Ah, December—after a full calendar year of IROSF, it almost seems like...

Wait. Did I just say "a full calendar year"? Twelve issues? Yes! We did it, folks! You may remember back in January's editorial when I told you that 2009 would be the year we managed to do it, and everyone on the IROSF team has been working hard to make sure that it happened. I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone on staff for devoting their time and energy to getting the magazine out every four weeks or so, our contributors for providing us with material that we get excited about publishing, and of course, our readers for supporting us and reminding us why we work so hard. It all means so much to us. It is our readership and the positive feedback we receive that keeps us excited about putting out this magazine month after month, and what gets us fired up about reaching milestones like this one.

To keep us alive and afloat, keep reading, keep telling your friends, keep donating when you can or purchasing merchandise from the IROSF Café Press store. Keep reminding your friends that we sell ad space—if we could fill up our ad space every month, we'd have plenty of financial resources to keep IROSF up and running.

As it stands, we're looking toward new financial options. Any long-time reader of IROSF knows that we've been "cash flow negative" since the beginning, and it's finally catching up with us. The fundraising party at Orycon was encouraging, but overall didn't bring us up to where we really need to be. As such, we're going in for a new plan. In January, we'll be having a fund drive. There will be several price points at which to donate, and we hope to bring in some fun incentives as well. I'm hearing rumblings from Bluejack that if this drive isn't successful, we may be going the way of those other magazines that have gone before us—so keep an eye out for the fund drive next month.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's focus on our good news! First, I'd like to introduce our new Managing Editor, David Noonan. David has been a newspaper reporter, a writer, and an editor, so we're very excited to have him on board with us. He's contributed to this issue quite a bit and starting next month, he'll be sending out those monthly email reminders that let you know when a new issue's gone live. (What? You don't get that email? Well, that's easily fixed—just sign up for a free subscription and you'll never miss a new issue!)

We also have another new column for you. Working in the gaming industry myself, I'm very excited to introduce "Gamnivore," by Corey Rixle—our first column devoted to SF games. Corey will examine games from tabletop to console to computer, focusing not just on the gaming aspect, but on the story that each game presents and what it's like to interact with this world or that. His first column, "Post-Singularity, but Post Office Speed," focuses on Eclipse One.

This issue wraps up our sixth year of publication. With January will come a new year full of new challenges and new endeavors for all of us. (Some of you may even be gearing up for next year's Clarion!) With that in mind, I invite you to read and enjoy our first twelfth issue of IROSF!