The Changing Leaves (Editorial, NYRSF 314)

I would be horribly remiss if I did not lead off with the news that our own legendary theatre critic Jen Gunnels has done made herself a book! Geek Theater: 15 Plays by Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers, which she edited with Erin Underwood, is freshly out from Underwords Press and collects 15 play scripts including works from authors familiar to the NYRSF-reading world: Jeanne Beckwith, F. Brett Cox, Andrea Hairston, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, Mac Rogers, Crystal Skillman, and many more. Go get it if you have any interest whatsoever in modern sf theatre (and you bloody well should). It’s available from the publisher at <underwordspress.com/underwords_book/geek-theater/> and from better booksellers everywhere.

October was a real kidney stone of a month for me, draining pretty much all of the energy and motivation that I would usually devote to getting NYRSF done. Ah, well, unless something goes wrong, you should still be receiving this before the World Fantasy Convention opens, and I predict the November issue will be back on schedule. This does bring home the fact that once again our staff are stretched rather thin—various changes of life, work and family problems, and all the other complications to which we fleshy mortals are heir have kept us bouncing around. So, if you want to take on an entertaining editorial hobby, let us know! We’re particularly looking for people who live within easy travel of Westchester County, New York and can come to the monthly Work Weekends (where most of the editorial work of the magazine is done), but we’re also happy to have additional copy editors/poorfeeders working remotely. Let me know if you’re interested, and thanks.

Speaking of the World Fantasy Convention, both I and my ridiculously intelligent wife Bernadette will be on panels—well, one panel each, opposite each other at 11 a.m. on Sunday. She will be speaking on the art of reading reviews, and I will be talking about how writers grow or diminish as they, and their careers, age. I hope to see a great many of you there.

Our venture into wider digital publishing proceeds apace. As has been true at every preceding step of our electronic anabasis, obstacles have arisen that one would think would be easily automated, yet are not. This time, we learned that InDesign generates epubs with HTML code that is not fully valid, requiring us to take yet another manual step before we can release the epub to our new additional digital venues. However, issue 313 is now available at iTunes <itunes.apple.com/us/book/id934447863>, Kobo <store.kobobooks.com/Search/Query?fcmedia=Book&query=9781502264275>, and Inktera <www.inktera.com/store/title/cec84a86-ca6a-4b34-ac26-3bcd93bd93be>, and I hope in the next few days it will be available on Barnes and Noble and Scribd. Individual issues will be available through each of those venues routinely in the future; subscriptions are available exclusively through Weightless Books. (No, we’re not selling through Amazon; one has to take a moral stand when one can.)

One of the things that has been driving down my mood over the last month is the ongoing systematic abuse of female game designers and critics. The attacks are horrifying, because of their persistence, their virulence, and their senselessness. If you’ve somehow missed the Gamergate campaign, Devin Faraci’s “Why I Feel Bad for—and Understand—the Angry #GamerGate Gamers” <badassdigest.com/2014/08/31/why-i-feel-bad-for-and-understand-the-angry-gamergate-gamers/> is a great primer. Gamergate is a ragegasm of social imbeciles fighting for their rights—not just the right to call anyone they dislike “faggots” and treat women as crackerjack prizes and wall decoration but the right to be free from all criticism for doing so.

For about 10 years, I was a professional computer game producer/designer, and board gaming is still one of my three main hobbies; I consider game-players—gamers—to be fundamentally “my people.” While I know, on a rational level, that the “Gamergate” terror campaign is being conducted by a small community of sociopaths egging each other on, the fact that they’re wrapping themselves in the mantle of my community to protect it from becoming more intelligent and more diverse makes it just that much worse. I’m not a direct target of Gamergate; but the thugs and simpletons conducting it think I’m who they’re fighting for, and that’s horrifically absurd.

Anyway. I’ll just quote myself from January’s editorial: More and different voices can only make the field richer as an art form and stronger as a community, and their growing strength is to be celebrated. So celebrate away.

—Kevin J. Maroney
and the editors