… and we hope it will be a fine year, indeed!

Last issue, I shared with you my hopes for this coming year. Let’s have a look at what’s come of that.

More Authors: I am pleased to note that we have new authors making their debut this month.

More Media: Here, too, we have new things. Two new categories — “Poetry” and “Imagery” — make their debut in this issue.

More (And Different) Content: So far… not so much. But I feel sure that will come. Again… “…more reviews of other books, movies, games. … reviews of conventions — not just SF conventions, but transhumanist and futurist conventions… articles on scientific research and breakthroughs.” If you’ve anything to offer, on any of these topics, please let me know.

More Readers: Slowly, surely, we make progress here. The more works we offer, the more things authors and artists contribute? The more readers will come to see what the Orion’s Arm universe has to offer.

That’s a good start on this year’s wish list, eh?

Now, here’s one of your wishes. Eric writes:

…I have ctrl-c and then ctrl-v a lot of the fiction available (and gone through a good chunk of the background inormation) and the most pressing sggestion I can make is to stop making the copy/paste ritual so integral to viewing the OA material in any offline context. I have a zaurus that I use for my offline reading and I would vastly prefer a plain text download option for reading the various e-books than the system I’ve worked out for myself. It has even been a roblem keeping the whole text (keeping the title and the author’s name intact in the file without requiring extra typing). Plase, if you want greater exposure, make it easy to do so. …

Eric: We are looking at this now. Many of the stories here rely on formatting to convey key information (the difference between characters; internal thoughts vs. external discussions; and the like). It’s not clear to me that plain text files, .txt format, will do. Rich text files (.rtf format) would probably do. Word (.doc format), certainly. But how well does that work for your e-books and pocket pc’s? Please drop me a line and let me know which would work for you.

Some of you will have noticed a format change in this issue. Originally, we broke longer stories into sections, so that each piece of the story would only require scrolling down a couple of screens. Some people appear to find that more comfortable to read. I am told there’s a couple of research papers out which document this, but I have yet to find such studies. Perhaps some of you reading this might have a notion? Others, however, seem to prefer the single page format — and it certainly makes production of V/FT easier.

Do you have a preference? A reference? An opinion? Drop me a note and let me know.

Next issue: We announce… a contest!