
So we come to the end of another calendar year. Another amazing year: 12 solid issues, another ~300,000 words of f&sf critique, all delivered more or less on time. We have our new layout, easier on the eyes; and an estimated 10,000 people downloaded our free 25th anniversary issue, which still croggles my imagination.
It’s very easy for the monthly demands of the magazine to consume all of our attention. However, our big projects for the next year all involve the past.
One of NYRSF’s greatest assets is its long history. We are always happy to sell you our back issues—almost all of our 288 print issues are still available for very reasonable prices ($4 each, or $2 each for orders of more than 5 issues), and we are once again offering grab bags of 20 random issues for $10/bag. You can order up to 200 issues for a mere $100! Contact us at [email protected] for these issues. But that’s not nearly futuristic enough. Weightless Books currently has PDF versions of our back issues dating back to issue 273 (May 2011), suitable for reading on tablets or printing out. So, our first historical project involves getting the first 272 issues up through Weightless as well.
Once we have usable PDFs of all the issues, we want POD archive collections—annual volumes as well as the standard two-packs currently on offer through Lulu.com. But that’s going to take us another few months. Wish us luck.
Our pictures this month are courtesy of Gregory Benford, who photographed various Jules Verne manuscripts while visiting Nantes. The detailed marginalia are fascinating. I think we’ll have larger versions of both photos up on the web site, so take a look.
Manuscript page from Jules Verne’s outline for Sans dessus dessous (trans. The Purchase of the North Pole). Photography by Gregory Benford.
Another Verne manuscript page from Autour de la Lune (Around the Moon) showing a diagram of a lunar eclipse & accompanying calculations.
Anyway. As I write this, it’s Christmas Eve. I have a busy day and a busy week still ahead of me, so I’m going to keep this short. Thank you, everyone who reads this, everyone who writes for us (which could be you!), everyone who edits or proofs or kibitzes or just sends us encouraging thoughts. The magazine is great fun, but without you, it wouldn’t be. Thank you, so much.
—Kevin J. Maroney
and the editors
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