I think the international appeal of SF is quite understandable since the kinds of people who like to read it, are, by the nature of the beast, interested in other cultures, of which other nations on Earth are the closest available example.

Usually if nobody hates a piece, nobody loves it, either; and a magazine which sets itself the goal of provoking thought is not doing its job if everybody agrees with what it does.

There may be something to the suggestion about the pace of technological change intimidating writers, though - it's been awfully hard to keep ahead of real developments.

It's most presumptuous to believe we already know all the answers and will never get any more big surprises.

This means I must pay close attention to the writing, but equally so to the scientific background - which sometimes means doing fairly involved calculations.

When something hasn't been around much for a while, and one example of it turns up and catches people's eyes, they go looking for more like it - until they get tired of it again.

I think the rising and falling popularity of areas like hard SF and far-future SF is, to a considerable extent, the same as any other fashion.