Wind, Howl

The March wind doth blow, and we are unhappy to say that the first news on the morning of March 1 was that Janet Kagan had passed away after a long illness. Janet and Ricky Kagan were an important part of the New York City area sf scene since the early 1970s, and Janet was a Hugo-winning sf writer in the early 1990s, with what seemed a long life and important career ahead of her. She was passionate about literature and about life. But she fell silent, and fell ill, and now the news seems to come as if from a long distance, about someone we were all close to a while back. We have missed Janet for years now, and offer sincere condolences to Ricky.

In the last week of February, our friend Robert Legault, often a contributor to NYRSF in the early years of the magazine, a regular at the NYRSF Readings in NYC, and a constant presence in the New York sf community, was found dead in his apartment of an apparent stroke. Robert was a dry, droll, erudite man, who was once the managing editor of Tor Books, but in recent years a freelance copy editor in sf publishing.

The sf community far beyond our local area is poorer for the loss of Janet and of Robert. Both of them spent decades making the sf field a more pleasant and interesting place to be.

Changing the subject entirely, I attended the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference in New York in mid-February, two days of intense panels and demonstrations, with lots of interesting conflicts, on how publishing is changing under the pressure of new media and new ideas. The presentations ranged from the intensely fascinating to the almost offensive. Perhaps the most interesting thing I took away from it was the radical disjunction between the presentations on how to use the new technologies to make more money or accomplish interesting things, and those explaining how everything was going to be free now or soon and no one was going to make money in this way any more—better develop new revenue streams that depend neither on selling words nor on copyrights. I report this without comment as material for contemplation.

Boskone this year seems to be even more interesting than usual (and it is one of our favorite regionals). The increases in hotel prices and especially parking are discouraging, but NESFA sure knows how to run an interesting program and to pick a hotel with a good bar. We missed most of the social aspects because the kids were sick and we had to retire early, but see page three for pictures.

As we enter spring like a lion, we look forward to the annual trip to Florida in mid-March for ICFA, for the first time in the Orlando area. And we look forward to catching up on clerical work for NYRSF and general cleanup, after a difficult winter. We will be traveling a lot in May and June, and need to get things in order, some things not done for all of 2007. Wish us luck. 

—David G. Hartwell

& the editors