Last Thursday US time, Friday here  in NZ, I and many others bade a sorrowful farewell to SF Signal:

All Good Things

From my perspective, SF Signal has been a Very Good Thing indeed from the first time I detected the signal. As I explained in my personal valedictory post, that was in 2010 when SF Signal linked to my blog celebration for the publication of The Heir of Night.

Encouraged by the friendly response that followed first contact, I maintained communication and within a year or so had penned a number of guest posts for SF Signal:

• Looking at the Stars: Why Epic Fantasy Keeps Speaking To Us — which was a Top 25 post for the month;
• Having Fun with Epic Fantasy: “Making the Grand Tour”; “The Band Of Brothers”; and “The Soul-sucking Sword.”

A little later, I commenced a more regular series, interviewing fellow Antipodean speculative fiction authors about their work. Fun With Friends  ran from June 2012 until October 2013, during which time I interviewed thirteen fellow authors. Last year I commenced another series, Fantasy Heroines That Rock My World, that was still running when the decision to shut down SF Signal was made.

So why close? As John said in the last post:

“The reason is boringly simple: time. As the blog has grown, so has its demands for our attention. That is time we would rather spend with our families.”

Despite my personal regret for the termination of the Signal, I completely understand. Even wee author blogs like mine take a reasonable amount of time. SF Signal had been running for twelve years and was a major fan site — but that simple word ‘fan’ also means that all the work needed to keep the site going and continue being the wonderful place it has been, was entirely voluntary.

Yet SF Signal was not only large, it operated to a very professional standard: something that doesn’t just happen through wishing and wanting, but through a lot of hard work. The sort of work that is going to cut into family time.

Is there another solution for sites like SF Signal? One path John, JP, and the team considered was downsizing the site, but felt that was a retrograde step — and one, I suspect, that would have been hard to pull off/sustain having created an expectation of what SF Signal meant.

The only other path would be to try and make the shift to semi-pro or professional site, but that is notoriously difficult to pull off and comes with not inconsiderable financial risk for those who attempt to do so. Not to mention probably requiring even more hard work for those trying to make it happen.

So, however sadly, I really do understand the SF Signal decision — and join together with so many others in the speculative fiction community in waving a sorrowful farewell.

“I’ve loved being part of the SF Signal community. I would like to thank all the regulars, including Paul, Patrick, JP, and Kristin, to name just a few, for supporting my more irregular contributions throughout that time. Most of all, though, I’d like to thank John, for his unfailing friendliness and openness to my ideas for posts on a fantastic theme – but also for his support for a SFF newcomer from the far side of the world.

Thank you, John, for SF Signal, a SFF site that has rocked my world for the past six years.

As we say where I come from: haere ra – farewell.”

~ Helen Lowe