MAG OF THE FUTURE

Somewhat troubled by the name of the month on the cover of issue 256. February indeed! I bought this in December! Should be well in the recycle by February! I do realise that the publishing industry has this merry wheeze of putting advanced dates on the cover of their magazines, no doubt to give the title long life on the newsstands, but it does seem to be pushing it a little. Indeed, “This Month In Sci- fi History” proclaimed five years ago to be March! Shock horror – there is time slippage at work even within the magazine. Then, in a bright Christopher Nolan type revelatory moment, it dawned on me what is going on. What if Bath is somewhere near a black hole ( Bristol perhaps) and the printers are near the same black hole but further out? If the magazine takes an hour to get between the two then seven Earth years may have passed. With all the proofing that goes on the ( now much respected) SFX scribes have to guesstimate when the issue will be available in the shops. Frankly February is pretty damn accurate considering all the time variables. Well done one and all.

Andrew Naish

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