I write in early February 2003, and already the sf year is full of event, gossip, anxiety, and bereavement. The most public bereavement is for the astronauts lost in the Columbia space shuttle disaster. As with other events terrible or wonderful in the still-young exploration of space, it yielded images of a new type and scale: in this case the grisly and horrifying depictions on the weather radar maps of the United States, showing a swath of debris (which we all know included human remains) scattered in a band like the path of a storm across four or more southern states. Such events inspire grief on a new scale. . . .