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Happy New Year, dear Analog readers, one and all. In my last column, I spent a lot of time looking back at some of the predictions and trends in the first quarter of the 21st century, yet I feel I only barely touched on maybe the most important change within the genre: the rise and boom in independent publishing. What better theme for my first Reference Library column of the next quarter century than to highlight that scene in modern speculative fiction? While there had been some early efforts at digital publishing—Stephen King released Riding the Bullet exclusively online and