A small milestone passed me by almost without my noticing. That is, the Futures SF story in last week’s Nature was, if you count the concurrent Futures stream in Nature Physics, the 250th entry in the column to see the light of other days day.

As some of you know, 100 from our archive have been published as this handsome anthology

now out in paperback (and also as an e-book for Amazon’s Kindle e-reader), in which you’ll find the true reconstructed plausible history of the genesis and evolution of the Futures column since its inception in Nature’s 130th birthday issue on 4 November, 1999.

For now, I’d like to repeat just one thing – that none of it would have been possible without the indulgence of Philip Campbell, Nature’s Editor-in-Chief, who has allowed me to commission, edit, select, prune, weed and publish without any hindrance whatsoever, entirely at my own discretion. This has allowed me to get away with lesbian robots mentioning the word ‘shit’ murder without demur, and even with encouragement.

So, thanks, Phil.

Oh yes, one more thing. One of the functions of the Futures column is to encourage good fiction from people who might never have published before.

The one about the lesbian robots was written by a senior citizen in Alaska who’d never written any fiction in her life. I’m getting lots of great submissions from a medical doctor in Singapore, and am cultivating the incredible natural talent of a 15-year-old high-school student.

If I had an ambition, it is this – that some stellar writer will, one day, step up to receive a literary award and say something like, ‘you know, none of this would have happened without that nice editor at Nature who published my first ever story’.