It is rarely difficult to distinguish between a ray of sunshine and a Scotchman with a grievance.

Thank you, P.J. Wodehouse. However, you may be surprised to learn that while it’s rarely difficult, it’s also exceedingly dangerous. There is a reason that the Americans called those mines claymores.

Founding members of the Simulacrum Glee Club.

I have a grievance, and it has nothing to do with the bronchitis from hell. Issue 7 still [deep sigh] contained a needless (i.e., n greater than 0) number of floating hyphens, which of course I didn’t discover until the copies came back from the printer. I’ve turned PageMaker’s auto-hyphenation off (because it’s so unpredictable, clumsy and heavy-handed) and have instituted a new policy of no manual hyphenation. Half measures, like half truths, tend to fall on the floor buttered side down (because they were buttered on the wrong side in the first place, so I’m told). Yer rrr just gonna have tay mak doo with some verrrra rrrragged rrrright edges, laddie. Och aye.

And then there was the gaffe (from Old Australopithecus: to poke in the eye with a sharp stick) in the previous issue. The review of Battles for the Factories was lovingly crafted by Art Lupinacci but was mistakenly credited to another Art. I am distressed, and apologize unconditionally. It was Art, for Art’s sake!

The change in the last issue to three equal columns per page means more editorial content; probably between 10 and 20 per-cent more. In effect, Simulacrum has grown by five pages, but with no change in printing or postage costs. Now I know that these are very rough estimates, but regardless of the actual numbers, the fact remains that Simulacrum now provides more than it did before. Those of you who are reading Simulacrum just to humor me will likely find this additional material distressing, and so you may wish to Remember the Claymore.

Science Fiction, Fantasy and Future History have not been well-represented in Simulacrum up to now. This has more to do with my own lack of expertise in these areas than a conscious editorial policy. I am delighted to be able to announce that this unfortunate state of affairs promises to be corrected with the arrival of fellow Canadian Mark Wegierski, whose bona fides appear elsewhere in this issue. His writing speaks for itself. Let me just say that anyone who can refer intelligently to Tolkien and Nietzsche in the same article can’t be all bad. And is probably not a mouth breather.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m giving some consideration to reprinting earlier issues of Simulacrum. But even if this project proceeds, it may be a little while before reprinted sets are available. Those of you who cannot wait to see some of the earlier issues may wish to consider visiting Russ Lockwood’s MagWeb site (http://www.magweb.com) where you will find issue 1 right now, and more as time goes by. Yes, this is a blatant plug, and no, I’m not ashamed.

Up to now, I’ve had Simulacrum printed on three-hole-punched paper so that you can store your issues in generic three-ring binders. The single staple keeps each copy separate for ease of stuffing in the envelopes and to minimize my collating problems. The absence of stiff covers just helps keep the overall price down. But if you’d like to see a change, abandoning the punched paper for example, please let me know. Around here, change is not just something you’re supposed to get from a vending machine.

Simulacrum’s Man in Taiwan, Harrison Chen, made his quarterly telephone call to me the other day. Harrison is a poet, physicist, etymological linguist, computer nerd, wargamer and more, but not necessarily in that order. Our discussion was most eclectic and covered a lot of ground, some of which will become more apparent as time goes by. For now, let me just say that you could do worse than to remember the initials UWF (pronounced yoof with all the dignity you can muster under the circumstances). You will also be hearing more from Mr. Chen before too long. You have been warned.

Alea iacta est.