I am pleased to present to you the first issue of 2010, where you will no doubt find a remarkable diversity of contributions. The more we struggle for free and independent dissemination of scholarship, the more essential our work on Nebula becomes to us. I am forever in the debt of my international colleagues who work tirelessly on bringing this journal to the academic community, despite the challenges that face many of us daily. I write this, I must confess, with a somewhat heavy heart and the fear that the search for a more equitable world, which drives the ambition of this journal, is a futile one. Just as the movement for social justice wins a small victory in one corner of the world, another atrocity springs with alacrity to replace it and the endeavour seems muted by institutional structures and mindsets that appear immutable and ancient. If my work and effort here only manages to distract me (and you?) momentarily from the darkness which permeates my consciousness of a most recent and surprising massacre, brushed aside as a state's attempt at self-defence, then perhaps it has not all been in vain.