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The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (usually referred to as F&SF) is a U.S. fantasy and science fiction magazine, first published in 1949 by Mystery House, a subsidiary of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Press. Editors Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas had approached Spivak in the mid-1940s about creating a fantasy companion to Spivak's existing mystery title, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. The first issue was titled The Magazine of Fantasy, but the decision was quickly made to include science fiction as well as fantasy, and the title was changed correspondingly with the second issue. F&SF was quite different in presentation from the existing science fiction magazines of the day, most of which were in pulp format: it had no interior illustrations, no letter column, and text in a single-column format, which in the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley "set F&SF apart, giving it the air and authority of a superior magazine".

F&SF quickly became one of the leading magazines in the science fiction and fantasy fields, with a reputation for publishing literary material and including more diverse stories than its competitors. Well-known stories that appeared in its early years include Richard Matheson's "Born of Man and Woman", and Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee, a novel of an alternative history in which the South has won the American Civil War. McComas left for health reasons in 1954, but Boucher continued as sole editor until 1958, winning the Hugo Award for Best Magazine that year, a feat his successor, Robert Mills, repeated in the next two years. Mills was responsible for publishing Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys, Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, and the first of Brian Aldiss's Hothouse stories. The first few issues mostly featured cover art by George Salter, Mercury Press's art director, but other artists soon began to appear, including Chesley Bonestell, Kelly Freas, and Ed Emshwiller.

In 1962, Mills was succeeded as editor by Avram Davidson. When Davidson left at the end of 1964, Joseph Ferman, who had bought the magazine from Spivak in 1954, took over briefly as editor, though his son Edward soon began doing the editorial work under his father's supervision. At the start of 1966, Edward Ferman was listed as editor, and four years later, he acquired the magazine from his father and moved the editorial offices to his house in Connecticut. Ferman remained editor for over 25 years, and published many well-received stories, including Fritz Leiber's "Ill Met in Lankhmar", Robert Silverberg's "Born with the Dead", and Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. In 1991, he turned the editorship over to Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who began including more horror and dark fantasy than had appeared under Ferman. In the mid-1990s, circulation began to decline; most magazines were losing subscribers and F&SF was no exception. Gordon Van Gelder replaced Rusch in 1997, and bought the magazine from Ferman in 2001, but circulation continued to fall, and by 2011, it was below 15,000. Charles Coleman Finlay took over from Van Gelder as editor in 2015. Sheree Renée Thomas succeeded Charles Coleman Finlay, becoming the magazine's 10th editor in the fall of 2020.

Lawrence Spivak
The first magazine dedicated to fantasy, Weird Tales, appeared in 1923; it was followed in 1926 by Amazing Stories, the first science fiction (sf) magazine. By the end of the 1930s, the genre was flourishing in the United States, nearly twenty new sf and fantasy titles appearing between 1938 and 1941. These were all pulp magazines, which meant that despite the occasional high-quality story, most of the magazines presented badly written fiction and were regarded as trash by many readers. In 1941, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine appeared, edited by Fred Dannay and focusing on detective fiction. The magazine was published in digest format, rather than pulp, and printed a mixture of classic stories and fresh material. Dannay attempted to avoid the sensationalist fiction appearing in the pulps, and soon made the magazine a success.

In the early 1940s Anthony Boucher, a successful writer of fantasy and sf and also of mystery stories, got to know Dannay through his work on the Ellery Queen radio show. Boucher also knew J. Francis McComas, an editor who shared his interest in fantasy and SF. By 1944 McComas and Boucher became interested in the idea of a fantasy companion to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and spoke to Dannay about it. Dannay was interested in the idea, but paper was scarce because of World War II. The following year Boucher and McComas suggested that the new magazine could use the Ellery Queen name, but Dannay knew little about fantasy and suggested instead that they approach Lawrence Spivak, the owner of Mercury Press, which published Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

In January 1946, Boucher and McComas went to New York and met with Spivak, who let them know later in the year that he wanted to go ahead. At Spivak's request they began acquiring material for the new magazine, including a new story by Raymond Chandler, and reprint rights to stories by H.P. Lovecraft, John Dickson Carr, and Robert Bloch. Spivak initially planned the first issue (for which Boucher and McComas were proposing the title Fantasy and Horror) for early 1947, but repeatedly delayed the launch because of poor newsstand sales of digest magazines. He also suggested that it should be priced at 35 cents an issue, which was higher than the original plan, to provide a financial buffer against poor sales. In May 1949 Spivak suggested a new title, The Magazine of Fantasy, and in August a press release announced that the magazine would appear in October. On October 6, 1949, Spivak, Boucher and McComas held a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Edgar Allan Poe and to launch "a new fantasy anthology periodical". Invitees included Carr, Basil Rathbone, and Boris Karloff.

The first issue, published by Fantasy House, a subsidiary of American Mercury, sold 57,000 copies, which was less than Spivak had hoped for, but in November he gave Boucher and McComas the go-ahead for another issue. The title was changed to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (almost always abbreviated to F&SF by both fans and science fiction historians) to reflect the contents. Sales of the second issue were strong enough for Spivak to commit further, and the magazine's future became more assured, despite the difficulties caused by the fact that both Boucher and McComas lived on the west coast, whereas the magazine's publishing offices were in New York. The publishing schedule moved to bimonthly with the December 1950 issue. The pay rate for the early issues was two cents per word, or $100 for short pieces, which was competitive with Astounding Science Fiction, the leading sf magazine of the day. By 1953 the rates had changed to three-and-a-half cents per word for stories under 3,000 words.

In 1951, McComas, who had a full-time job in sales on top of his role as editor of F&SF, was forced to reduce his workload for health reasons. Boucher then did most of the reading and editing, while McComas reviewed the results and occasionally vetoed a story. In August the following year the schedule switched to monthly. In 1954 Spivak sold his shares in Mercury Press to his general manager, Joseph Ferman; that year also saw McComas's departure—his health had deteriorated to the point where he had to give up the editing post completely.

The Fermans and Gordon Van Gelder

In 1957 Ferman launched a companion magazine, Venture Science Fiction, which was intended to focus on more action-oriented fiction than F&SF. Boucher was unable to take on the extra work, so Robert P. Mills, who had been the managing editor for F&SF, became Venture's editor, with Boucher in an advisory role. Later that year Ferman sold Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine to Bernard Davis, who was leaving Ziff-Davis to start his own publishing venture. Ferman retained F&SF, though Boucher departed, and Mills became the editor of F&SF while remaining managing editor of Queen's magazine. Mills stayed for over three years, leaving at the end of 1961 to spend more time working as a literary agent, and Ferman replaced him with Avram Davidson, whose name first appeared on the masthead with the April 1962 issue. Joseph Ferman's son Edward had worked for the magazine as an editorial assistant in the 1950s, but left in 1959 to gain experience elsewhere; he returned in 1962, and worked under Davidson as managing editor. In 1963 Ted White, later the editor of Amazing Stories, became assistant editor, and stayed with the magazine until 1968.

Davidson gave up the editor's chair in late 1964 in order to have more time to write, and was initially replaced by Joseph Ferman, who handed over control to his son Edward from May 1965, though the masthead did not reflect the change till 1966. Four years later the younger Ferman took over from his father as publisher as well, and moved the editorial and publishing offices to his house in Cornwall, Connecticut. His wife, Audrey, was business manager, and Andrew Porter was an assistant editor. In the early 1970s Ferman contacted Sol Cohen, the owner of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Stories, two competing sf magazines, about purchasing them both. Ferman was considering combining them into a single magazine and publishing them alongside F&SF, but Cohen decided to keep both titles.

In 1969, an issue of F&SF was priced at 50 cents; by the end of the 1970s the price had gone up to $1.25, although the page count also rose, from 128 to 160 pages. Circulation did not suffer, but rose from 50,000 to over 60,000, partly because of subscription drives through Publishers' Clearing House, and perhaps also because the magazine's quality remained consistent throughout the decade. In Ashley's words, "F&SF delivered the goods month after month": the schedule was reliable, the format remained unchanged, and the editor remained the same from 1965 throughout the next two decades and more. Ferman managed to keep the circulation above 50,000, and sometimes above 60,000, during the 1980s when most other magazines were losing subscribers. He turned over the editorship to Kristine Kathryn Rusch in 1991, and by the mid-1990s circulation began to fall again. In 1997 Gordon Van Gelder took over as editor, and from the February 2001 issue was publisher as well, having bought the magazine from Ferman. John Joseph Adams was Van Gelder's assistant editor from 2001 until December 2009. Van Gelder was unable to arrest the decline in circulation, which by 2011 was down to less than 15,000. Van Gelder reduced the publication frequency to bimonthly, increasing the page count and price. Charles Coleman Finlay guest-edited the July/August 2014 issue, and was hired in 2015 as full-time editor, beginning with the March/April 2015 issue. Sheree Renée Thomas was hired as editor, beginning with the March/April 2021 issue.

Boucher, McComas, Mills and Davidson
Boucher and McComas's original goal for the new magazine was to imitate the formula that had made Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine successful: classic reprints, along with quality fiction that avoided the excesses of the pulps. The initial proposal called for the magazine to include fantasy, but not science fiction. Even before the launch, the editors found they were having trouble deciding exactly where the boundary lay, so when in February 1949 Joseph Ferman, Spivak's general manager, asked them to add sf to the lineup as a way to broaden the readership, they were happy to comply. The first issue included only one story that could be called science fiction: Theodore Sturgeon's "The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast"; it also included reprints from the slick magazines by writers such as Richard Sale, and Guy Endore. The interior layout was quite different from the existing fantasy and sf magazines: there were no interior illustrations, and the text was printed in a single column, instead of two as was usual elsewhere. There was a book review column, but no letters page. According to sf historian Mike Ashley, this "set F&SF apart, giving it the air and authority of a superior magazine". The logo design and layout were the work of Mercury Press's art director, George Salter, whose background was in book design rather than in pulp magazines. Salter remained with the magazine until 1958. He was responsible for many of the surreal early covers; these gave way to work by other artists, but his design for F&SF remained intact for decades, and in Ashley's opinion the consistency of appearance has been "one of the major selling points" of the magazine.

When the second issue appeared, with the title revised to include "Science Fiction", there was no announcement of the change, and not much more science fiction than in the first issue. Damon Knight contributed one example, "Not with a Bang", which Knight has described as his first fully professional story. The next issue included Richard Matheson's first sale, "Born of Man and Woman", widely considered one of the finest stories F&SF ever published. Over the next few years several writers became strongly associated with the magazine, including Margaret St. Clair, Reginald Bretnor, Miriam Allen deFord, and Zenna Henderson, and Boucher was also able to attract some of the best-known established names, such as Arthur C. Clarke, Fritz Leiber, and Ray Bradbury. Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp began their "Gavagan's Bar" series of stories in the first issue of F&SF, and Manly Wade Wellman published the first of his "John the Balladeer" stories in the December 1951 issue. The focus was on short fiction; serials and novels were mainly avoided. One exception was Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee, an alternative history set in a world where the South wins the American Civil War. Boucher bought "A Canticle for Leibowitz" from Walter M. Miller, who had been unable to sell it elsewhere, and printed it in the April 1955 issue; it was the first story in the series that would become the novel of the same name, and has since become recognized as a classic of the genre.

A controversial article by the astronomer R.S. Richardson titled "The Day After We Land on Mars" appeared in the December 1955 issue; Richardson commented that an exploration of other worlds would require "the men stationed on a planet [to be] openly accompanied by women to relieve the sexual tensions that develop among normal healthy males". Responses by Poul Anderson and Miriam Allen deFord appeared in F&SF the following year. DeFord argued that Richardson was assuming that women were not people in the same way as men, and the controversy has since been cited as part of the long debate within the genre about the image of women in science fiction.

In 1958 F&SF won its first Hugo Award for Best Magazine, and when Mills became editor that year he maintained the high standards Boucher had set, winning the award again in 1959 and 1960. Mills continued to publish a broad range of material without limiting the magazine to particular subgenres. Ashley cites John Collier, Robert Arthur, Allen Drury, and Ray Bradbury, all authors with mainstream reputations who appeared in F&SF in 1960, as evidence of the magazine's diversity. Daniel Keyes had been unable to sell "Flowers for Algernon" until Mills bought it in 1959; it went on to win several awards and according to Clute and Nicholls is "arguably the most popular sf novel ever published". Rogue Moon, a novel about a deadly artifact left by aliens on the moon, is often considered Algis Budrys's best novel; it appeared in 1960, and the following year saw Brian Aldiss's "Hothouse", the first in that series. (Budrys later said that what he described as the "cuteness of the early F&SF school of editing—and its open contempt for the accomplishments of the Campbellian school" had resulted in "buckets and buckets of froth" but, more favorably, "Liberal Arts concepts in what had been almost exclusively a B. S. field". ) Zenna Henderson's stories of The People, a group of refugee humanoid aliens hiding on Earth, were published through the 1950s and 1960s and became a "central feature" of the magazine according to sf critic John Clute. Boucher published Damon Knight's "The Country of the Kind", described by Ashley as "one of his most potent stories from the fifties", in 1956, and the same year, under the pseudonym "Grendel Briarton", Reginald Bretnor began a series of punning stories known as "Feghoots" that lasted until 1964. At the end of the 1950s, during Mills' tenure as editor, Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers was serialized in F&SF, under the title Starship Soldier; this was intended to be a juvenile novel but was rejected by Scribner's for being too violent. It won the Hugo Award in the novel category the following year, and proved to be one of Heinlein's most controversial books.

Among the cover artists in the first decade, sf historian and critic Thomas Clareson singles out the early astronomical scenes by Chesley Bonestell as being the most notable; these were among the first to replace George Salter's surreal artwork on the cover. Kelly Freas and Ed Emshwiller, two of the most popular artists in the sf field, also contributed covers during the 1950s. Mel Hunter began contributing covers with the November 1953 issue, and in October 1955 began a long-running series of covers that depicted a robot survivor of a nuclear holocaust engaging in human activities amidst the desolation—watering a flower, playing with toys, or reading a store catalog, for example. A regular book review column appeared, titled "Recommended Reading"; it was signed simply "The Editors" until McComas ceased to be one of the co-editors, after which Boucher used his own name. According to Clareson, the column "long remained the most catholic appraisal of the field" because of the variety of works reviewed. Boucher did not review his own fiction in the column, though on at least one occasion he listed a new book of his, telling the reader: "Comments eagerly welcomed; in this case, you are the reviewer". When Boucher left, he was succeeded by Damon Knight as book reviewer; Alfred Bester took over in 1960 and remained in the role until Avram Davidson became the book reviewer when he took the editorial chair. Isaac Asimov had begun a series of science articles for Venture Science Fiction in January 1958, and when Venture was cancelled Mills brought the science column over to F&SF. The column, which according to Asimov he enjoyed writing more than any of his other works, ran for decades without interruption, helping to contribute to a long-standing feeling of consistency and continuity in F&SF's format and contents.

Avram Davidson, who became editor in 1962, had sold his first story to F&SF in 1954, though he was better remembered for "The Golem", which appeared in the March 1955 issue. Under Davidson more work appeared by non-English-speaking writers such as Hugo Correa, Herbert Franke, and Shin'ishi Hoshi. Notable stories he acquired for F&SF include Terry Carr's first sale, "Who Sups with the Devil?", in 1962, and Roger Zelazny's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" in November 1963. He published two "author special" issues: Theodore Sturgeon was featured in the September 1962 issue, and Ray Bradbury in May 1963. These author issues, which had been Joseph Ferman's idea, became a regular feature, with subsequent issues featuring Isaac Asimov (October 1966), Fritz Leiber (July 1969), Poul Anderson (April 1971), James Blish (April 1972), Frederik Pohl (September 1973), Robert Silverberg (April 1974), Damon Knight (November 1976), Harlan Ellison (July 1977), Stephen King (December 1990), Lucius Shepard (March 2001), Kate Wilhelm (September 2001), Barry N. Malzberg (June 2003), Gene Wolfe (April 2007), and David Gerrold (September/October 2016).

Edward Ferman
Joseph Ferman's son, Edward Ferman, was managing editor during Davidson's tenure as editor. When Davidson left, Joseph Ferman took over the editorial chair, but in reality Edward Ferman was doing all the editorial work, and by the May 1965 issue was in full control of the magazine. It remained eclectic through the 1960s and 1970s, publishing work by New Wave writers such as Thomas Disch and John Sladek, along with new US writers such as Samuel Delany and Roger Zelazny, hard science fiction stories by Gregory Benford and John Varley, fantasies by Sterling Lanier and Tom Reamy, and horror by Charles L. Grant and Stephen King. The mid-1960s saw an increase in the diversity of stories appearing elsewhere in the field; magazines like New Worlds and Science Fantasy published material that previously could only have appeared in F&SF. Sf author Christopher Priest, writing in 1978, commented that many writers later considered part of the New Wave soon found "a natural home for their work" in F&SF. In Ashley's view the rest of the field was starting to catch up to F&SFs open-mindedness, but this did not lead to a drop in F&SFs quality; the end of the 1960s saw Ferman printing some old-fashioned material such as John Christopher's novel about miniaturization, The Little People, alongside much of Roger Zelazny's early output, and "anarchic and often indefinable" stories by R.A. Lafferty, Harvey Jacobs, and others. In 1968, Piers Anthony's early novel Sos the Rope was serialized; Anthony had won a competition sponsored in part by F&SF.

Harlan Ellison and James Tiptree, Jr. were frequent contributors in the 1970s, Tiptree contributing some of her best-known stories, such as "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" and "The Women Men Don't See"; Ellison's many stories in F&SF included "The Deathbird", in 1973, which won a Hugo Award, and "Jeffty Is Five" in 1977, which won both a Hugo and a Nebula Award. Other award-winning stories from Ferman's first decade and a half included Fritz Leiber's "Ship of Shadows" in 1969, "Ill Met in Lankhmar" in 1970, and "Catch That Zeppelin" in 1975; all three won Hugos, and the latter two also won Nebulas. Poul Anderson's "The Queen of Air and Darkness" won both a Hugo and a Nebula, Robert Silverberg's "Born with the Dead" won a Nebula, and Frederik Pohl's novel of Martian colonization, Man Plus, also won a Nebula.

Judith Merril took over the book review column on Davidson's departure, and was followed by James Blish in 1970 and Algis Budrys in 1975, with frequent contributions from other reviewers such as Joanna Russ and Gahan Wilson. In 1965 Wilson began contributing cartoons, and continued to do so regularly until 1981. Ferman set a humorous competition for the readers in the November 1971 issue, and thereafter ran two or three similar competitions every year. These were later collected in a 1996 anthology, titled Oi, Robot, the title taken from a competition to add a single letter to a well-known work of SF. A film review column, the first in the magazine since Charles Beaumont's "The Science Screen" (and "William Morrison" aka Joseph Samachson's live-theater column "The Science Stage") in the latter 1950s, conducted by Samuel R. Delany, commenced in 1969; Baird Searles contributed the column between 1970 and 1984. Among the later reviewers, Ellison was one of the most popular, and columns from his first four years were collected as Harlan Ellison's Watching in 1989.

Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine was launched in 1977 and from 1983, under the editorships of Shawna McCarthy and later Gardner Dozois, it began to publish more mature material, becoming a more direct competitor to F&SF's market niche. Authors such as Lucius Shepard, James Blaylock, and John Crowley, whose work was a natural fit for F&SF, were selling to Asimov's as well. The launch of Omni in 1978 also had an impact. For almost every year in the 1970s stories published in F&SF won more award nominations, and were selected for more "Year's Best" anthologies, than the other magazines; in the 1980s that was no longer true, as Asimov's took over the leading role, and Omni sometimes pushed F&SF into third place. Ferman was still able to acquire some highly regarded material, such as "Lost Boys" by Orson Scott Card, and Kirinyaga by Mike Resnick. When Omni rejected George R.R. Martin's "Monkey Treatment" and Gardner Dozois's "Down Among the Dead Men", which were dark fantasy, Ferman acquired both. Along with these regular columns, Ferman occasionally published articles, such as "Science Fiction and the University", a feature in the May 1972 issue that included contributions from Darko Suvin, Thomas Clareson, and Philip Klass.

F&SF won the Hugo Award for Best Magazine for four consecutive years, from 1969 through 1972, when the award was changed to "Best Professional Editor". Initially this category was dominated by Ben Bova, the editor of Analog, but Ferman won it for three more years at the start of the 1980s.

Some of the artists who had provided covers for early issues of F&SF, including Chesley Bonestell, Ed Emshwiller, and Alex Schomburg, were still contributing their work into the late 1970s, and many of the regular writers from the early years, such as Reginald Bretnor, Ron Goulart, and Hilbert Schenck, continued to appear in F&SF into the 1980s. A newer group, including Joanna Russ and R.A. Lafferty, had become regulars more recently. Some established writers such as Thomas Disch published their more unusual work in F&SF, and there were also writers such as Felix C. Gotschalk, whose unusual stories were described by Ferman as "a step ahead of most sf writers (or perhaps he's marching in a different direction)". In Ashley's opinion, Ferman managed to "balance the work of these eccentric writers so that they never distorted the contents yet kept the magazine on the edge".

Newer writers who began to appear regularly in the 1980s included Bruce Sterling, who published his early Shaper/Mechanist stories in F&SF, beginning with "Swarm", in 1982. Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series had begun in 1979 in F&SF, and four more stories appeared over the next three years before being collected as a novel in 1982; and Michael Shea and Bob Leman contributed horror and weird fiction regularly in the 1980s. Despite the increased competition from Omni and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Ferman managed to keep F&SF's reputation for quality intact throughout the 1980s; it was not as distinct from its competition as it had once been, but it retained an "idiosyncratic individuality", in Ashley's words.

After Ferman
Under Kristine Kathryn Rusch F&SF began to publish more dark fantasy and horror stories, such as "The Night We Buried Road Dog" by Jack Cady, which won a Nebula Award. When Rusch took over as editor, Isaac Asimov had been writing the science column for over three decades, and Algis Budrys had been contributing a book review column since 1975; in 1992 Asimov died and Budrys departed. The science column ran for 399 consecutive issues, ending in February 1992. Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov, wrote another essay for the December 1994 issue, based on her conversations with her husband before his death, and a final essay appeared in January 1996, containing material from the book Yours, Isaac Asimov: A Lifetime of Letters. The science column continued to appear, written by Bruce Sterling and Gregory Benford among others, and John Kessel took over the book reviews; Robert Killheffer succeeded Kessel, with some overlap in 1994 and 1995. Asimov's maintained its dominance of the field through the 1990s, though Rusch published well-received material such as "The Martian Child" by David Gerrold and "Last Summer at Mars Hill" by Elizabeth Hand. Rusch won one Hugo Award as editor during her five years at F&SF, in 1994.

Van Gelder printed more fantasy and less hard science fiction than had Rusch, and in Ashley's opinion he was able to "restore some of the magazine's distinctiveness". As a result of the switch to bimonthly in 2009, with the resulting higher page count in each issue, the magazine began to publish longer stories.

Assessment
F&SF quickly established itself as one of the leading magazines. Ashley describes it as bridging "the attitude gap between the slick magazines and the pulps"', and argues that it made the genre more respectable. The fantasy side of the magazine attracted writers who had been regular contributors to Weird Tales and Unknown, two of the best-known fantasy pulps, and in Ashley's opinion, it soon found a "middle ground" between those pulp traditions and fantasy written for the slicks. It was known as the most literary of the science fiction and fantasy magazines, and it published the most diverse range of material. In a 1978 review of New Wave SF, Christopher Priest agreed that F&SF has a bias for literary work, and added that "it has been a sort of New Wave of its own ever since its inception".

From the 1950s, F&SF was regarded as one of the "big three" science fiction magazines, along with Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy Science Fiction. In a review of a 1952 issue, James Blish (writing as William Atheling, Jr.) commented that much of the magazine to that point was wonderfully written, and that Boucher's and McComas's editorial acumen made F&SF very readable, but that on occasion a well-written, sophisticated, but unoriginal science fiction story might be accepted by F&SF because it was not a specialist sf magazine. At the end of the 1950s Kingsley Amis described it as "the most highbrow" of the science fiction magazines, and Gary K. Wolfe later said that F&SF, along with Galaxy, "defined the tenor" of the 1950s. In 1966, Judith Merril argued that it was Boucher and McComas who made a place in the genre for writers such as Charles Beaumont, Mildred Clingerman, Edgar Pangborn, and many others who, in her opinion, had "virtually stopped writing until the necessary new magazine came along".

In 2007, Ashley commented that F&SF had been "the most consistently enjoyable magazine of the last 50 years". In his view, a key reason for the magazine's appeal was that its roots were in the literary tradition, with Lawrence Spivak, its first publisher, the inheritor of H.L. Mencken's American Mercury, which had been successful and widely respected as a literary review. Unlike most of its competitors, F&SF had no connection to the pulp magazine era, and its editors had always intended to appeal to readers of books, rather than of magazines. Ashley also cites F&SF's broad editorial policy, which allowed the magazine to carry a wider range of fiction than its competitors. In 2014 Gary Westfahl praised the "creative editors of the 1980s and 1990s, such as Gardner Dozois ... and Gordon Van Gelder", but added that "such editors were no longer the most important figures in the field".

Bibliographic details
As of March 2017, the editorial succession is as follows: The first issue was titled The Magazine of Fantasy; with the second issue the title switched to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It has been in digest format since the beginning.
 * Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas, Fall 1949 – August 1954
 * Anthony Boucher, September 1954 – August 1958
 * Robert P. Mills, September 1958 – March 1962
 * Avram Davidson, April 1962 – November 1964
 * Joseph W. Ferman, December 1964 – December 1965
 * Edward L. Ferman, January 1966 – June 1991
 * Kristine Kathryn Rusch, July 1991 – May 1997
 * Gordon Van Gelder, June 1997 – January 2015
 * Charles Coleman Finlay, March/April 2015 – January 2021
 * Sheree Renée Thomas, March/April 2021 – present.

The publisher was initially Fantasy House, a subsidiary of Mercury Press; from March 1958 the publisher was listed as Mercury Press instead. Since February 2001 the publisher has been Van Gelder's Spilogale, Inc.

The following table lists F&SF's prices over the years. When Joseph Ferman announced the price change in the February 1959 issue, his justification for the increase was that "during the past ten years...paper costs have gone up by 38%, composition, printing, binding and handling costs have gone up by 32%, postages costs have gone up from 33% to 60%, and various other costs have risen as much or more".

Anthologies
The following anthologies of fiction from F&SF have appeared. In 1981, Martin H. Greenberg edited a hardcover facsimile edition of the April 1965 issue of F&SF, with the addition of an introduction by Edward Ferman, and memoirs by the authors whose work appeared in the issue. The book was published by Southern Illinois University Press.

Overseas editions
F&SF has had multiple foreign editions, including:
 * Argentina. Minotauro (September 1964 – June 1968), edited by Francisco Porrúa under the alias Ricardo Gosseyn, and published by Ediciones Minotauro, Buenos Aires.  Ten issues.  The full title was Minotauro fantasía y ciencia-ficción.  Minotauro did not reprint individual issues of F&SF; instead each issue was filled with stories selected from various issues of F&SF.  Also La revista de ciencia ficción y fantasía (October 1976 – February 1977), edited by Marcial Souto and published by Ediciones Orión.  Three issues.  This was primarily a reprint edition of F&SF but also published some original material.
 * Australia. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (November 1954 – August 1958), published by Consolidated Press as a saddle-stapled digest.  14 issues.  The first six issues were 128 pages long, the next 4 were 112 pages, and the last four were 96 pages.  It was priced at 2/- throughout.  The contents were selected from the US magazine but the Australian issues did not correspond to individual issues of the original.
 * Brazil. Galáxia 2000 (first issue January 1968), edited by Mario Camarinha, and published by Ediçōes O Cruzeiro.  Four or five issues.  This contains reprints from not only the US edition of F&SF, but also from the French, Italian and Argentinian versions.  This was followed in 1970 by another Magazine de Ficçāo Cientifica, which appeared in April 1970.  The editor was initially Jerônymo Monteiro; he died after two issues and was succeeded by his daughter, Theresa Monteiro.  The publisher was Revista do Globo.  The magazine ran from April 1970 to November 1971, publishing a total of 20 issues, each containing a story by a local writer along with the reprinted material.
 * France. Fiction (October 1953 – February 1990), edited by Alain Dorémieux for most of its existence.  412 issues.  Fiction included original French stories as well as translations from the English version of the magazine, and occasionally these French stories subsequently appeared in F&SF, translated into English.  One example is "Les Premiers jour de mai" by Claude Veillot, which appeared in Fiction in May 1960 and then as "The First Days of May" in F&SF in December 1961, translated by Damon Knight.  Since 2005 it has been issued twice a year as a magazine/anthology series.
 * Germany. A series of anthologies titled Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction began appearing in Germany in 1963, published by Heyne, and lasted until issue 101, which appeared in 2000.  These contained stories selected from F&SF.  The editor was Charlotte Winheller for issues 1–9; Walter Ernsting for issues 10–14; Wulf H. Bergner for issues 15–42; Manfred Kluge for issues 43–63; and Ronald M. Hahn thereafter.   The full title of the publication was initially "Eine Auswahl der besten SF-Stories aus The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction";  later titles include "Die besten SF-Stories aus The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" and "Die besten Stories aus The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction".
 * Israel. Fantasia 2000 (December 1978 – 1984), edited by Aharon Hauptman and Gabi Peleg; published by A. Tene for the first 15 issues, and thereafter by Hyperion.  44 issues.  Most of Fantasia 2000's contents were translations of material that had originally appeared in F&SF, along with some original stories by Israelis.  It included translations of Asimov's science column, and also included departments that did not originate in F&SF, such as a letters page and non-fiction articles.
 * Italy. Fantascienza (November 1954 – May 1955), edited by Livio Garzanti, published by Garzanti e i Fratelli Treves.  7 issues.  Reprints of issues of F&SF.  Also Fantasia & Fantascienza (December 1962 – October 1963), edited by G. Jori, published by Minerva Editrice.  10 monthly issues, omitting May 1963.  A reprint of F&SF, but it included some original material as well. Another series of reprints was published by Elara from 2013 to 2017, for a total of 17 issues with irregular periodicity.
 * Japan. SF Magazine (February 1960 – current as of 2017), edited by (among others) Masami Fukushima, Ryozo Nagashima, and Imaoka Kiyoshi.  This began as a reprint edition of F&SF, but soon began printing more original fiction, and as of 2016 is the leading Japanese science fiction magazine, publishing both original material and stories reprinted from a variety of sources.
 * Mexico. Ciencia y Fantasía (September 1955 – December 1957), editor unknown, published by Novaro-México, S.A.  14 issues.  Reprinted from F&SF by selecting stories from different issues of the original magazine.
 * Norway. Nova (1971–1979), edited by Terje Wanberg, Øyvind Myhre, Per G. Olson, and Johannes H. Berg, published by Stowa Forlag.  34 issues.  Initially titled Science Fiction-Magasinet, it began by reprinting from F&SF; from the fourth issue it began to feature new material.
 * Sweden. Jules Verne Magasinet (1969–2013), edited and published by Bertil Falk (1969–1971); edited by Sam Lundwall (1972–2013) and published by Askild & Kärnekull (1972), Delta (1973–1983), and Sam J Lundwall Fakta & Fantasi (1983–2010).  Starting with the Askild & Kärnekull issues, and until at least the mid-1980s, this contained a large proportion of reprints from F&SF, along with some original material from other sources.
 * United Kingdom. Two series, both titled The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.  The first series was published by Mellifont Press, and ran from October 1953 to September 1954, in digest format, with 128 pages, priced at 1/6.  The contents were taken from the U.S. magazine, but the UK issues did not directly correspond to individual U.S. issues.  The second series was published by Atlas Publishing & Distributing from December 1959 to June 1964, in digest format.  All issues were 128 pages except for January 1961 through November 1961 and March 1962 through June 1964, which were 112 pages.  The price was 2/- from until November 1961, and 2/6 from December 1961 until the end of the run.  As with the first series the reprint issues did not exactly correspond to individual U.S. issues.  After the second series ended, some additional material from the U.S. issues was reprinted in the UK edition of Venture Science Fiction.


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Murray cod

The Murray cod (Maccullochella peelii) is a large Australian predatory freshwater fish of the genus Maccullochella in the family Percichthyidae. Although the species is called a cod in the vernacular, it is not related to the Northern Hemisphere marine cod (Gadus) species. The Murray cod is an important part of Australia's vertebrate wildlife—as an apex predator in the Murray-Darling River system—and also significant in Australia's human culture. The Murray cod is the largest exclusively freshwater fish in Australia, and one of the largest in the world. Other common names for Murray cod include cod, greenfish, goodoo, Mary River cod, Murray perch, ponde, pondi and Queensland freshwater cod.

The scientific name of Murray cod derives from an early Australian fish researcher Allan Riverstone McCulloch and the river from which the explorer Major Mitchell first scientifically described the species, the Peel River. This was for a number of years changed to M. peelii peelii to differentiate Murray cod from Mary River cod, which were designated as a subspecies of Murray cod. However, as of 2010, Mary River cod have been raised to full species status (M. mariensis), thus Murray cod have reverted simply to M. peelii.

Murray cod populations have declined severely since European colonisation of Australia due to a number of causes, including severe overfishing, river regulation, and habitat degradation and are now a listed threatened species. However, they once inhabited almost the entire Murray-Darling basin, Australia's largest river system, in very great numbers.

A long-lived fish, adult Murray cod are carnivorous and eat crustaceans (shrimp, yabbies, crays), fish and freshwater mussels. The species exhibits a high degree of parental care for their eggs, which are spawned in the spring and are generally laid in hollow logs or on other hard surfaces. Murray cod are a popular angling target and aquaculture species. Often available through the aquarium trade, they are also a popular aquarium species in Australia.

Description
The Murray cod is a large grouper-like fish with a deep, elongated body that is round in cross section. It has a broad, scooped head, and a large mouth lined with pads of very small, needle-like teeth. The jaws of the Murray cod are equal, or the lower jaw protrudes slightly.

The spiny dorsal fin of Murray cod is moderate to low in height and is partially separated by a notch from the high, rounded soft dorsal fin. Soft dorsal, anal, and caudal (tail) fins are all large and rounded, and are dusky grey or black with distinct white edges. The large, rounded pectoral fins are usually similar in colour to the flanks. The pelvic fins are large, angular, and set forward of the pectoral fins. The leading white-coloured rays on the pelvic fins split into two trailing white filaments, while the pelvic fins themselves are usually a translucent white or cream, tending toward opacity in large fish.

Murray cod are white to cream on their ventral (belly) surfaces. Their backs and flanks are usually yellowish-green to green, overlain with heavy darker green, but occasionally brown or black, mottling. The effect is a marbled appearance sometimes reminiscent of a leopard's markings. Colouration is related to water clarity; colouration is intense in fish from clear water habitats. Small to medium-sized Murray cod from clear-water habitats often have striking and very distinct colouration. Very large fish tend towards a speckled grey-green colouration.

Size
Murray cod are large fish, with adult fish regularly reaching 80 – in length. Murray cod are capable of growing well over 1 m in length and the largest on record was over 1.8 m and about 113 kg in weight. Large breeding fish are rare in most wild populations today due to overfishing.

Related species
Murray cod continue a pattern present in Murray-Darling native fish genera of speciation into lowland and specialist upland species: Murray cod are the primarily lowland species and the endangered trout cod are the specialist upland species. The pattern is slightly blurred in the cod species because, being adaptable and successful fish, Murray cod push significant distances into upland habitats, while the now endangered trout cod stray (or did stray, before their decline) well down the upland/lowland transition zone, which can be extensive in Murray-Darling Rivers. Nevertheless, the basic pattern of speciation into a primarily lowland species and a specialist upland species is present.

Murray cod, like a number of other Murray-Darling native fish species, have also managed to cross the Great Dividing Range at least once through natural river capture events, leading to several species and subspecies of coastal cod. The best known are eastern freshwater cod of the Clarence River system in northern New South Wales, and Mary River cod of the Mary River system in south eastern Queensland, both of which are endangered, but survive today. Coastal cod were also found in the Richmond River system in northern New South Wales and the Brisbane River system in southern Queensland, but are now extinct.

Taxonomy
In Mitchell's original description, he classified the fish as "Family, Percidae; Genus, Acerina; Subgenus, Gristes, Cuv. or Growler; Species, Gristes peelii mihi, or Cod-perch", observing "This fish may be identical with the fish described by MM. Cuvier and Valenciennes Volume 3 page 45 under the name of Gristes macquariensis: but it differs from their description…".

In the 1800s and early 1900s, commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, riverside residents, and some fisheries scientists (e.g. Anderson, Stead, Langtry) distinctly recognised two species of cod in the southern Murray-Darling basin, Murray cod and trout cod or "blue nose cod". Taxonomically however, confusion abounded. Ignoring glaring differences in size at sexual maturity, and via some rather unscientific reasoning, some prominent fisheries scientists (e.g. Whitley) insisted on recognising only one species of cod—the Murray cod (then named Maccullochella macquariensis, after an early Australian fish researcher with the surname McCulloch and the Macquarie River in New South Wales where the holotype was captured ). Then, as trout cod declined into near extinction over the 1900s, the distinction between the two species was further eroded and finally questioned. In the 1970s, early genetic techniques confirmed that trout cod were a separate species and further showed that the original "Murray cod" specimen was in fact a trout cod. Following the rules of scientific classification, the name M. macquariensis remained with the original specimen, now known to be the trout cod, and a new name, M. peelii, for the Peel River where the new holotype was captured, was coined for the Murray cod. Subsequently, two further cod were identified as separate species, the eastern freshwater cod (M. ikei) and the Mary River cod (M. mariensis).

Range
The Murray cod is named after the Murray River, part of the Murray-Darling basin in eastern Australia, Australia's largest and most important river system, draining around 14% of the continent. The Murray cod's natural range encompasses virtually the whole Murray-Darling basin, particularly the lowland areas, and extending well into upland areas — to about 700 m elevation in the southern half of the basin and to about 1000 m in the northern half of the basin. Consequently, Murray cod inhabit a remarkably wide variety of habitats, from cool, clear, fast-flowing streams with riffle-and-pool structure and rocky substrates in upland areas to large, slow flowing, meandering rivers in the extensive alluvial lowland reaches of the Murray-Darling basin. Murray cod have died out in many of their upland habitats, particularly in the southern Murray-Darling basin, due to a combination of overfishing, siltation, dams and weirs blocking migration, pollution from arsenic-based sheep-dips, mining, and in some cases, introduced trout stockings, which causes competition between juvenile Murray cod and introduced trout species. Murray Cod have also been introduced into other drainage basins, such as the Cooper Basin in Queensland.

Age
Murray cod are very long-lived, which is characteristic of many freshwater native fish in Australia. Longevity is a survival strategy in variable Australian environment to ensure that most adults participate in at least one exceptional spawning and recruitment event, which are often linked to unusually wet La Niña years and may only occur every one or two decades. Murray cod are the most long-lived freshwater native fish in Australia. The oldest Murray cod aged yet was 48 years of age, and the even larger specimens of years past leave little doubt that the species can reach considerably greater ages, of 70 years or more.

Diet
The Murray cod is the apex aquatic predator in the rivers of the Murray-Darling basin, and will eat almost anything smaller than itself, including finned fishes such as smaller Murray cod, golden perch, silver perch, bony bream, eel-tailed catfish, western carp gudgeon, and Australian smelt and introduced fish such as carp, goldfish, and redfin (English perch), as well as crustaceans such as yabbies, freshwater shrimp, and Murray crayfish. Fish are eaten when abundant by mature Murray cod in lowland river and impoundment habitats but crustaceans tend to dominate the diet under natural conditions, and freshwater mussels were commonly eaten in the past. Murray cod have also been known to eat ducks, cormorants, freshwater turtles, water dragons, snakes, mice, and frogs. The observations of the recreational fishermen fishing for Murray cod with surface lures at night reveal that the popular description of Murray cod as a demersal ambush predator is only partially correct. While this behaviour is typical during the day, at night, Murray cod are active pelagic predators, venturing into shallow waters and frequently taking prey from the surface.

Reproduction
Murray cod reach sexual maturity between four and six years of age, generally five years. Sexual maturity in Murray cod is dependent on age. Therefore, roughly 70% of wild river Murray cod, with their slower growth rate, have reached sexual maturity by 50 cm in length. Wild Murray cod in impoundments like Lake Mulwala, with their faster growth rates, do not reach sexual maturity until they are well over 60 cm in length. These data strongly indicate the 50-cm (20-in) size limit for Murray cod is inadequate and should be increased substantially to allow for a greater chance of reproduction before capture.

Large female Murray cod in the 15– to 35-kg (35– to 80-lb) range are the most important breeders because they produce the most eggs and for other reasons; large females in most fish species are also important because they produce larger larvae with larger yolk sacs, and are also more experienced breeders that display optimal breeding behaviours. Such large females may also have valuable, successful genes to pass on. All of these factors mean the spawnings of large female fish have far higher larval survival rates and make far greater reproductive contributions than the spawnings of small female fish. Not surprisingly, there is no truth to claim made by some recreational fishers that "large Murray cod don't breed".

Female Murray cod, upon first reaching sexual maturity, have egg counts of no more than 10,000. Very large female Murray cod can have egg counts as high as 80,000–90,000, although a recent, very large 33-kg specimen yielded an egg count of 110,000 viable eggs. Egg counts in female Murray cod of all sizes are relatively low compared to many fish species.

Murray cod spawn in spring, cued by rising water temperatures and increasing photoperiod (daylight length). Initially, fish biologists working with Murray cod considered spring floods and temperatures of 20 – to be necessary and that spring flooding is critical for successful recruitment (i.e. survival to juvenile stages) of young cod by providing an influx of pelagic zooplankton and early life-stage macroinvertebrates off the flood plain into the main river channel for first feeding, but more recent research has shown Murray cod breed annually, with or without spring floods, and at temperatures as low as 15 °C. Additionally, recent research has shown abundant epibenthic/epiphytic (bottom dwelling/edge clinging) prey in unflooded lowland rivers, traits in Murray cod larvae that should allow survival in a variety of challenging conditions, and a significant proportion of Murray cod larvae feeding successfully in unflooded rivers.

Latest research has also shown that Murray cod in fact live their entire lifecycle within the main channel of the stream. Earlier ideas that Murray cod spawn on floodplains, or the larvae feed on floodplains, are incorrect. Murray cod breed in the main river channel or, in times of spring flood, the inundated upper portion of the main channel and tributary channels, but not on floodplains. Murray cod larvae feed within the main river channel or, in times of spring flood, on the inundated upper portion of the main channel and the channel/floodplain boundary, but not on the floodplain.

Spawning is sometimes preceded by upstream or downstream movements. Radio-tracked Murray cod in the Murray River have moved up to 120 km upstream to spawn, before returning to exactly the same snag from where they departed, an unusual homing behaviour in a freshwater fish. Decades of observations by recreational and commercial fishermen suggest such spring spawning movements are common across the Murray cod's geographical range. Spawning is initiated by pairing up and courtship rituals. During the courtship ritual a spawning site is selected and cleaned — hard surfaces such as rocks in upland rivers and impoundments, and logs and occasionally clay banks in lowland rivers, at a depth of 2 –, are selected. The female lays the large adhesive eggs as a mat on the spawning surface, which the male fertilises. The female then leaves the spawning site. The male remains to guard the eggs during incubation, which takes six to 10 days (depending on water temperature), and to guard the hatched larvae for a further week or so until they disperse. Larvae disperse from the nest site by drifting in river currents at night, and continue this behaviour around four to seven days. During this dispersal process, larvae simultaneously absorb the remainder of their yolk sac and begin to feed on small, early life-stage macroinvertebrates and epibenthic/epiphytic (bottom dwelling/edge clinging) microinvertebrates. It may be that Murray cod are the first freshwater fish identified as having long-term pair-bonding in its repertoire of mating strategies in the wild.

The relationship between river flows and Murray cod recruitment are more complex than first thought, and in less regulated rivers, Murray cod may be able to recruit under a range of conditions including stable low flows. (Significant recruitment of Murray cod in low-flow conditions in less regulated lowland rivers has now been proven.) This information also suggests that nonriver-regulation-related causes of degradation are playing a larger role in the survival and recruitment of Murray cod larvae than first thought; competition from extremely large numbers of invasive carp larvae are negatively affecting the survival and recruitment of Murray cod larvae to a much greater degree than first thought; and that decades of overfishing is playing a far larger role in the current state of Murray cod stocks, through depletion of spawning adults, than first thought.

These findings do not mean that river regulation and water extraction have not had adverse effects on fish stocks. Rather, river regulation has been a major factor in the decline of Murray cod and other native fish. Thermal pollution is also a major problem, evidence indicates strong Murray cod recruitment events (which may be important for sustaining Murray cod populations over the long term) can result from spring flooding, and the health of Australian lowland river ecosystems generally rely on periodic spring flooding. Also, due to the regulation of most of the rivers in the Murray-Darling River system, mainly for irrigation purposes, only exceptional spring floods manage to "break free". The long-term viability of wild Murray cod, other native fish species and river ecosystems, in the face of this fact, are of great concern.

History
Murray cod were originally the most common large native fish in the Murray-Darling basin. Contrary to some fishery department literature, the first serious declines in Murray cod were caused by overfishing. In the latter half of the 1800s and the early 1900s, Murray cod were caught in large numbers by both commercial and recreational fishermen. For example, one commercial fishing operation commenced on the Murray River near Echuca in 1855, targeting Murray cod over hundreds of kilometres of river, and yet within eight years, grave concerns over the sustainability of this operation, and complaints about the near-absence of Murray cod in their heavily fished grounds, were being raised in the main state newspaper, The Argus. Yet fishing effort continued to increase in the region, so in the late 1880s and early 1890s, between 40,000 and 150,000 kg of mostly Murray cod (between 7,500 and 27,000 fish, at an average weight of 5.5 kg) were caught near Echuca. Similarly, in 1883, more than 147,000 kg of Murray cod were sent to Melbourne from just one river town (Moama). By the 1920s Murray cod had been overfished to the point where large-scale commercial fishing operations were no longer feasible. Recreational fishermen took similarly excessive hauls during this era, using rods and reels, handlines, setlines, drum nets, gill nets, and even explosives, with hauls often either wasted or illegally sold. Perhaps this extreme overfishing and its impacts of wild Murray cod stocks is best summarised by a short article in the Register News (a South Australian newspaper) in 1929:

"In [the last] 29 years 26,214,502 lbs (nearly 11,703 tons) [11,915,683 kg] of Murray cod has been eaten by the people of Melbourne. The Superintendent of Markets (Mr G. B. Minns) included these figures in a statement he made today pointing out that the supply was declining. In 1918, the peak year, 2,229,024 lb was received at the market, but since 1921, when 1,101,520 lb was sent to Melbourne, supply has decreased. Last year [1928] it was only 551,040 lb."

Twenty years later, the aquatic ecologist J. O. Langtry criticised the heavy fishing pressure, in the form of both uncontrolled small-scale commercial fishing and rampant illegal fishing, which he found in all reaches of the Murray River he investigated 1949–1950.

A thorough reading of historical newspaper articles and historical government reports reveals that the history of wild Murray cod between the mid–1800s and the mid–1900s was one of citizen agitation, government inaction, and ongoing stock decline. For decades, riverside residents, commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, local fisheries inspectors, fish retailers, and others agitated in newspapers and other fora about the declining Murray cod stocks, to be met in turn either with government denials, or conversely, with various ineffective inquiries into Murray cod stocks and fisheries, and various ineffective control measures. Debate about excessive fishing pressure, number of fishermen, number of nets, net mesh size, bag limits, minimum size limits and take of small cod, closed seasons and the taking of spawning cod full of eggs during spring, and other sundry issues, continued without resolution. Fishing regulations were either not amended, or amended and largely unenforced and completely ignored. Heavy commercial, recreational and illegal fishing pressure continued. The end result was a Murray cod population, initially abundant, continually fished down until in the early to mid 20th century a number of other factors such as river regulation (listed below) emerged to drive the species even further into decline. All of these drivers of decline left this iconic Australian fish in a perilous situation. There are now concerns for the long-term survival of wild Murray cod populations.

Status
Since 3 July 2003 and, the Murray cod is listed as a vulnerable species under the EPBC Act (Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999). It is listed as a species of Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, but under state legislation in both South Australia and Victoria, it is an endangered species.

A study published in Biological Conservation in March 2023 listed 23 species which the authors considered to no longer meet the criteria as threatened species under the EPBC Act, including the Murray cod. The team, led by John Woinarski of Charles Darwin University looked at all species listed as threatened under the act in 2000 and 2022. The Murray cod was the only fish on the list, and the reason for their assessment was given as "Actual recovery over the period 2000–2022, from long period of decline".

Overfishing
While extremely severe commercial and recreational overfishing in the 1800s and the early 1900s caused the first strong declines of Murray cod, overfishing by recreational fishermen, aided by inadequate fishing regulations, continues today and remains an extremely serious threat to Murray cod. The current size limit of 60 centimetres in most states is inadequate now that scientific studies have documented average size at sexual maturity in Murray cod. This and catch data and computer modelling exercises on wild Murray cod stocks indicate measures such as raising the size limit to 70 centimetres and reducing the bag and possession limits from 2 and 4 fish respectively to 1 fish are urgently needed to maintain the long-term viability of wild Murray cod populations. As of November 2014, the NSW Department of Fisheries has introduced a maximum size limit of 75 cm for Murray Cod to provide protection for large breeding fish, as well as a new minimum size limit of 55 cm.

Although angler effects are sometimes disregarded in the overall picture today, recent population studies have shown that while all year classes are well represented up to the minimum legal angling size (now 60 centimetres in most states), above that size, numbers of fish are dramatically reduced almost to the point of non-existence in many waters. Some emphasis has been made of the results of two small surveys which suggested a majority of Murray cod are released by anglers. However, there are valid questions as to the representativeness of these surveys: these surveys do not explain the dramatic disappearance of large numbers of young Murray cod at exactly the minimum size limit, and most importantly, any emphasis on these surveys miss the fundamental point — as a large, long-lived species with relatively low fecundity and delayed sexual maturity wild Murray cod populations are extremely vulnerable to overfishing, even with only modest angler-kill. A tightening of fishing regulations for wild Murray cod, as referred to above, and a switch by fishermen to a largely catch and release approach for wild Murray cod would alleviate this problem. Recognising these issues, in late 2014 the New South Wales and Victorian fishery departments amended their regulations so that a slot limit of 55 to 75 cm now applies in these states. (i.e. only Murray cod between 55 and 75 cm may be taken; those above and below this size range or "slot" must be released.) This measure should have positive effects for the Murray cod population by protecting and increasing the proportion of large breeding Murray cod.

Another issue is that Murray cod caught and released in winter, while developing their eggs, or in spring prior to spawning, resorb their eggs and do not spawn. This may be a minor issue compared to some of the other threats facing Murray cod, nevertheless, concerned fishermen try to avoid catching wild Murray cod at these times. At this point in time a closed season is in place for the spring spawning period, during which anglers are not allowed to target Murray cod, even on a catch and release basis.

Effects of river regulation
The Murray River and southern tributaries originally displayed a pattern of high flows in winter, high flows and floods in spring, and low flows in summer and autumn. The breeding of Murray cod and other Murray-Darling native fish was adapted to these natural flow patterns. River regulation for irrigation has reversed these natural flow patterns, with negative effects on the breeding and recruitment of Murray cod. The Murray and most southern tributaries now experience high irrigation flows in summer and autumn and low flows in winter and spring. Small and medium floods including the once annual spring flood-pulse have been completely eliminated.

It is estimated that flows at the river mouth by 1995 had declined to only 27% of natural outflows. The probability of the bottom end of the Murray experiencing drought-like flows had increased from 5% under natural conditions to 60% by 1995.

Thermal pollution is the artificial reduction in water temperatures, especially in summer and autumn, caused when frigid water is released from the bottom of reservoirs for irrigation demands. Such temperature suppression typically extends several hundred kilometres downstream. Thermal pollution inhibits both the breeding of Murray cod and the survival of Murray cod larvae, and in extreme cases inhibits even the survival of adult Murray cod.

The rare floods that do break free of the dams and weirs of the Murray-Darling system have their magnitude and duration deliberately curtailed by river regulators. Increasing research indicates this management practice is very harmful and drastically reduces the general ecosystem benefits and breeding and recruitment opportunities for Murray cod and other Murray-Darling native fish species these now rare floods can provide.

Blackwater events
Blackwater events are emerging as a very serious threat to wild Murray cod stocks in lowland river reaches. Blackwater events occur when floodplains and ephemeral channels accumulate large quantities of leaf litter over a number of years and are then finally inundated in a flood event. The leaf litter releases large quantities of dissolved organic carbon, turning the water a characteristic black colour and inducing a temporary explosion in bacterial numbers and activity, which in turn consume dissolved oxygen, reducing them to levels harmful or fatal to fish. (Fish essentially asphyxiate.) Water temperature is a critical regulator of blackwater events as warmer water temperatures increase bacterial activity and markedly reduce the intrinsic oxygen carrying capacity of water; events that may be tolerable for fish in winter or early spring may be catastrophic in late spring or summer due to the increase in water temperature.

Blackwater events are often described as “natural” events—while there are some historical records of relatively severe events in smaller, more ephemeral systems (e.g. lower Lachlan, upper Darling), there is no record of severe events in the Murray River and its largest southern tributaries before water extraction and river regulation. In the Murray and large southern tributaries, very severe large-scale blackwater events are a relatively new but recurring phenomenon and appear to be an effect of river regulation curtailing the winter/spring flood events that formerly swept leaf litter away annually, exacerbated by long-term declines in rainfall and recurring prolonged drought events.

Flood events in 2010 and 2012 following the prolonged Millennium Drought (1997–2009) induced very severe blackwater events; while formal studies of these events were limited due to the relatively rapid response times required and logistical difficulties, angler photographs and observations of extraordinary numbers of dead Murray cod during these events and plunging catch rates after these events show they induced extremely heavy Murray cod mortalities along extensive tracts of the Murray River.

Physical barriers to fish movement
Dams, weirs and other instream barriers block the migration of adult and juvenile Murray cod and prevent recolonisation of habitats and maintenance of isolated populations. Additionally, recent study has proven approximately 50% of Murray cod larvae are killed when they pass through undershot weirs.

Habitat degradation / siltation
Hundreds of thousands, perhaps more than a million, submerged timber "snags", mainly River Red Gum, have been removed from lowland reaches of the Murray-Darling basin over the past 150 years. The removal of such a vast number of snags has had devastating impacts on Murray cod and river ecosystems. Snags are critical habitats and spawning sites for Murray cod. Snags are also critical for the functioning of lowland river ecosystems — as one of the few hard substrates in lowland river channels composed of fine silts snags are crucial sites for biofilm growth, macroinvertebrate grazing and general in-stream productivity.

Vegetation clearing and cattle trampling river banks create severe siltation, which fill in pools, degrade river ecosystems and make rivers and streams uninhabitable for Murray cod. This is exacerbated by removal of riparian (riverbank) vegetation which causes siltation and degrades river ecosystems in many ways.

Introduced carp
There is serious competition for food between larval/early juvenile introduced carp and larval/early juvenile native fish. Introduced carp dominate the fish faunas of lowland Murray-Darling rivers; the sheer amount of biomass carp now take up, and the large numbers of larvae carp produce, causes serious negative effects on river ecosystems and native fish. Carp are the main vector of the introduced Lernaea parasite (Lernaea cyprinacea) and serious vectors of the introduced Asian fish tapeworm (Bothriocephalus acheilognathi).

Introduced pathogens
Murray cod have soft skin and very fine scales that leave them particularly vulnerable to infection from exotic diseases and parasites. The following exotic diseases and parasites all seriously affect wild Murray cod; all have been introduced by imports of exotic fish. Chilodonella is a single-celled, parasitic protozoa that infects the skin of Murray cod and has caused a number of serious kills of wild Murray cod. Saprolegnia is a fungus-like oomycete or "water mould" that frequently infects Murray cod eggs and the skin of Murray cod that have been roughly handled through poor catch and release technique. (It is essential that Murray cod intended for release only touch cool wet surfaces and are not put down on any hard, dry, rough or hot surfaces, e.g. boat gunwales, boat floors, dry grass, dry rocks, gravel banks, dry towels or mats, etc. Hands should also be wetted before touching them. They must not be hung vertically by the mouth or gill covers.) Wild Murray cod populations across their range suffer extremely severe infestations of Lernaea or "anchor worm", a parasitic copepod vectored by introduced carp and that burrows into the skin of Murray cod. Lernaea puncture wounds are often secondarily infected by bacteria. Severe Lernaea infestations probably causes the death of many more adult Murray cod than commonly recognised. Ebner reports a young adult Murray cod seemingly killed by severe Lernaea infestation.

Conservation measures
State government fisheries departments support Murray cod populations by stocking with hatchery-bred fish, especially in man-made lakes. Important issues affecting restoration of cod populations, such as the need for spring floods and excessive angler take, are slowly being acknowledged but are yet to be definitely addressed. Other concerns such as the stocking of Murray cod in areas where trout cod (M. macquariensis) are recovering encourages hybridisation and needs consideration for future restocking programs.

Relationship with humans
Murray cod play a very important role in the mythology of many Aboriginal tribes in the Murray-Darling basin, and for some tribes, particularly those living along the Murray River, Murray cod were the icon species. The myths of these tribes describe the creation of the Murray River by a gigantic Murray cod fleeing down a small creek to escape from a renowned hunter. In these myths, the fleeing Murray cod enlarges the river and the beating of its tail create the bends in it. The cod is eventually speared near the terminus of the Murray River, chopped into pieces, and the pieces thrown back into the river. The pieces become all the other fish species of the river. The cod's head is kept intact, told to "keep being Murray cod", and also thrown back into the river.

Murray cod continue to play important roles in the culture of First Nations Peoples along the Murray and Darling rivers and the Murray-Darling Basin overall.

Aquaculture
The Murray cod is renowned as a good-tasting fish for eating. In recent years, despite the decline in the wild population, farmed fish are being harvested.

It has long been known that Murray cod could be translocated to impounded water. In the 1850s, landholder Terence Aubrey Murray stocked a large and beautiful billabong—Murray's Lagoon just north of Lake George—with Murray cod fished out of the Molonglo River at Murray's other property of Yarralumla. At some time the billabong overflowed and introduced Murray cod into the slightly brackish lake itself. They bred rapidly, and, from the 1850s to the 1890s, Lake George abounded with them. Due to the lengthy Federation Drought, by 1902, the lake dried out completely. In their search for water to survive in, the Murray cod flocked into the mouths of the few small creeks feeding the lake and died there by the thousands.

Farming Murray cod uses fishmeal and fish oil as food, but the species has a better ‘wild fish in to farmed fish out’ ratio than other farmed species such as rainbow trout and Atlantic salmon. It commands a premium price compared to those species. It is increasingly farmed, in large dams holding water used for irrigation of farmland, where the presence of effluent produced by the fish is not a problem

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Murray cod


text:
Gynoid

A gynoid, or fembot, is a feminine humanoid robot. Gynoids appear widely in science fiction film and art. As more realistic humanoid robot design becomes technologically possible, they are also emerging in real-life robot design. Just like any other robot, the main parts of a gynoid include sensors, actuators and a control system. Sensors are responsible for detecting the changes in the environment while the actuators, also called effectors, are motors and other components responsible for the movement and control of the robot. The control system instructs the robot on what to do so as to achieve the desired results.

Name
A gynoid is anything that resembles or pertains to the female human form. Though the term android has been used to refer to robotic humanoids regardless of apparent gender, the Greek prefix "andr-" refers to man in the masculine sense.

The term gynoid was first used by Isaac Asimov in a 1979 editorial, as a theoretical female equivalent of the word android.

Other possible names for feminine robots exist. The portmanteau "fembot" (feminine robot) was used as far back as 1959, in Fritz Leiber's The Silver Eggheads, applying specifically to non-sentient female sexbots. It was popularized by the television series The Bionic Woman in the episode "Kill Oscar" (1976) and later used in the Austin Powers films, among others. "Robotess" is the oldest female-specific term, originating in 1921 from Rossum's Universal Robots, the same source as the term "robot".

Feminine robots
...the great majority of robots were either machine-like, male-like or child-like for the reasons that not only are virtually all roboticists male, but also that fembots posed greater technical difficulties. Not only did the servo motor and platform have to be 'interiorized' (naizō suru), but the body [of the fembot] needed to be slender, both extremely difficult undertakings. Tomotaka Takahashi, roboticist

Examples of feminine robots include:

 * Project Aiko, an attempt at producing a realistic-looking female android. It speaks Japanese and English, and is produced for a price of €13,000
 * EveR-1
 * Actroid, designed by Hiroshi Ishiguro to be "a perfect secretary who smiles and flutters her eyelids"
 * HRP-4C
 * Meinü robot
 * Mark 1
 * Ai-Da, the world's first robot art system to be embodied as a humanoid robot.

Researchers note the connection between the design of feminine robots and roboticists' assumptions about gendered appearance and labor. Fembots in Japan, for example, are designed with slenderness and grace in mind, and they are employed to help to maintain traditional family structures and politics in a nation of population decline.

People's reactions to fembots are also attributable to gender stereotypes. Research in this area is aimed at elucidating gender cues, clarifying which behaviors and aesthetics elicit a stronger gender-induced response.

Sexualization

Gynoids may be "eroticized", and some examples such as Aiko include sensitivity sensors in their breasts and genitals to facilitate sexual response. The fetishization of gynoids in real life has been attributed to male desires for custom-made passive women and compared to life-size sex dolls. However, some science fiction works depict them as femmes fatales, fighting the establishment or being rebellious.

Female robots as sexual devices also appeared, with early constructions quite crude. The first was produced by Sex Objects Ltd, a British company, for use as a "sex aid". It was called simply "36C", from her chest measurement, and had a 16-bit microprocessor and voice synthesiser giving primitive responses to speech and push-button inputs.

In 1983, a busty female robot named "Sweetheart" was removed from a display at the Lawrence Hall of Science after a petition was presented claiming it was insulting to women. The robot's creator, Clayton Bailey, a professor of art at California State University, Hayward called this "censorship" and "next to book burning".

In fiction
Artificial women have been a common trope in fiction and mythology since the writings of the ancient Greeks (see the myth of Pygmalion). In science fiction, female-appearance robots are often produced for use as domestic servants and sexual slaves, as seen in the film Westworld, in Paul J. McAuley's novel Fairyland (1995), and in Lester del Rey's short story "Helen O'Loy" (1938), and sometimes as warriors, killers, or laborers. The character of Annalee Call in Alien Resurrection is a rare example of a non-sexualized gynoid. In Xenosaga, a role-playing video game, the character "KOS-MOS" is a female armored android.

The perfect woman
A long tradition exists in literature of the construction of an artificial embodiment of a certain type of ideal woman, and fictional gynoids have been seen as an extension of this theme. Examples include Hephaestus in the Iliad who created female servants of metal, and Ilmarinen in the Kalevala who created an artificial wife. Pygmalion, from Ovid's account, is one of the earliest conceptualizations of constructions similar to gynoids in literary history. In this myth a female statue is sculpted that is so beautiful that the creator falls in love with it, and after praying to Aphrodite, the goddess takes pity on him and converts the statue into a real woman, Galatea, with whom Pygmalion has children.

The Maschinenmensch ("machine-human"), also called "Parody," "Futura," "Robotrix," or the "Maria impersonator," in Fritz Lang's Metropolis is the first example of gynoid in film: a femininely shaped robot is given skin so that she is not known to be a robot and successfully impersonates the imprisoned Maria and works convincingly as an exotic dancer.

Fictional gynoids are often unique products made to fit a particular man's desire, as seen in the novel Tomorrow's Eve and films The Perfect Woman, The Stepford Wives, Mannequin and Weird Science, and the creators are often male "mad scientists" such as the characters Rotwang in Metropolis, Tyrell in Blade Runner, and the husbands in The Stepford Wives. Gynoids have been described as the "ultimate geek fantasy: a metal-and-plastic woman of your own."

The Bionic Woman television series popularized the word fembot. These fembots were a line of powerful, lifelike gynoids with the faces of protagonist Jaime Sommers's best friends. They fought in two multi-part episodes of the series: "Kill Oscar" and "Fembots in Las Vegas," and despite the feminine prefix, there were also male versions, including some designed to impersonate particular individuals for the purpose of infiltration. While not truly artificially intelligent, the fembots still had extremely sophisticated programming that allowed them to pass for human in most situations. The term fembot was also used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The 1987 science-fiction film Cherry 2000 portrayed a gynoid character which was described by the male protagonist as his "perfect partner". The 1964 TV series My Living Doll features a robot, portrayed by Julie Newmar, who is similarly described. The film Her (2013) depicts an Artificial Intelligence assistant called Samantha, whom the protagonist, Theodore, falls in love with until her intelligence surpasses human comprehension and she leaves to fulfil her higher purpose.

More recently, the 2015 science-fiction film Ex Machina featured a genius inventor experimenting with gynoids in an effort to create the perfect companion.

Gender
Fiction about gynoids or female cyborgs reinforce essentialist ideas of femininity, according to Margret Grebowicz. Such essentialist ideas may present as sexual or gender stereotypes. Among the few non-eroticized fictional gynoids include Rosie the Robot Maid from The Jetsons. However, she still has some stereotypical feminine qualities, such as a matronly shape and a predisposition to cry.

The stereotypical role of wifedom has also been explored through use of gynoids. In The Stepford Wives, husbands are shown as desiring to restrict the independence of their wives, and obedient and stereotypical spouses are preferred. The husbands' technological method of obtaining this "perfect wife" is through the murder of their human wives and replacement with gynoid substitutes that are compliant and housework obsessed, resulting in a "picture-postcard" perfect suburban society. This has been seen as an allegory of male chauvinism of the period, by representing marriage as a master-slave relationship, and an attempt at raising feminist consciousness during the era of second wave feminism.

In a parody of the fembots from The Bionic Woman, attractive, blonde fembots in alluring baby-doll nightgowns were used as a lure for the fictional agent Austin Powers in the movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. The film's sequels had cameo appearances of characters revealed as fembots.

Jack Halberstam writes that these gynoids inform the viewer that femaleness does not indicate naturalness, and their exaggerated femininity and sexuality is used in a similar way to the title character's exaggerated masculinity, lampooning stereotypes.

Sex objects
Some argue that gynoids have often been portrayed as sexual objects. Female cyborgs have been similarly used in fiction, in which natural bodies are modified to become objects of fantasy. The female robot in visual media has been described as "the most visible linkage of technology and sex" by Steven Heller.

Feminist critic Patricia Melzer writes in Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought that gynoids in Richard Calder's Dead Girls are inextricably linked to men's lust, and are mainly designed as sex objects, having no use beyond "pleasing men's violent sexual desires." The gynoid character Eve from the film Eve of Destruction has been described as "a literal sex bomb," with her subservience to patriarchal authority and a bomb in place of reproductive organs. In the 1949 film The Perfect Woman, the titular robot, Olga, is described as having "no sex," but Steve Chibnall writes in his essay "Alien Women" in British Science Fiction Cinema that it is clear from her fetishistic underwear that she is produced as a toy for men, with an "implicit fantasy of a fully compliant sex machine." In the film Westworld, female robots actually engaged in intercourse with human men as part of the make-believe vacation world human customers paid to attend.

Sexual interest in gynoids and fembots has been attributed to fetishisation of technology, and compared to sadomasochism in that it reorganizes the social risk of sex. The depiction of female robots minimizes the threat felt by men from female sexuality and allow the "erasure of any social interference in the spectator's erotic enjoyment of the image." Gynoid fantasies are produced and collected by online communities centered around chat rooms and web site galleries.

Isaac Asimov writes that his robots were generally sexually neutral and that giving the majority masculine names was not an attempt to comment on gender. He first wrote about female-appearing robots at the request of editor Judy-Lynn del Rey. Asimov's short story "Feminine Intuition" (1969) is an early example that showed gynoids as being as capable and versatile as male robots, with no sexual connotations. Early models in "Feminine Intuition" were "female caricatures," used to highlight their human creators' reactions to the idea of female robots. Later models lost obviously feminine features, but retained "an air of femininity."

Criticisms
Critics have commented on the problematic nature of assigning a gender to an artificial object with no consciousness of its own, based purely on its appearance or sound. It has also been argued that our innovation should part from this essentialising notion of a woman and focus on the purpose of creating robots, without making them explicitly male or female. Indeed, very few robots are explicitly male; it is the contrast with the female robot that makes the neutral one male (the principle of the male default). Critics have also noticed how the creation of gynoids is associated with service roles, while androids or systems with male voices are employed in positions of leadership.

title: Gynoid


text:
User:DigiBullet

I've been contributing to Wikipedia since December 17, 2003. I have many topics of interest, I haven't really contributed with dedication in months, but I make edits whenever I see a problem during my almost daily reading of whatever interests me on Wikipedia.

title: User:DigiBullet


text:
Loíza, Puerto Rico

Loíza (Spanish pronunciation: ) is a town and municipality on the northeastern coast of Puerto Rico, north of Canóvanas; east of Carolina, Puerto Rico; and west of Río Grande, Puerto Rico. Loíza is spread over five barrios and Loíza Pueblo (the downtown area and the administrative center of the city). It is part of the San Juan-Caguas-Guaynabo Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is renowned for its rich Afro-Puerto Rican culture and heritage.

History
Some say its name comes from a female cacique, named Loaíza or Yuíza, who governed the region formerly called Haimanio, on the shores of the Río Grande de Loíza. It is said that this cacique might have married a mulatto conquistador called Pedro Mejías, but there is no evidence of this. Other sources point to a Spanish landlord named Iñigo López de Cervantes y Loayza, who owned a lot of the territory, and was renowned among governors and colonists of the time.

In 1692, Loíza was officially declared an urban area due to its population (100 houses and 1,146 residents), but it was in 1719 that the Spanish government declared it as an official town. It was founded by Gaspar de Arredondo.

Puerto Rico was ceded by Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish–American War under the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1898 and became a territory of the United States. In 1899, the United States Department of War conducted a census of Puerto Rico finding that the population of Loíza was 12,522.

In the 1970s, an Aero Virgin Islands DC-3 plane crashed in a Loíza beach, with no fatalities.

On September 20, 2017 Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico. In Loíza, 598 residences lost their roof and 298 homes were a total loss. Loíza suffered a catastrophic hit from Hurricane Maria like the rest of Puerto Rico. In 2018, it was featured in an episode of Bar Rescue called Operation: Puerto Rico where bar consultant Jon Taffer visited Loíza to rescue an area bar and turned it into a community rescue, repairing a local community center, playground, baseball field and basketball court as well as the bar.

Gallery
Pictures of damage caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017:

Geography
Loíza belongs to the geographical region called the Coastal Plains of the North. Its terrain is uniformly plain, since it doesn't exceed 100 meters above water level.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 65.71 sqmi; of which 19.44 sqmi of it is land and 46.27 sqmi of it is water.

Barrios
Like all municipalities of Puerto Rico, Loíza is divided into barrios. The municipal buildings, central square and large Catholic church are located in a barrio referred to as "el pueblo".

 * 1) Canóvanas
 * 2) Loíza barrio-pueblo
 * 3) Medianía Alta
 * 4) Medianía Baja
 * 5) Torrecilla Alta
 * 6) Torrecilla Baja

Sectors
Barrios (which are, in contemporary times, roughly comparable to minor civil divisions) are further subdivided into smaller areas called sectores (sectors in English). The types of sectores may vary, from normally sector to urbanización to reparto to barriada to residencial, among others.

Special Communities
Comunidades Especiales de Puerto Rico (Special Communities of Puerto Rico) are marginalized communities whose citizens are experiencing a certain amount of social exclusion. A map shows these communities occur in nearly every municipality of the commonwealth. Of the 742 places that were on the list in 2014, the following barrios, communities, sectors, or neighborhoods were in Loíza: La 23 in Honduras barrio, Sector Pompeya (Los Pizarros) in Honduras barrio, Sector Villa del Carmen in Honduras barrio, Calle Melilla, Colobó, El Ceiba, El Jobo, Miñi Miñi  Piñones, Pueblo del Niño, Tocones, Villa Cañona 1, Villa Cañona 2, Villa Colobó, Villa Kennedy, Villa Santos, and Zapatería Pizarro.

In late May 2020, the mayor of Loíza announced that millions of dollars received from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) had been earmarked for 10 construction projects in Loíza. Of the ten, the largest project is for scheduled improvements to the Miñi Miñi Sector of Medianía Baja barrio.

Demographics
The population of the municipality was 23,693 at the 2020 census. Consisting of 8,508 households, and 6,140 families residing in the municipality. The population density was 1,673.4 inhabitants per square mile (646.1/km2). There were 8,508 housing units at an average density of 562 per square mile (217/km2). There were 8,508 households, out of which 45.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.1% were married couples living together, 29.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 16.3% were non-families. 14.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 5.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.39 and the average family size was 3.77. In the town the population was spread out, with 39.3% under the age of 19, 7.8% from 20 to 24, 27.4% from 25 to 44, 17.3% from 45 to 64, and 8.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 27 years. The median income for a household in the town was $8,962, and the median income for a family was $9,911. Males had a median income of $14,076 versus $12,903 for females. The per capita income for the town was $4,707. 67% of the population and 64.7% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 62.3% of those under the age of 18 and 59.5% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line. The municipality has the highest concentration of Afro-Puerto Ricans on the island. About 4,256 residents speak English as a native language (Census 2000).

Landmarks and places of interest
There are 19 beaches in Loíza.

In May 2020 the Parque Julia de Burgos (Julia de Burgos Park) was inaugurated. Some other attractions of Loíza include:
 * Aviones Beach
 * Ayala Family Artesan Center
 * Julia de Burgos Walk
 * María de la Cruz Cavern
 * Piñones Lagoon
 * San Patricio Parish
 * Vacía Talega Beach
 * Samuel Lind Estudio de Arte (Samuel Lind Art Studio)

Culture
One of Loíza's barrios, Loíza aldea, is famous across Puerto Rico because it has been a talent pool for dancers and artisans. A center for black Puerto Rican music, it is said to be the traditional birthplace of the musical form known as plena along with Ponce.

Each year there is a celebration in Loíza where people parade around wearing Máscaras de Vejigante, a type of mask made from coconuts and painted in multiple colors.

Loíza is known as "La Capital de la Tradición" (Capital of Traditions) for its bomba music, traditional Taíno and African dishes, folk art, and distinct culture.

Festivals and events
Loíza celebrates its patron saint festival in March. The Fiestas Patronales de San Patricio is a religious and cultural celebration that generally features parades, games, artisans, amusement rides, regional food, and live entertainment.

Other festivals and events celebrated in Loíza include:
 * Mayombe Carnival – February
 * Festival of Saint James the Apostle – July

Agriculture
Coconuts, fruits, sugar canes, and apples.

Industry

 * Fishing

Government
Like all municipalities in Puerto Rico, Loíza is administered by a mayor. The current mayor is Julia María Nazario Fuentes, who was elected at the 2016 Puerto Rican general elections.

The city belongs to the Puerto Rico Senatorial district VIII, which is represented by two Senators. In 2016, Nayda Venegas Brown and Eric Correa Rivera were elected as District Senators.

Symbols
The municipio has an official flag and coat of arms.

Flag
Green and gold and red with three undulating stripes - The silhouette of a bell tower in the upper left hand  corner (Canton) of the first stripe represents religious tradition and also serves as a symbol of the Church of San Patricio as an historical monument.

Coat of arms
The mounted figure of Saint James the Apostle, dominant in the shield, proclaims the devotion to the saint that the Loiceños profess, manifested in a special way during the celebration of traditional festivities every July 25. The flames are emblem of the Holy Spirit, bearer of the seven gifts, a title of the old church of Loíza. The undulating stripe represents the Grande de Loíza River, notable in geography, history and literature of Puerto Rico. The crown symbolizes the famous Taína Chief Yuisa, who lived in Loíza territory where she died. The shamrocks represent Saint Patrick of Ireland and patron of the population.

Education
Like all other municipalities, education in Loíza is administered by the Department of Education of Puerto Rico. Loíza has several elementary schools, but only two junior high and two high schools.

Transportation
Service to Loiza is available from San Juan by AMA route D45. This route provides service to Piñones and Isla Verde and connects to the Tren Urbano at Sagrado Corazon station.

There is no public transportation connecting Loiza to the eastern cities of PR, and there are few if any hotels and guest houses in Loiza itself, but there are resorts in Rio Grande.

There are 5 bridges in Loíza.

title: Loíza, Puerto Rico


text:
Tárogató

The tárogató (töröksíp, Turkish pipe; plural tárogatók or, anglicized, tárogatós; or torogoata) is a woodwind instrument commonly used in Hungarian folk music. The modern tárogató was intended to be a recreation of the original tárogató, but the two instruments are thought to have little in common.

Early use
Mention of the tárogató in Hungarian writings dates back at least as long ago as the 15th century. It is not clear whether it was first brought into Europe by the Hungarians when they first emigrated from the east in the 9th century. It is certain, however, that instruments of this type, descended from the Middle Eastern zurna, were introduced into Eastern Europe by the Turks in the Middle Ages, as evidenced by the term töröksip—"Turkish pipe"—which was used as a synonym for tárogató. It is possible that instruments from both traditions were combined into one entity. The tárogató has a Turkish origin, and it appeared in Hungary during the Turkish wars. Up to about the 18th century, the tárogató was a type of shawm, with a double reed, conical bore, and no keys.

Being a very loud and raucous instrument, the tárogató was used as a signaling instrument in battle (like the bugle or the bagpipe). However, depending on the type of reed used, it can also give off a very subtle, and yet, deep, mellow sound when played at a relaxed, steady pace. Because the tárogató was representative of the Rákóczi's War for Independence (1703–1711), its use was suppressed in the 18th century by the Habsburg monarchy. The instrument was eventually abandoned, being considered too overpowering for a concert hall.

Modern usage
In the 1890s, a modern version was invented by Vencel József Schunda, a Budapest instrument maker. It uses a single reed, like a clarinet or saxophone, and has a conical bore, similar to the saxophone. The instrument is made of wood, usually black grenadilla wood like a clarinet or oboe. The most common size, the soprano tárogató in B♭, is about 29 inches (74 cm) in length and has a mournful sound similar to a cross between an English horn and a soprano saxophone. Other sizes exist: one maker, János Stowasser, advertised a family of seven sizes of which the largest was a contrabass tárogató in E♭. The new tárogató bears very little resemblance with the historical tárogató and the two instruments should not be confused. It has been suggested that the name schundaphone would have been more accurate, but tárogató was used because of the nationalistic image that the original instrument had.

This instrument was a symbol of Hungarian aristocracy, and the favorite woodwind instrument of Governor Miklós Horthy. Manufacturing in Hungary ceased after World War II, though tárogatós continued to be made in Romania and other countries. In the 1990s several Hungarian makers started producing the instrument again.

A modern tárogató may occasionally be heard in Act 3 of Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner where it has become traditional in some opera houses (e.g. the Royal Opera House, London) to use it instead of the off-stage cor anglais for the last passage (bars 999-1149) of the Shepherd's air, but Wagner did not specify this, merely suggesting in the score "a specially built simple natural instrument". In the 1920s, Luță Ioviță, who played the instrument in the army during World War I, brought it to Banat (Romania), where it became very popular under the name taragot. In 1928, the British music journal Melody Maker reported that the Oxford-based clarinettist Frank Dyer was using "a taragossa, a novelty Hungarian instrument which is a cross between a saxophone and a Cor Anglais" with his Symphonic Dance Orchestra. No such instrument as a "taragossa" exists: the rest of the journal's description fits that of the tárogató.

Dumitru Fărcaș, who was born in Maramureș, made the instrument known all over the world and was considered to be the most famous tárogató player. German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann has used the tárogató in free jazz and free improvisation. American reed players Charles Lloyd, Scott Robinson & Michael Marcus have occasionally used the tárogató. Joe Lovano has also displayed interest in the instrument featuring it extensively in his episode of SOLOS: The Jazz Sessions, on Steve Kuhn's Mostly Coltrane, and on his own albums Trio Tapestry and Roma (with Enrico Rava) (both ECM Records). In 2015, Irina Ross, a Romanian singer, released her single "Taragot" which features the instrument in a dance-pop song.

title: Tárogató