New Maps readers,

The latest New Maps is on its way! U.S. subscribers should see their copies arrive around the 20th or a few days thereafter; in other countries timing will be somewhat different. If you’re not subscribed, you can get your copy right here at the Order page. Digital copy? You can get the issue on Payhip.

This has, entirely thanks to chance, turned out to be an almost fully themed issue. What’s it about?

A global diet of less resources doesn’t mean everyone will live with less: as long as there’s been money, there have been those with lots of it and those without. In this issue we meet some of those at the extremes. A nervous new executive attempting to impress his new colleagues, and a brother and sister whose last modest wealth has just been shredded by a tornado. Two children trying to get their mother to a hospital although cars are the preserve of a wealthy few, and an oilman who jumps on the latest technological attempt at making the rich immortal. And the opening of a novella that follows a clan of poor marsh farmers in the shadow of high-life condo perches. Find as well the story of a husband’s promise with unforeseeable ramifications, and poetry, letters, and two new columns, here in the latest New Maps.

Deadlines

If you have a story you’re working on for the Summer issue, now is a good time to get the finishing touches onto it. Submissions for New Maps No. 5:3 are due on June 2. And get those keys a-tapping for some conversation in the Letters section! Letters are due on June 30.

Your Field Notes Wanted

One of this issue’s columns is from yours truly (my first in over a year), and without trying to cover the same ground here, one thing it’s about is the difficulty of connecting the thing that serves as ultimate cause of much of what’s happening around the world — resource depletion — with its effects that we can actually see on a day-by-day level. This is what the occasional Field Notes department is about. We are (or at least, so I assert in my column) entering a period where effects will suround us, sometimes to the extent that we don’t even realize they’re what we’re seeing. What do you see that strikes you as a symptom of terminal resource decline, or of the environmental degradation that has come about from resource overuse? I don’t need a big production or a thesis; just a paragraph or two of observation will do, and the more of you who write in, the clearer the picture. Head your email with “Field note” and get it to me by June 30.

As ever, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

Nathanael Bonnell
Editor