Editorial

Pleeze Help!

HOLIDAYS ARE COMING. THE GOOSE is getting fat. Please put a penny in the “Perihelion” hat so we can continue to bring you great science fiction, articles, and comics throughout the new year. Think for a minute what all of this goodness is worth to you. By comparison, a Big Mac (depending upon where you live ) costs roughly $3.57. Two adult tickets to “Thor: The Dark World” in Real3D cost $21.50. A pair of Skechers Woman’s Weekender Fashion Sneakers cost $59.95.

Aren’t we worth the price of shoes, a movie, even a fast food hamburger?

Now picture what the world would be like without “Perihelion.”

First off, you’d need to surf over to another online science fiction magazine for the stories. There are many, but none specializing in the kind of “hard” science fiction known for its gripping adventures, sense of wonder, and colorful characters. So you might wind up slogging through narratives that are more speculative than scientific. Or fantastic. Are magical ponies, elves, and fairies really your cup of tea? Buckets of blood? Steampunk? Gasp! (To be fair, in the right hands, steampunk isn’t that bad, and it is more scientific than, say, deals with the devil.)

Next, where do you go for your comic strip fix? Jason Yungbluth’s (one of our own staff illustrators) “Weapon Brown” phenomenon aside, the Internet is awash in webcomics. You’ve got lots of twentysomething strips dealing with relationships, dating, and family life. There are anime-styled manga populated with magical girls, talking animals, and yaoi scenarios. There’s cartoon porn, too.

Articles? Science news on most news sites is watered down and pablum-ized for the lowest common denominator; that means high school level, max. But you could pay money for access to the many peer reviewed scholarly publications that abound in cyberspace, assuming you have multiple Ph.D.s. That could get expensive. Better to give a fraction of the subscription monies to “Perihelion” and get a variety of articles on many scientific fronts, as well as literary criticism from some of the best critics in the field.

If this alone isn’t enough to convince you to open your purses and wallets, let’s look at some cost free alternatives.

We could mutate “Perihelion” into a kind of blogazine—one or two brand-new stories per month, with the rest of the magazine converted into moderated message boards, each one a different topic, on which readers could post messages, or stories. Imagine that. Anybody could post any story without any quality controls or editorial judgment. On second thought, maybe you don’t want to imagine that.

We could morph “Perihelion” into a fanzine. Oh boy! Again, you might have one or two stories per month, but mostly endless gushing over the cast of “The Hunger Games” movies. Lots of fuzzy smartphone snapshots of “ye editors” doing crazy things. Maybe for effect we could produce mimeographed editions of the magazine like back in the day. Does anybody know if mimeographs even still exist?

We could open up “Perihelion” as a magazine of speculative fiction. How does that save money? Good stories that aren’t as saleable because they don’t fit into any particular genre can be had on the cheap, if not for free. Absorbing tales about shopping for the perfect padded bra. Benny Rosen’s Bar Mitzvah.

At first thought you might be saying to yourself that we don’t have to pay for material. After all, isn’t publication and exposure value enough? Yes, but writers want to get paid for what they produce. Keeps them off the streets, the time clocks at Home Depot, and the unemployment lines. Publications that exchange actual money for manuscripts rank higher up on the food chain. What remains for the non-paying markets are the leftovers. Here’s an example of what you get for free:

Udvar Sadjniac raised his glass for the third time before he noticed how really very big the moon was in the sky tonight. Yes Darvon IV was some special place he was thinking when he noticed the bug on the shiny green smooth bar top where his elbow was leaned he swatted at it. The little grey bug with six legs scooted to the side and drew its weapon and shot a hole right through Udvar’s glass that he had lifted for the third time before he noticed how really very ...

Like it? This is one alternate reality facing “Perihelion” without reader support.

The point is ... drop whatever you are thinking of doing within the next five minutes. Click on the “donate” button to the right of this heartfelt plea, and send some money to keep “Perihelion” doing what it does best, and what you surf on over here for. You can give up one Big Mac per year. You already have plenty of shoes. Catch that movie when it is available on DVD. Can you ever have enough of “Perihelion?” We didn’t think so.

Postscript: Do you shop at Amazon.com? You will notice there are a number of Amazon products advertised throughout the “Perihelion” website. We are a sales affiliate of Amazon. We get a small referral fee for products purchased via these ads. Clicking on any one of them will take you to Amazon. But you don’t have to buy the specific product shown. Once on Amazon, the computers recognize you as having come from “Perihelion” and anything you purchase from that point on is credited to us. We get our percentage; it doesn’t cost you a penny more. So feel free to order that $300 HD television for yourself or set of nonstick cookware for the in-laws. We’ll get our cut. It’s a painless way to send some money our way without actually sending us any money.

Sam Bellotto Jr.