It is August 2017 - more than three years since the release of Hugi 38. In one of the recent issues of the C64 diskmag Vandalism News, Hugi 38 was declared to be the "last" issue of Hugi. This was a typo. At that point in time, it was merely a fact that Hugi 38 was the latest issue of Hugi. However, it is likely that the author of those lines had, by chance, foreseen the future and that Hugi 38 will really be the last issue of Hugi.
It is not a coincidence that Hugi 38 was released in June 2014, half a year after my father's death. It has always been my father who told me: "Whenever you have nothing else to do, work on Hugi." Now that he is dead, there is nobody who keeps motivating me this way. But, despite still having enough time to spare, I am never bored. There are plenty of other interests of mine.
A recent project of mine is the website 21st Century Headlines, for example. This website might evolve into a useful tool to keep track of current trends and developments in biomedical science, computers and physics. Just like Hugi once was a medium reading which on a regular basis would keep you up to date about all the major events that happened in the demoscene.
My interests have shifted, which is partly also due to the fact that it is nowadays far easier to gather relevant information on science and technology than it was when I started making Hugi, in 1996.
I would like to stress that it was more a matter of coincidence that the focus of Hugi became the demoscene, instead of having been planned from the beginning. In the first two years, Hugi was a magazine in German language that dealt with a broad variety of topics. Only then some of the people with whom I was in contact inspired me to switch to the English language and focus on the demoscene.
I have always regarded Hugi as a service for the demoscene. Many demosceners have not recognized this and accused me of making Hugi to promote myself, of not being a scener because I do not make demos, of not having contributed anything valuable to the demoscene, of only caring about myself, of not respecting the demoscene etc. This is really unfair since I used to sacrifice all of my spare time working on Hugi especially in the years 1996 to 2001, when I was still a student at high school. I could have spent the time doing whatever I like to do, as most of the other young people I knew did. I could have played computer games all the time, for example. This would have been more fun for me. I could have also read books or maybe even tried to find a form of sports I enjoy. I could also have ventured into computer game development and tried to sell games for money. Hugi was always free of charge and it only cost me time, energy and financial resources. I made it because I cared about the demoscene and felt that there should be a magazine that covers it in its entirety, keep its readers up to date about all the events and major releases and ultimately serve as a resource for dissertations and books about the demoscene.
It is thanks to Magic that Hugi was released after 2006, when I would have already stopped had he not been. But now Magic has other priorities in his life, too.
I hope that the demoscene will not perish, that people will continue releasing demos for many years to come, that there will be new, young people who will join the scene, and that somebody will be found who will make a new magazine, be it a diskmag or a web-based publication, that will keep track of all the events and major releases of the demoscene, so that one day history books will be written covering the demoscene in its entirety.
Farewell.
Adok/Hugi