My vision of Prometheus as a newsletter features cool cover art with cutting edge articles and reviews within. I don’t always get artwork for the cover, and as you can see from these three samples sometimes the newsletter leads off with the article on the front page.
When L. Neil Smith’s novel, The Probability Broach was published as a graphic novel in early 2005, I immediately asked Neil and artist Scott Bieser for permission to reprint some of the art in the issue. They agreed, and so I took advantage or their generosity. The last page of the newsletter contains a small frame of the delectable DJ Thorens, and I wrote a review of the graphic novel version. I’ve now actually bought more graphic novels since 2004 than between 1990 and 2004, but I can still count them on two hands. My personal opinion is that the graaphic novel version of TPB should have been a best novel nominee, but instead the book won as a Special Award. It probably would not have won as a novel, since it already won back in 1982.
The issue with the gunslinger and was inspired by the two articles for each WorldCon site. This issue almost never appeared in print. In 2004 there was a transition in editorship for the newsletter, and this issue was sent to members in two emails. this was around the time I thought about volunteering to help edit the issue, and so I created a sample newsletter to sort of see if I actually could put together an issue again. I had already moved from OS 9 on the Mac to OS X, and my PageMaker software no longer ran native. So, I upgraded to InDesign 2, and threw together an issue and learned a few things about the software. I never released this issue to anyone, and almost lost all the electronic bits in a hardware crash. When I recovered the drive and after I already had put out a couple of issues, I redisovered this 2004 print version, and decided to release it as a special issue.
And here is a plain, almost vanilla cover. A few of the most recent issues have gone 16-20 pages, and with page real estate in these issues at a premium I decided to skip creating a distinctive cover. The current issue again features artwork on the cover, but I’ll hold off on posting this until after the issue is published, some time in mid-October. The issues shown on this page are all available for $3 (just send me an email for details), or you can join LFS and receive each forthcoming issue per year of your membership. A few years ago I had several complete sets of all the back issues of Prometheus, but now there are quite a few that I lack, especially for issues prior to 2004. If anyone knows how to scan pages into PDF, please let me know and I can start the process to put all the back issues online at some point.
By the way, I’m always looking for articles and reviews for the newsletter. Please contact me for details.
As a preview, here’s what’s in store for members and subscribers in the Fall 2006 issue:
Inside Prometheus:
Prometheus Award winners’ remarks from David Lloyd, Patrick Nielsen Hayden (editor), and Ken MacLeod
WorldCon Report by Fred Curtis Moulton with photos of the event
A brief review of the movie version of V for Vendetta
Fiction reviews:
F. Paul Wilson’s The Keep: The Graphic Novel
Gary Bennett’s The Star Sailors, a 1982 novel recently available again
Keith Brooke’s Genetopia
David Louis Edelman’s Infoquake
A trio of Naomi Novik books reviewed
Ian MacDonald The River of Gods
Chris Roberson’s Paragaea
David Lloyd’s Kickback
