With F&SF going bi-monthly recently, times are clearly hard but I'm pretty  surprised at the way this has been done, assuming that ->this<- is an accurate report.

It feels like the owners were looking for an excuse to pull the plug, particularly as they've gone public before even telling Shawna, which I think is a particularly poor way to treat an employee.

I'm also surprised that considering subscriptions were good and advertising presumably still reasonable they didn't go into hiatus, poll subscribers and go e-zine.  I wouldn't be surprised if someone buys the title and doeas just that.
You can always hope!

I watched this Walt Disney film again last night for the first time in many years, and while the CGI holds up, and Ralph Richardson's wizard is original and has depth, what really struck me was the cleverness of the film's plot.  
For straight S&S fantasy I think it is a great example of how you can use all the tropes of a genre, and then subvert them to keep your story original and surprising.  Dragon, wizard, apprentice, king, princess, blacksmith, evil swordsman and comedy old bloke are all there but they never do what you expect and there are some quite pointed jabs at authority and religion on the way, and some very bleak moments.
An interesting film, a little lacking in tension, and with one absolutely excruciating 'love scene', overall it is still very watchable.  One of Disney's more unusual films.
And for my money it still has -the- best dragon of any film.
Breath in...
Breath OUT.

rock and rolled and a whole load of other stuff too.  2009 (including Christmas 2008) has been a pretty difficult year so far with an ailing father requiring daily care, and my sister loosing her husband in a car crash.
Slowly life is returning to some form of normality, though in terms of caring for dad that will never be as it was and I don't believe he will now ever regain his full health or mobility.
So it goes.  He's 91 at the end of this month and as a WW2 glider pilot, has literally been through the wars, surviving some desperate injuries and living with disability ever since.  Looking after him can be tough at times, but he deserves much consideration.
One side effect of all this is that I simply do not have the time, nor the energy to keep my leather work going (www.tinb.co.uk) and I have decided to mothball that project indefinitely.  I'll still be making a few things for pleasure, and for friends on request, but for the foreseeable future the Traveller in Black business is closed.
Which means that the free time I do have will be devoted to writing.  This year the ambition is to write 5,000 words a week (I tried 1,000 words a day but that is just not possible some days), stay focused, and write, write, write.
Many thanks to Terry Edge for the motivation and inspiration to do this!