Since the June issue, I've been taking advantage of the all-to-brief mid-western summer to enjoy as much time as I can out in the beautiful weather with my family. I've also been working hard to get more of my fiction polished and out the door. That has meant less time for the scenarios. I make no apologies for that. This is a labor of love, not an obligation. At the same time, I believe in putting out a consistently high quality product, even if the only reward I get from it is the satisfaction I feel when I've done something well. This is a relatively skimpy issue in the scenario department, and one that I'm not totally satisfied with.

At the same time, there are good things in here. The Operation Torch scenario leads to an interesting situation-an America at war faces a constitutional crisis, a Red Scare, and the Soviets running amok in Asia. The maps from the 1939 atlas are interesting, though they are going to be for POD members only due to the amount of space they take up. POD members will see the end of Winston, and a second piece of Songbird.  They will also get a mystery map--a map that could only have come from an Atlas published within a matter of a year or two.  POD members will also notice a somewhat longer than normal section of comments on last issue of POD. It was a good issue, with a lot of thought-provoking stuff in it, and even 15 or so pages of comments don't really do it justice.