In March, a couple of weeks before we were due to ship the May/June issue of Technology Review, something became extremely clear: we needed to throw it away.

We’d already cleared a portion of the magazine for coronavirus coverage, but as the pandemic kicked in, everything seemed irrelevant. Nobody would want to read what we’d prepared for them, at least not now, not when all they could think of was covid-19. Everybody got behind the idea quickly, and without complaint. They all knew it was the right thing to do.

So, in a couple of weeks—rather than the usual couple of months—we built a new magazine.

New stories assigned, reported, written, edited, art directed and published. It was a huge team effort all round and actually turned out to be both deeper and more optimistic than I had first imagined. I also edited a ton of stories, so I just want to give a shout out to all of them. There are others in the magazine too. You should look!

I ended up exhausted and proud. As I said to everybody: “Fantastic work. very proud of everybody and of the lineup we arrived at. Now, let’s never do that again.”

How we get to normal
A blueprint for living in a world with covid-19
Gideon Lichfield

How to manage a pandemic
Why some countries have fared far better in the battle against covid-19 than others—and what we can learn from them.
James Crabtree

Helping hands
How scientists, researchers, and engineers are organizing volunteer efforts to fight the pandemic.
Karen Hao

Repurposing drugs might help fight this pandemic
And they could even help with the next one.
Wudan Yan

The trace race
Even with a national government asleep at the wheel, one Indian state showed the world the right way to tackle coronavirus.
Sonia Faleiro

Vaxx the vote
America might survive coronavirus. But will the election?
Patrick Howell O’Neill

They were waiting for the Big One. Then coronavirus arrived.
Can being ready for one kind of disaster prepare you for another?
Britta Lokting

Together alone
What the sea taught me about a life of isolation.
Rose George

The stress test
There’s a boom in mental health apps and teletherapy. But are they good enough?
Tanya Basu