Quartered (Editorial, NYRSF 300)

80 percent of success is showing up.

—Woody Allen

Well, we made it. With this issue, we reach two landmarks: the end of our first year of electronic publication, and the end of our twenty-five years. When I first read Professor Tolkien’s works, I was struck by the simple wisdom of the hobbitish tradition of celebrating one’s birthday by giving gifts to all your friends and relations, so this free issue is our gift to you.

If you’re a new reader, welcome! The New York Review of Science Fiction was founded in 1988 by the staff of The Little Magazine, who saw the need for a science fiction critical magazine to fill the wide space between the lightweight reviews of the fanzines and newszines and the heavier apparatus of academe. We designed this issue to be a sampler of all the types of material NYRSF publishes—appreciations of authors both well-known and forgotten; reviews, long and short, of good science fiction, fantasy, and horror books; theatre reviews; personal essays related to the larger f&sf field; and a vigorous letter column.

If you are a long-time reader, thank you! We hope this issue holds up our traditions well. This issue has been added to your subscription for free.

One of the less obvious goals of NYRSF over the last 25 years has to hit its deadline. One issue per month, a dozen issues a year, year after year and it adds up. (If you take care of the months, they say, the quarter-centuries take care of themselves.) I’m proud to say that even with the rough transition to electronic publication, we have never been more than a couple of days behind schedule and we have every reason to believe that we will continue to hit your electronic mailbox around the end of each month for the foreseeable future.

We publish 12 issues a year, $3.00 each or $30 for a 12-issue subscription; you can receive the issue in printable PDF or as an epub or mobi file for your favorite e-reader, all through our online publishing partner, Weightless Books <www.weightlessbooks.com>, all of them DRM-free—so once you pay for it, it’s yours to keep. We also have a print-on-demand version available through Lulu.com. And of course we have 300 back issues just waiting to be bought and loved and read; there’s an index (in Excel format) at <bit.ly/NYRSFIndex>.

After all that patting ourselves on the back, I must add: We can’t do this without you! Nor would we want to. We want to hear from you—we want letters for Screed, comments on the web articles, and of course we want contributions! If you’ve ever wanted to write for us, let us know—our writers guidelines are at <bit.ly/NYRSFguide>.

We have several wonderful surprises in the coming year, but I’ll talk more about those as they become less ideal and more actual. Until then, we will do what we always set out to do:

Read science fiction like it matters.

Thanks, all, from the bottom of my well of words.

—Kevin J. Maroney

. . . and the editors:

David G. Hartwell • Samuel R. Delany • Kris Dikeman • Avram Grumer • Alex Donald • Jen Gunnels

. . . and the indispensable staff:

Ann Crimmins • Arthur D. Hlavaty • Joshua Kronengold • Heather Masri • Lisa Padol • Christine Quinones • M’jit Raindancer-Stahl • Jason Strawsburg • Eugene Surowitz • Anne Zanoni

. . . and all those, living and gone, who came before, filling the world still with their brilliance.

Comments

[Eugene R.]

Because he is a comic writer and comedian, many folk take Mr. Allen's "80%" line as a joke. Which it is not. Congrats on showing up for 300 issues (and 22 Hugo nominations) with incredible regularity.