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.

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.

Ideally, I'd like every issue to include a diverse group of stories that meet the qualifications sketched above, but covering a wide range of specific matter and flavour.

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

There are a significant number of people who appreciate what we do, and most of them gravitate to Analog because this is where they can find it. The other magazines tend to share their audiences, which may result in each of them having a smaller market share.

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.

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