Looking Ahead

Daniel K. Appelquist

This issue marks the seventh time I've highly abused the Internet, Bitnet and UUCP with a mass mailing, this time to over 1300 subscribers. As you may be aware, if you're on the internet, the FTP server which had been doing a great job archiving back issues of Quanta has been down for some time. I'm in the process of trying to find a new server, so any help towards that goal would be appreciated. In the mean time, I'll be happy to fill any back order requests through the mail. This presents little or no change for subscribers on BITNET, UUCP or any of the various other non-internet nets out there.

This is also the first issue to bear the official new quanta ISSN (International Standard Serial Number). What does this mean? Not much, besides being a mark of officialdom. All it really means is that the number 1053-8496 is assigned to Quanta for ever more in the files of the Library of Congress and in the International Standard Serial Number archives, in Paris, France. Neat, huh?

I was accused by some of being "Liberace"-like in my column last issue, and while I'm not quite sure what that entails, I'll try to keep this one to the facts, the bare essentials. You won't catch me going off on a tangent, no sir-ee. Not in this article...

So anyway, we have some really great fiction for you this issue. Some familiar faces are back, specifically Phillip Nolte, Christopher Kempke (of course), William Racicot, and Jim Vassilakos with a new installment of his `Harrison' series. Faye Levine also makes a reappearance with `The Gods of Pittsburgh'. `Gods' is a bit of a departure for Faye... I think you'll enjoy it. We also have two new authors this issue (at least new to Quanta): Fiona Oceanstar gives us timely advice on `How to Pick Out a Good Horror Novel' and Robert Hurvitz lets us in on `The Big Joke'.

Let me take this opportunity to solicit some material. I'm always looking for new material from new authors. If you have something you think would fit into Quanta, I encourage you to send it along to me.

I've been throwing around the idea of expanding the scope of Quanta to include all genres of fiction, with an emphasis on SF related works, but no strict limitations. If you have any thoughts on this, please express them to me. I feel Quanta, as it is, needs to grow, but I'm not sure in what direction that growth should occur. One possible direction for growth is in distributon. I have approached the Compuserve Science-Fiction group on making Quanta available for public downloading there. I also hope to get Quanta onto GEnie and other online services. If you're a member of one of these service (I personally am not), and if you could provide me with a name I could contact, I'd be deeply appreciative. Also, getting in touch with the administrators of these systems and telling them about Quanta yourself might be of help.

In other news, although Jim McCabe has yet to come out with the last issue of Athene, it is official that the magazine has been shut down. Fortunately, Jason Snell, whose name you may recognize from various stories and articles he has published in both Quanta and Athene, has decided to start up his own magazine. Jason will be inheriting Athene's subscription list, and has been working diligently on the format at last report. If you're interested in this new magazine (working title is "Intertext") send mail to Jason Snell (jsnell@ucsd.edu).

Well, that's about it for me --- Enjoy!

Quanta is Copyright(c)1994 Daniel K. Appelquist.
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