New Maps readers,

Thank you for bearing with me during the recent hiatus. I’ve used the time to get a lot of things done in the realms of life that aren’t to do with the magazine: among them, welcoming a new daughter, Willow, to my family late last month. Though the nights have been on the sleepless side since then, the Winter issue of New Maps has nonetheless joined the world as well.

If you’re a U.S. subscriber, your copy should already have come in the mail (unless the post office where you are is even more beleaguered than mine). In other countries, it will vary, but if it hasn’t arrived yet, it should soon.

If you’re not subscribed, you can get yours now from the Order page.

In this issue, find stories of what we leave behind, and what’s made of it by those who come after us: a team of secret-hunters who take a crack at a valuable abandoned data center; a librarian who pulls together clues from the last highly connected days to find an unsettling story of their end; a hermit whose hideout in a decommissioned nuclear plant is under threat from outside and, somehow, inside; a beloved machine that finds a new home. And stories of people trying to find ways forward: a man traveling through wreckage who finds his companion’s appetites disturbing but can’t seem to part from him; a scientist on a mission to find what genetics can do for life in a warming world; a man who stays behind in his home when everyone else has fled the climatic shift, but has never quite put his finger on why; a girl who has, with boundless cheer, started a new field club for cataloging what wildlife is doing amid the upheaval in the weather. As well find poetry and reflections on how new cultures develop when the center fails to hold. Welcome back to New Maps.

Auto-renewal alert—make sure your card’s not expired!

If you have an auto-renewing subscription, it may still not have renewed, if your card has expired. PayPal should try to send you notices about this, but they may be easy to miss. If you’re in any doubt, drop me a line to check on your subscription status at orders@new-maps.com. My internet time is somewhat irregular but I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Send your letters in

The tradition of the New Maps mailbag could use a little extra love this next issue around; with the long delay and a bag that turned up empty this time, the magazine is missing your voice.

Yeah, you. I know you have opinions about the state of the world lately. Not just because you have good taste in magazines, but because you have a pulse. Letters need not be specifically to do with what’s been in New Maps lately. Anything to do with the general decline of industrial civilization, and the consequences of its excess, is bang on topic, and that includes almost anything you see when you look out your window these days. I think maybe writing about a boulder would be off topic. (Though I’d be fascinated to be proved wrong.)

The Spring issue’s mailbag will be open until April 1; after that, go ahead and write anyway, and it’ll go to the Summer issue!

Year five

This issue marks the beginning of the fifth year of New Maps’ publication, and it only gets more relevant year after year. It’s now slightly outlasted its predecessor Into the Ruins, as well as innumerable ephemeral little zines and magazines that flag from lack of interest. To have made it this far is amazing, and I thank all of you for letting New Maps carve out a little, analog, idiosyncratic spot in the world’s conversation about the world’s state.

Nathanael Bonnell
Editor