Reading science fiction like it matters since 1989.
Welcome to the first post-paper issue of NYRSF. This has been a long time coming. We first determined back in November of last year that this was the only way we could continue into volume 25. The sad fact is we were consistently receiving less money in subscriptions and back issue sales than we were paying in printing and postage, and something had to change. The happy fact is everyone has been extremely supportive of this move—our contributors most of all. It’s been a ride.
One other factor that made the transition to paperless more necessary was the loss of our longtime printers, Odyssey. The company that took them over was capable of good physical work, but their customer service model really wasn’t designed for small-press magazines. As a going-away gift, they took approximately four weeks to deliver copies of the August issues directly to Dragon Press, and we are getting reports of bulk-rate copies of that issue just now reaching subscribers in mid-September. Obviously, that’s an unmanageable delay on a monthly magazine; it was not the first such delay, though it was by a wide margin the worst.
If you’re reading this in the magazine, you know about our online publisher, Weightless Books. If you’re reading this on the NYRSF web site, then by all means hie yourself hence to Weightless and sign on up! Individual issues (current and backstock) and 12-issue subscriptions await you! All you need is an e-mail address and either a Paypal account or a major charge card. (Sorry, Diner’s Club, the future has passed you by.) You can get the issues either in magazine-format pdf or in e-reader-friendly epubs, your choice, drm-free, so once you buy it, you own it.
(If you were a subscriber to the paper edition and you haven’t set up a Weightless subscription for your remaining issues, drop me an e-mail immediately—[email protected].)
And diving even deeper into the post-paper future, we of course have a web site, a Twitter account @NYRSF, and a Facebook page, all under the able hands of our web maestro, Alex Donald. The newly active web site features articles from our issues, and as an experiment we’ve turned on comments on selected articles. We know our readers are, unfailingly, the wisest, most insightful people on the planet (you’re reading us—qed), and if we can avoid the problems of trolls and spammers, we’ll make a habit of it.
The ethereal future is nice, but it has been our plan all along to offer print-on-demand volumes in addition to the software versions. We seem to have landed at Lulu.com, through which we can offer bimonthly double issues (48 pages with a color cover) for $10 plus shipping. The entirety of volume 24 should be available there by the end of the month Just search on “NYRSF” or follow the links from our web site.
Further down the line, we’ll be offering print-on-demand collections of entire volumes—12 issues in a single bound volume. We’re still working out the details of that, but I hope to have something solid to announce before the end of the year.
Several of the NYRSF staff (David Hartwell, Ann Crimmins, Lisa Padol, Joshua Kronengold, Anne Zanoni, and I—did I miss anyone?) made it to Chicon 7, this year’s Worldcon—see the photos elsewhere in the issue. I don’t wish to speak for anyone else, but I had a tremendous time, as I always do at Worldcons. I wish that the facilities themselves had been less exhausting and better arranged for serendipitous conversations, but I went to a large number of events where the participants sparkled. So, success.
On the political front of the Hugo Awards: It was particularly gratifying to see the work of the Semiprozine Reform Committee ratified, which should make that category more reflective of the original intent, to reward publications that are not purely fannish but are also not professional. I was also very pleased by the changes to the Best Fanzine award, explicitly adapting to the ubiquity of online fannish discourse; by the already long-overdue adoption of the Best Fancast award; and by the permanent adoption of the Best Graphic Story award.
The Worldcon did throw us a bit off our timing, especially in the wake of the aforementioned problems with our printer. Our goal is to have the new issue available the first week of each month. “Monthly ’til we die,” as David has said so many times. We expect the October issue will be significantly earlier in the month.
So. Forward. And thank you all for coming along.
and the editors
A PDF copy of the NYRSF issue in which this editorial first appeared is available for purchase at Weightless Books.
A print edition of Issues 289 and 290 is available from
Lulu.com.
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