Je 07.15 atm 2006.10.18, Dave MacLEOD skribis
>Is it increasing or decreasing? Compared with the population growth of
>the Earth, that is. There are two stories on Liberafolio.org right now
>about Gxangalo and Fonto closing:
>
>http://www.liberafolio.org/2006/ghangalovendata/
>http://www.liberafolio.org/2006/fontochesos/
>
>But then again Don always has the info on events here and
>there...what's the impression people have that have been around for
>the past few decades as opposed to me who has only been paying
>attention since the middle of 2005?

I wouldn't get too excited or worried over either of these losses.

Gxangalo isn't closed yet, though I personally suspect that it will 
go the way of all flesh at the end of this year; its owner, Flavio 
Rebello, has decided that he wants to dedicate all his effort to the 
Esperanto International TV, and is looking for someone to _buy_ the 
site from him. Whether he will find any takers is doubtful. Ah, well. 
Websites come and go, as I'm sure you're aware. There will be another 
one along soon.

(I personally regret, more than the disappearance of Gxangalo, the 
disappearance of elerno.net in China. Luckily, I found a new archive 
of the literary magazinelet "Penseo" in another place.)

The magazine "Fonto" has had a pretty good run, all things 
considered; as far as I know, the only Esperanto literary magazine 
that has lasted longer is "Literatura Foiro", which has been around 
for more than a third of a century now ("Fonto" goes back to 1980). 
Zamenhof's "La Revuo" lasted seven years; "Literatura Mondo", which 
is considered the model Esperanto literary magazine, was published in 
three separate periods that totalled about a dozen years or 
thereabouts. "La Nica Literatura Revuo", which I have been slowly 
putting on-line over the past few years, also lasted seven years. I 
think that "Norda Prismo" also lasted on the order of 12-15 years 
(with a one- or two-issue attempt to revive it in the early seventies).

Gersi Alfredo Bays, the publisher, has suggested that he is only 
taking a one-year break and that the magazine will reappear later. 
Frankly, I doubt it. Bays is in his seventies. To regain his 
subscriber base, he'd not only have to reestablish his network of 
subscription agents, but also restore the magazine to the quantity 
and quality it boasted in the eighties (it has lost much of both in 
the intervening period). This is not likely to happen.

I feel a lot of regret over losing "Fonto" (far less about Gxangalo, 
which I rarely visited). But I've been through this before. I 
remember feeling much the same, as a boy, when "Saturday Evening 
Post", what was really the last popular wide-circulation popular 
fiction magazine, disappeared (I remember lying on my stomach reading 
episodes of Leonard Wibberley's "The Mouse that Roared" in that 
magazine). The plethora of SF mags that graced my parents' night 
tables and bookshelves also disappeared over the years; today it's 
not that easy to find any at all (even The Other Change of Hobbit no 
longer carries "Analog" and "Asimov's" -- a distribution problem, I 
gather -- though you can still find them around if you know where to 
look, particularly in the magazine sections of the big chains such as 
Borders and Barnes & Noble). Not surprising to see, from time to 
time, the same phenomenon appearing in the Esperanto world. (*)

More interesting to me, in the world of content, is the report that 
42 Esperanto-speaking volunteers from China, Japan and Korea are now 
working on a translation of a "common history" textbook for those 
three nations that was originally published in 2005 in Chinese, 
Japanese and Korean. The book is expected to be published in 
Esperanto before next year's World Esperanto Congress in Yokohama by 
the three national Esperanto associations involved.

---

(*) I should also say a kind word about the long-lost "Collier's", 
which, when I was eight years old, regaled me with a series of 
beautifully illustrated articles called "We Will Conquer Space Soon" 
by, I think, Wernher von Braun. It was they that introduced the 
"wheel" space station that those who saw the old Disney movie 
"Conquest of Space" will remember. But "Collier's", like the "Post" 
and so many other great magazines of the era, is also long-gone.


-- Don HARLOW
http://www.webcom.com/~donh/don/don.html
Opinions (in English): http://www.harlows.org/don/opinions/
Esperanto (in English): http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/
Literaturo (Esperante): http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Literaturo