It is the day after Groundhog Day, and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. We continue to have strange weather; for the third straight year, it has been unseasonably warm for the February Work Weekend—not shirtsleeve weather (as it was in 2006) but in the high 40s Fahrenheit. For the first winter on record, there was no measurable snowfall in Central Park in New York City in the month of January. Still it has been noticeably winter, all the same, and will continue. We are betting on at least one blizzard and hope it is not on the weekend of Boskone. Winter will already be ending by the time you read this in March, and we will be heading to Orlando for the ICFA, exploring the new location. And those of you not heading for Florida will be going perhaps to Eastercon, or Minicon, or Norwescon, all of which we would like to attend—but all are on the same weekend. What a dense and difficult conventional world it is in sf today!
I direct your attention to the fine essay on the current state of reading and of publishing, by Ursula K. Le Guin, in the February Harpers (which also contains a long, provocative essay on the U. S. economy). The Le Guin essay is quite a substantial indictment of the current publishing situation, lacking only a recognition that the distribution system is composed of larger corporations than publishers—some on the same order of magnitude larger as movie companies—and that many aspects of publishing are entirely at the mercy of distributors, and not merely manifestation of corporate stupidity or corporate greed on the part of the now increasingly corporate publishers themselves. Do keep this in mind when reading her cogent piece.
If you live in the vicinity of New York City, we need your help. We have meetings nearly every Wednesday, starting between 5:30 and 6 p.m. and lasting until around 7:30. Meetings are held (through the kindness of Tor Books) in the Flatiron Building at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, and we always can use more volunteer help on the dog work of the magazine: stuffing envelopes, addressing labels, sending review copies, and so forth. For six weeks now, and more, we have been short‑handed, and can’t catch up without more help. The rewards are mostly intangible, but there are free review copies of books to be had, and some pretty unusual conversation too. The email address is on page three; drop us a line.
—David G. Hartwell
& the editors
