The good thing about launching Salon Futura at Worldcon was that I could go round sticking my iPad under people’s noses and pestering them to read it. The bad thing about launching at Worldcon is that many of the people there had no internet access and therefore could not spend any time on the site. Also many of you were at Dragon*Con instead. Most people should be back home by now, so I thought I should do a quick reminder post.

Issue #1 is online here. I’m very pleased with the content, which includes the following:

• Fabulous cover art by John Coulthart
• An interview with China Miéville in which he talks about The City and The City, Kraken, and his forthcoming science fiction novel.
• An interview with Lauren Beukes, who talks, amongst other things, about her script writer for the kids cartoon, URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika. Do check out the except from the series we included in which Lauren makes a cameo appearance as Rabid Rabbid.
• The first in our regular series of podcasts, The Salon. In this issue Gary K. Wolfe, Nnedi Okorafor and Fábio Fernandes join me to talk about the changing nature of the science fiction field.
• Sam Jordison claiming the high profile mainstream writer, E.L Doctorow, for steampunk.
• Jonathan Clements bidding fond farewell to the manga and anime genius, Satoshi Kon, who died recently.
• Karen Burnham highlighting some fine online short fiction
• And my own column talking about how the real world keeps creeping into science fiction and fantasy literature.

In addition to being free online, the magazine is available as an EPUB download. The audio and video are not included as the files are huge, but the magazine looks utterly fabulous on an iPad. One of my jobs now I’m back is to get it into the iBooks and Kindle stores (though I have to say it doesn’t look nearly so nice on a Kindle).

Also now I am back, I need to get the news service up and running. If you have any industry news, please send it to me. That should make the magazine’s Twitter feed worth following.

Because Salon Futura is part of the Wizard’s Tower Press project, it has to be a paying venue, not a fanzine. I very much want to establish the idea that people who write good non-fiction are just as much worth paying as people who write good fiction. And of course if my UK company is paying America writers that will help my visa application when I am in a position to make it. We are getting some income from advertising, and ebooks sales will also help once I get the magazine into the stores, but as ever we are very grateful for any donations you see fit to make.