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First and Last Issue of Infinite Matrix

Posted by michael on from the living-in-internet-time dept.

Code Fixer writes: "The first (and perhaps last) issue of The Infinite Matrix is up." The one and only issue of a would-be science fiction magazine. Good stuff.

1 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. A product of financial euphoria by Allen+Varney · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Business people have a boosterism neurosis and are seriously detached from harsh reality. Everybody reads FORTUNE and SUCCESS, but nobody subscribes to BANKRUPTCY and FAILURE.

    This salient quotation from Week Two of Bruce Sterling's Infinite Matrix blog, "Schism Matrix," could describe the thinking that inspired Matrix.net to launch an online SF magazine in the first place. The company wanted to acquire such a cachet of cool among faanish computer geeks that everyone would want to work for them. (I suspect that the company owners, SF fans themselves, also were willing to pay big bucks for this pretext to hang out with cool SF people like Sterling.)

    This kind of hiring strategy only makes sense when the job market, and company management, have both gone completely giddy. It seemed that way to me, back when editor Eileen Gunn talked about this project at last year's ArmadilloCon SF convention in Austin, Texas. Still, it's neither good manners nor good politics to say, "So, you're caught up in a financial euphoria, are you?"

    Another irony of the Sterling comment above is that FORTUNE was the only magazine I saw that pointed out the bubble before it burst, albeit in the late stages. Somebody there wasn't detached from harsh reality. But few paid attention, because pointing out bubbles isn't good manners or good politics.