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Dear GateWay Readers: First, let me take a moment to thank you for your loyal readership. You are the reason we put together this magazine each issue. Along with loving the Lord, and a strong compulsion to publish science fiction! And second, let me give you a little history lesson... When I started this "project" almost five years ago now, I was still working a full time job, and had the money to put out a print edition as well as this webzine. I also had a little less time with which to work on this, so from the beginning there has always been an editor on board, in addition to myself. (Our first Editor was Lawrence Green, who has continued on staff as Tech Support.) Things have changed over the years, and the passing of time has slowly altered both the complexity of my life as well as my plans for this publication. When I first began GateWay, I had the notion that a "companion" webzine would primarily be a good way of promoting a print version. Mr. Green was its Editor, and I concentrated on being Webmaster of this one. Still am, in fact. The plan was to build a subscription base and use the webzine as basically a free way of advertising for GateWay Publishing House, whose first "child" would be the paper edition, to be followed by other "print" endeavors, such as paperback books. I had been a lithographer for many years of my working life and had ink in my blood, so on top of being an advid science fiction nut, fond of fandom, art and writing, I thought this was a fine background for becoming a Professional Publisher. Especially since I'd had some experience with that end of things via the Amateur Press Associations (APAs) prevelent when I'd stumbled headlong into the genre in the 1950's. I published more than one of "fanzine" while growing up, cloistered in my room, isolated from my family, reading, writing, drawing, and "plotting." They simply didn't understand me...but fandom did! To make a long story short, I developed a heart problem at the beginning of 2004, that forced me into early retirement, and the money went south. And though I had additional time on my hands, most of it was spent running between specialists. The first thing that changed was my ability to continue a paper edition, which we ceased publishing. I say "we" at this point because by then God had sent me a second Editor in the person of John A.M. Darnell, who took on a boatload of work, making me look good during my illness and recuperation. This new lack of money forced me to lower what I was able to pay for stories, from $25, to $10, to $5 and finally to "sans payment." Being a writer myself, this was a difficult thing to do, seeing as how we authors secretly desire to become rich off our writing. The financial situation also forced me to abandon having an ad in the prozines each month -- after years of running one -- and which had worked well to garner submissions. So, the number of stories arriving also went south. We have really had to scramble these past two issues, and you might have noticed the number of stories per issue has dropped drastically. The original plan of publishing both a paper edition and a web edition went by the wayside, replaced by the cold realization that there would probably never be a regular print issue. Though I still hold out hope of perhaps issuing a print collection of the best stories annually. As well as actually getting around to doing the PDF version we keep hawking on our main page, but never seem to have gotten accomplished as yet. (Though I am really working on it!) In the meantime, thanks to John Darnell and our new Assistant Editor, Ann Wilkes, the webzine has continued uninterrupted for fifteen issues now, and I am grateful to them both, and to God for allowing us to survive in spite of the difficulties. Because of their faith and committment, they do an excellent job of working with the writers we do have, helping them to hone their writing talents, to make sure we have the best stories to still publish in our small nitch of the science fiction universe.
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