough content, we have Karen Traviss talking about the differences between writing traditional SF and tie-in novels, we have a guest review from Farah Mendlesohn, and we have R. Scott Bakker responding to Jeff Vandermeer’s article on politics in fantasy.

Finally, in addition to all the blog stuff, you may notice a new trick or two on the web site. I’ve finally managed to get to grips with the interface to Amazon’s web site and can search for books. I’d still much rather you bought from The Aust Gate or Wrigley-Cross, because we need specialist SF dealers, but hopefully you’ll find the new links to Amazon useful.

Best wishes,

Cheryl