We found out what went wrong with Bobo. Last issue there was a kind of

     glitch in the Computer Corner. The page portrayed a kind of virus rather than

     there being the standard material of that feature. It seems also that the virus

     was not of the kind desired in the original arrangement of the page; what was

     wanted there was a screwed up program brought up to visibility to function

     as a form of hoax appartition.  But it seems that there was a possibility of the

     viewers seeing something like that as really being a virus and not perceiving

     the joke.  So instead a more blatant sighting was used.  Unfortunately this new

     presentation looked like a Goa'uld symbiote.  Bobo had all this information and

     evaluated a glitch out of it, noticed it was pressed to a hard drive or some such

     thing as that, and reacted to the symbiote-like apparition as an unforeseen

     eventuality; furthermore, his programming demanded that he delete all Goa'uld

     symbiotes. He was also aware that the editor was to write a vast speculative

     editorial for this issue and presumed that could refer to the possibility of his

     presence, room for robots and their doings in this grand cosmic view.  This

     would have been better when we were all portrayed as Star Trek crewmen, but

     Bobo's self-initiated compensatory action takes place when we have ourselves

     portrayed as seen below, before the commencement of the actual editorial.

     Here we stand, not like Martin Luther or General Custer or one taking a stand on some matter of present-day significance, but just standing here, on the commencement of our twenty-first issue, which might be said to represent our not only having been through the maturing process of adolescence, but having achieved young manhood as a magazine, or womanhood too if we had any actual secretaries. It's the age when we can definitively vote, if we want to. I suppose we'd all vote for Cthulhu for President, but if we did that I don't suppose any harm would come to us from doing so.

     Yet our netzine comes of age at an uncertain time, a time which tries men's souls and spirits, and we have no certain grasp of how things are or what we do now.  And that is why I have chosen to portray us as the crew of the Andromeda in the art for the editorial this edition.

     The reader may be surprised to learn that war is not a good or lofty ultimate objective for mankind.  True, it is, as supposed, an ultimate objective, but note that its quality is not adequate to portray man's ultimate aspirations as a progressing and changing “total entity” in a positive light.  Do we want to obliterate everything?  Or do we want instead to find new goals and purposes?  If man's end is ordained, who ordained it?  Hmmm.  We might suppose that a good and noble ordainer would ordain something of a more positive nature, a transference into new realms of which we have not even dreamed, or if we did dream it, there were, like, only intimations to our dreams, new realms which were only the tenuous suggestions of occasional, intermittent dreams on the part of mankind. Dreams are pretty good if they are not nightmares.  Dreamers are not a bunch of faggots, but this is what has frightened mankind away from doing more of that good dreaming.

     Look at our poetry this issue.  There are lofty sentiments in there, conveyed by the mode of verse, in verses not so practical and Machiavellian as the stories.  Sure, read those, too, for a “taste” of pragmatic reality.  Read the whole issue, gents, there are some flyers in it. You will find that our writers see beyond death, and go to heaven when they die. It is an important consideration when so many of those in the science fiction writing game with the mantles of deans or grand masters are passing away, leaving behind them what are considered by some to be apprentices or scholars.  Is an era ended?  Will we be in on a New Beginning?  Well, if you can't lend your hand to the beginning of a new road, just roll on out of the way, but keep your eyes open, because there is room for dreamers as well as workers, as the new age, the coming age of tomorrow, was not plotted by Plato and apparently will be better than Plato visualized.

     So let us all try to achieve roles as Citizens of the New Age in the vast RPG of the future.  You'll do well to have a printed copy (which you make yourself) of Surprising in hand, too, when you go forth to your New Age Citizenship.  For, as of now, Surprising is the Magazine of the New Age.

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