Bewildering Stories Editorial

by Jerry Wright

Stumbling Into The Future

A bit of an update as to the wide world of Bewildering Press... Mike Lloyd's opus, Observation One is at the printers, and we are waiting on a proof copy. And I'm getting ready to generate the Advance Reader's Copy of "Tale Tales on the Iron Horse" by Colin P. Davies. This will be a book that will be going out to various publicists and reviewers in an almost but not quite finished version, so that we can get some response back before the book is released into the wild.

It will also allow some more proofreading. Proofreading NEVER ends. But that's okay. We see books from the big boys that have flaws that should never have been allowed to reach the light of day. It is the nature of the beast.

And so on...

We are now half way through this "year of our Lord 2007" (certainly anachronistic, and these days almost meaningless, eh?). Anyway, friends, this is the future we've been reading about since the 50s (or for some, even earlier). I must say, I'm a bit disappointed. And relieved. I've been doing a bit of re-reading from an old 1953 collection of stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. There were a number of "after-the-bomb" stories taking place in what would be a now alternative past. Yeah set in the future 60s, 70s, etc. So, yes, feelings of relief. On the other hand, why don't we have a stronger presence in Space? Y'know, the spacesuits that NASA has still require prebreathing and are time-consuming and difficult to wear and handle. And yet the technology for better suits has been around since the fifties.

The private space effort has claimed its first casualties, with the deaths of three people doing a fuel transfer for Scaled Composites (of SpaceShip One fame). Not even a death in space, simply an industrial accident. Sad, but not rare.

I wish you all joy and delight, and a hope that the bad things forget where you live. Onward!