It’s a little after ten o’clock on Sunday morning and I’m sitting quietly in the living room, nursing a mild hangover and listening to Neil Young. I picked up his Live at Massey Hall 1971 a while ago, and didn’t really get a chance to listen to it right away. I ripped it for the iPod, but that never means much, shuffle being what it is.  Anyhow, I listened to it through a couple times last night, and it’s extraordinary. Young sits down, solo, in a hall and plays a bunch of songs he’s just written (as most everyone would know, songs that would become Harvest), and holds the audience in the palm of his hand. I saw him play live in 1997 and I know realise that his voice was already shot, and he was half way to being the self-parody that he’s become, but for a while there he was magnificent.

Marianne and I are going to take the girls out for dim sum and maybe a quiet wander through a bookshop, which is a pleasant enough way to spend a rainy Sunday. For the moment, though, the house is surrounded by kids. We have a bunch of young ones who live next door, and they usually end up running round and round out place, chasing each other, and playing. It’s loud, but they usually enjoy it. I’m also getting ready to read a new Michael Swanwick story, which seems like a good thing to do. I do need to get ON with my reading, though. It’s not long till the year’s best has to be handed in.

There have been a lot of wonderful observations in the comments thread responding to my comments on this week’s changes at the SF Book Club. They’ve prompted a few thoughts. First, the SF Book Club isn’t dead yet. It’s my speculation that it will be folded into the main club, but that’s not been announced by the company. So, if you are a member, please don’t give up yet. I know of at least three original anthologies in process at the Club, all of which deserve your support. And, no doubt, there are some fine omnibuses to come too. These are all books that were set in motion by Ellen or Andy, so supporting them seems like a worthwhile thing to do. Second, I’d love to hear more about what the Book Club has meant to you. I’ve never been eligible to join (being located outside the US), but it’s always looked terrific to me. Given that it’s been mailing out great fiction since 1954, I’m sure it’s been important to countless readers and writers, so I’d love to hear what it’s meant to you.

On Monday Publishers Weekly reported that Bertelsmann would overhaul its Book Club business, restructuring a number of specialty book clubs and eliminating 280 jobs. It also announced that it would close Madison Park Press, its 18-month-old original publishing arm, to focus on its book club business.

The impact of these decisions on the science fiction community was immediate. While there have been no official announcements, it appears that both long-serving Science Fiction Book Club Editor-in-Chief Ellen Asher and Senior Editor Andrew Wheeler have lost their positions with the company. Given that they were the only editors working for the fifty-four-year-old SFBC, it seems likely that Bertelsmann will ultimately combine the SFBC with its main Doubleday Book Club.

Bertelsmann’s decision to close Madison Park Press will also impact on the SF community. Although the SFBC has primarily reprinted existing trade books, it has a long history of publishing exclusive omnibus volumes, and has recently published a number of original anthologies edited by the likes of Marvin Kaye, Mike Resnick, Gardner Dozois, and Jack Dann, one of which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology last year. Although Bertelsmann’s announcement makes it clear that it will honor existing commitments (and my own queries have confirmed this), it seems certain that the books currently under contract will be the final original books to be published by the SFBC for the forseeable future.

It’s too early to say what the long-term impact of these decisions on the science fiction field will be. Certainly, losing highly respected and knowledgeable editors like Asher and Wheeler has got to be a bad thing for the industry, and any contraction of the SFBC, which has a history of providing access to economical editions of new science fiction and fantasy direct to readers that stretches back to 1953, would be enormously disappointing.

On a more personal note, I have been working with Andrew Wheeler at the SFBC since 2003, when we worked on the first volume of the ‘Best Short Novels’ series. During the past four years we’ve assembled four books (BSN: 2004; 2005; 2006; and 2007) that I’m incredibly proud of, and were in the midst of preparing another one (an original anthology called Godlike Machines). Andy, Ellen, Mike McCormack, and the various other people that I dealt with in design, accounting and so on were all highly professional and a pleasure to deal with. I can only hope that things will work out well for all of them. I’d certainly be happy to work with any of them again, and hope that I get the chance to do so.

Andy Wheeler has posted about the recent changes at the SF Book Club. I don’t know what the changes mean, but the news is bad. I can only hope that things work out for Andy. He’s really one of the good ones, and has always been a delight to deal with.