Ray's Cloudy Crystal Ball
by Raymond M. Coulombe

The paper magazine is in trouble, and it's not my fault. I know, I know, I've said it before, but it's still true.

If you go by a magazine rack, it looks like the paper magazine is doing well. The racks are full, aren't they? Full of what? Let's just say the value of most magazines would be greater if they were printed on soft absorbent tissue stock.

Where are all the Science Fiction magazines? The Fantasy magazines? To be sure, certain specialty stores still have good selections, but it's almost like buying porn was in the 50's; you need to know where to go and who to talk to. Most magazines rely on subscriptions. You can still get your speculative fiction fix delivered to your door. (In a plain brown wrapper, not to tip off the neighbors?)

Here's where I dig out my cloudy crystal ball. Never mind those three finger holes that sort of make it look like a bowling ball. It's a tool for divining the future. Believe me, it works. Well, it works like I do, occasionally and not all that enthusiastically. Still, that's good enough to see what's coming down the pike.

I grew up in a paper mill town. I know something about making paper. I also came to a decision, at a very early age, that while I didn't know that I wanted to do in life, it certainly didn't involve making paper. I digress. Paper making takes a lot of energy. Think your fuel prices are high? Try fueling up all those, chain saws, tree harvesters, skidders, cherry pickers, chippers, wood trucks, and other machines needed to get the wood out of the woods. It's been a long time since they've floated logs down the river in the spring flood.

At the mill, there are all kinds of processes and chemicals for different paper grades and applications. Then the paper has to be cut down to printing stock. Now move all that paper around using trains and trucks. Send it off to the printer, where all that industrial magic happens.

Every stage of the process uses energy. Most of that energy comes from petroleum products. The chemicals involved were either derived from petroleum, or petroleum was used to make them. Petroleum's reach is a long one. For example, soybean based ink is make from soybeans grown with petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides.

The point is, making a magazine is energy intensive. So, you may ask, why are magazines still fairly cheap? Up until now, energy was fairly cheap. That age has come to an end. The low hanging energy fruit has been picked. At one time petroleum just oozed from the ground in semi civilized regions of the world, places like Pennsylvania.

Now oil comes from places even less civilized than Texas. It comes from the frozen north, burning deserts, deep water operations in the path of category 5 hurricanes, and from countries where the old repressive Communist regimes were thought of as the good times.

The light sweet, easily processed crude is in decline. Now it's sour crude with high sulphur content and even things like oil shale, which really isn't oil at all and on a bad day takes more energy to process than it yields.

No problem, you say, there are always alternatives. Yes, indeed there are, but you just can't take the alternatives and plug them into the system the same way that petroleum was. The system has to change. Priorities have to be made. That's coming from a guy who has a significant solar electric system for his house and runs his cars on waste vegetable oil.

Paper is made from trees. It could be made from hemp, but that's a whole ‘nother editorial for a different zine, dude. Now a guy with some trees to sell could sell it for low quality paper making, like the paper used in magazines, or he could sell it to someone desperate to heat his house -a guy who can no longer afford heating oil. Everything is connected in one way or another.

The last time paper was in short supply was during a little political dispute called WWII. One of the casualties of that shortage was the pulp fiction market. A lot of writers and publishers made a good living up until that paper shortage. The market never did return in anything like its former self. Sadly, a lot of pulp fiction writers had to get real jobs. The very thought of it saddens and depresses me.

Once again, this time due to energy shortages, paper is getting expensive. Shipping is getting expensive. The costs of putting out a paper magazine will continue to increase. Writer's payments have already been shaved to the bone, so there are few savings to be made there. People paying more for the necessities, gas to go to work, heat, and food, have less money to spend on luxuries like magazines and medical care.

Internet publications are not immune from these pressures. Everything is connected. Even the Quantum Muse crew has some contact with the real world. Fortunately, we are piggy backing on systems: the Internet, power grid, and the communication grid, that have value to society. On the ship of modern industrial society, we are the rats along for the ride in the hold.

It does take a little energy to run a computer, but a lot less than to heat water for a shower. We know what kind of choices the Quantum Muse readers will make when push comes to shove. When it comes down to either drinking warm beer or reading Quantum Muse, we might be in trouble. By the way, drinking warm beer is terribly sophisticated and European. (I'm looking out for my future.)

My crystal ball shows bad times for magazines. It also shows that the end of cheap oil will do more to the world than that, but that's another editorial for another day. We just hope things don't get so bad that people don't have the resources for reading a free Internet zine. We also hope our readers will have the lights on, a full belly, and people who love them, but we are just incurable romantics that way.

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