I’d forgotten to mention this until now, but F&SF recently ventured into the realm of web-only publishing. That is, we added a web-only column to the website. It’s written by Dave Truesdale (of Tangent Online fame), and is called, appropriately, “Off on a Tangent.” In this first installment, Dave discusses the pithy and sometimes controversial book reviews of Alfred Bester, who served as F&SF‘s book reviews editor for two years or so.

If you like the column, and you’d like to see it continue, then be sure to take note of the disclaimer at the bottom of the article:

Remember when National Lampoon said “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.”? Well, we don’t have anything comparable planned for Mr. Truesdale, but since this column represents our first foray into Web-only publishing, we’ve decided thus: as long as one person uses the PayPal link below to buy a subscription, we’ll continue running the column.

In other words, Buy a subscription or we’ll kill this column. “Buy a subscription or this kitten dies?”

So go take a look and report back. What do you think? Do you like the column? Do you like the idea of a web-only column, but dislike the column itself? Opinions? Thoughts? Concerns?

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Here’s what we bought this month: a new shadowy fantasy from Fred Chappell (set in the same world as the one he sold us in May); a linguistic first-contact tale from Sheila Finch; a lit’ry fantasy novella about magic and millers from Ian R. MacLeod; and a subtle horror tale from Don Webb. I don’t normally mention non-fiction in this space, but there were two notable purchases, aside from our regulars: a tribute piece from Neil Gaiman for our upcoming special author issue (who the issue is dedicated to is a secret–or at least it is until Gordon says it’s okay to talk about), and a new book review column from John Kessel. (Rob Killheffer’s column has been discontinued; I’m not sure yet if Kessel will be signing on to do a regular column, or if this is just a one-shot.)

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