Editorial: May 2011

Let’s start with the good news. Working on Salon Futura appears to be good for fertility. When we launched Anne had just given birth to her daughter, Rosie. A couple of months ago Karen announced that she was pregnant. And last week Jonathan’s wife, Kati, gave birth to a son. Congratulations to all. The world needs new book readers, and we appear to be doing our part to supply them. This makes me very happy.

The prognosis for the magazine is rather less hopeful. As I said last month, the downturn in the global economy means that I am no longer able to subsidize Salon Futura, and so we are going to have to close, at least for a while. I do not intend to keep going by turning the magazine into a fanzine. I firmly believe that good writers deserve to be paid for what they do, and if I can’t afford to pay them then they should go and write for someone who can.

The website will stay online for the foreseeable future. There may also be the occasional podcast going out through the Salon Futura iTunes feed. Kevin and I are planning to do another Hugo Award rules podcast soon. If I can get the funds to do occasional issues I shall do so.

In the meantime I’m planning to do some redesign work on the Salon Futura and bookstore websites. I have learned quite a lot over the past few months and now have a much better idea of what is required.

Before we go, I have a whole lot of thanks to make. Without help from Karina Meléndez creating the websites we would never have got launched on time. Our regular contributors: Sam, Karen, Jonathan and Alvaro, have done a great job in providing Salon Futura with the sort of high quality material. I should also thank all of our guest contributors, and our cover artists. I’m particularly grateful to people such as John Coulthart and John Picacio who can sell their work elsewhere for much more money, but were happy to find something I could use. Thanks are also due to those who helped behind the scenes: Anne and Kevin. And of course huge thanks to everyone who donated money, bought ebooks and otherwise helped keep us in business. People in Finland and at the Bay Area Science Fiction Association have been exceptionally generous. Finally thanks to everyone who has read the magazine. Hopefully we will be able to bring you some more of them soon.

Cheryl