Cheryl Morgan announced on Monday that her popular web based Fanzine, Emerald City, will be ceasing publication over the next two to three months. Although the final decision to shut down was made two months ago, a public announcement was postponed until after the Hugo Award voting deadline. Emerald City began production in 1995 and over the past 11 years, has been nominated for several Hugo Awards, winning the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine in 2004.
Morgan stated that, “The reasons for this decision are many and varied. One of the least obvious is that I have a major logistical problem. It simply isn’t possible to run an operation like this when you don’t have a permanent home. In addition, over the past year or so I have become very disillusioned about both the quality of my own work and the general usefulness of online book reviews. The bottom line is that if you don’t think what you are doing is worthwhile then it is very difficult to maintain the level of commitment necessary to produce something like Emerald City.”
She plans on continuing with issues for August and September, but an October edition is questionable.
Cheryl urges anyone that has set PayPal to make repeating payments to Emerald City to cancel future payments. She is also, “offering to pay back any money donated to the [Fanzine] over the past year.”
We are sorry to hear this news as Emerald City was one of the better SciFi/Fantasy online zines on the net.