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Difficult Times For SF Magazines
Lawrence Person writes "Another speculative fiction magazine folds: Realms of Fantasy is ceasing publication. This comes hot on the heels of the announcement that the venerable Fantasy and Science Fiction will be moving from a monthly to a bimonthly schedule, and underscores what a tough environment this is for science fiction and fantasy magazines, all of which have suffered declining circulation for quite some time. This is a real problem, since short fiction is generally where new writers cut their teeth, appearing in print alongside their more famous peers. Given that a one-year subscription costs less than the average video game, those with an interest in science fiction might want to consider buying subscriptions to Asimov's, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Analog. (Those in the UK might want to add Interzone and/or Black Static and Postscripts as well.)"
I've been buying Asimov, Analog, and S&SF for a LONG time, but I won't subscribe to them. The extra cost involved if you don't live in the US means it's the same price - or less - to buy it at the local book store. AND, unlike when I *did* subscribe, it arrives at the book store a month earlier. WTF is up with that? What are they doing - taking back the overstock and mailing it out to subscribers?
Subscribe to these magazines. I have particular experience with Analog & Asimov's and the amount of quality stories in each issue is quite high, providing many hours of good reading each month.
I would have never discovered either if it weren't for downloading 'illegal' digital copies via IRC. One of the biggest problems of these magazines is people just don't know, the more exposure they get the better off they will be. I would advise them to freely post a certain number of back issues online to entice potential subscribers. I think they need to re-invent their content delivery model if they want to stay afloat. It would be a great loss if they faded away.
Magazines in general are hurting. Mad magazine also cut down from being a monthly magazine to being a quarterly. It's rival, Cracked, has been doing well because they adapted to the internet (cracked.com vs mad's crappy website).
Sorry guys, it's a brave new world, it's not 1984 anymore. Get with the program.
BTW, I don't read a lot anymore, but besides the odd fanfiction (fanfiction.net), I find fictionpress for original stuff a decent place to read. Perhaps there are others. The problem is (and what magazines with editors used to do) was picking out the gems from the crap. There are various ways to do this on those type of sites, but many still still don't make any effort and dump the whole lot of listings on you.
As an unpublished writer myself, I think what this means is that writers are going to have to get their starts by posting their stories on the Internet. If they write well, perhaps they will build a following, and that will make it easier for them to get published by more regular means (which pay better, but beginners never made that much money anyway).
It is too bad for me that I seem to complete one short story or novella every four years, but that is my own problem... I could always put out the stories I have...
Posting on the Internet is currently easier for novelists than it is for short story writers. Magazines want first serial rights and that means they want to get your story before the Internet does. Book publishers don't care so much about being first as about having exclusivity. So you can put your book out, and if it becomes popular, some publisher might pick it up without you having to write another one. But then book publishers prefer to keep a book in print for a while, if it keeps selling.
It can still work for short story writers to give stories away, but only if they complete stories fairly often. If I could complete a story every month, I could offer it to the magazines first and then put it on the Net. Maybe eventually I would write something good enough that a magazine might decide to catch the next one...
Ok, I'm game. I have always loved SF, and read quite a lot of it. I have never got into the magazines, though. Which are your favorites, and why?
They started their decline about the time Astounding turned into Analog (around the time of Sputnik), but really the SF magazines are being dragged to their death from above. Having grown up reading science fiction, I'm now embarrassed to be seen anywhere near that section of a book store. The speculative aspect of the genre has been completely lost. The adolescent drivel has triumphed. But then, short fiction of all types is endangered.
Of course, written science fiction of all types has been diluted by the inanity of Hollywood. For instance, Gort was the Martian emissary in the original short story of "The Day the Earth Stood Still". Instead, we get Michael Rennie (or Keanu) as a leading man.
From the summary:
"This is a real problem, since short fiction is generally where new writers cut their teeth..."
A real problem my ass... I'm sure new writers can find a place on the internet all the same. In fact, anyone who really thinks it's a problem should go start a site right now. With the right business model, you could provide the same service to new writers and readers alike. There are all kinds of ways this could be done where writers even get paid.
There is no problem, chill out. Print media is dead, the internet is the new library... or something. Either way, calling this a problem is like when the RIAA thought the internet was a problem for music... but it was really the answer to better accessibility.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
There's a "Science Fiction" bookstore near where I live, and they've shifted gradually towards carrying mostly fantasy.
Genuine Science Fiction has always been rather thin on the ground. Doing it well is *hard*. Hal Clement was one who did it well. Larry Niven occasionally did it well. (Known Worlds series incl. Ringworld et seq.)
Currently I only know of Charles Stoss, though there may be others. (I've cut back on my reading a lot.)
But a thing to note is...the Science Fiction book store near me doesn't care the magazines regularly. They can't get the distributors to deliver them. And this is in the SF Bay Area, California, USA. Books they can get, but not magazines.
Unfortunately, in my opinion the quality of the single magazine I followed regularly, Analog(Astounding) has also deteriorated. Significantly. Very significantly. So much so that a subscription is practically a waste of money. (There have been a few periods when I also regularly followed Galaxy or Worlds of If...but those are now decades in the past.)
And it's not that I don't still like good Science Fiction...or even good fantasy. I still buy many books. (*Almost* all of which I count as fantasy of one sort or another...but NOT Science Fiction.)
I wish Randall Garrett had lived. *He* could have written decent Science Fiction in the current age. (He wasn't just the Lord Darcy series. There were long periods when he was the most prolific writer that J.W. Campbell had writing for him...under lots of pseudonyms.) He wouldn't have written the same stories that Charles Stoss writes...and nobody will ever know what he would have written. Sigh.
But, in my opinion, most of the magazines don't really deserve to live. It's a real pity, because the magazines is where authors used to develop their skills. Now ... now there doesn't seem to be any decent place for such development. Which means that the people who can become authors are far fewer.
On line? Who pays for on line? IMHO that only works if you are already a well enough known name that a publisher will pick up your work anyway. (I.e., even if they don't have exclusive rights to distribution.) A few authors can get away with that.
Science Fiction has always been a shoe-string operation. And SF magazines have always been VERY highly dependent upon their editor. A change of editors can make a weak magazine or break a strong one. Astounding/Analog was extremely lucky in having Campbell for so long. Galaxy was lucky in HL Gold. Asimov's ... faded rapidly when he did. I don't think that Stanley Schmidt was as good an editor as Campbell (average rating...Campbell sure had his off periods!), but he was more than adequate. But he didn't keep the spark going. He didn't have the fire that inspires authors and readers. Recently...I haven't been following. Occasionally I see one and pick it up. But rarely...meaning I rarely see one. When I do see one, I'm rarely inspired to buy it.
All magazines are falling off, but Science Fiction magazines have always lived closer to the edge...so any fall off in business affects them more profoundly.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I used to think that print mags would survive as long as there were toilets. Crap, we need something to read while we're in there. But then I started to bring my laptop into the can. I know gross. But you can't beat surfing the net, while doing your business.
No they haven't died out, the heydey of Analog was actually in the 60's. Analog went through a few years when it was published in a large format offset printed magazine with some very nice artwork. And the content was wonderful. Among other things Dune was serialized in Analog during those years.
There was some good stuff in the 70's too. Joe Haldeman's Forever War, which Ridley Scott is planning to make into a movie first appeared as a serial in Analog then.
I still have my old large format Analogs in a box in my garage. I've been a continuous subscriber for 43 years... since I was about 12. It is now quite painful to read knowing the former glory. I have about 3 years of back issues now that I haven't read.
The publication volume numbers are also painful to look at. They are less than 10% of what they were in the 60's.
Given the tough economy and the general trend away from the sciences and worse yet reading anything longer than a web page it would not surprise me to see Analog stop publication for a while. Or forever.
I pretty much agree with you. I've read a shit load of fantasy and s.f. over the years, but as I've gotten older, I've found much of it less satisfying. The truth of the matter as I see it is that a large portion of fantasy/s.f. is akin to those trashy romance books that my grandmother used to read by the hundred. They're geek porn.
Just to be clear, it's not the the entire genres are bad--it's that a lot of what is popular and people read are popcorn fluff. There's still a lot of really good fantasy and s.f. lit out there, it's just not always readily apparent.
Can't someone post an oppositional opinion on slashdot without being modded "troll" or "flamebait" or the even more senseless "overrated"? The guy's got a right to an opinion, however off the beaten path he may be.
The entire publishing industry--magazines, newspapers, and books--is in trouble these days; the traditional hard copy distribution system is breaking down and there's no clear alternative that will provide authors and publishers a similar level of employment.
Millions of us have basically switched from reading books (or watching TV, which is the original book-and-magazine killer) during evenings and weekends to interactive media--cable/satellite TV and, increasingly, the internet.
Probably a majority of people now get their daily news hit from the internet, and after a couple of hours of surfing there's just not much mental space left to sit down with a magazine, except maybe on the toilet.
I foresee a time when hard copy is basically a thing of the past, with some kind of cheap, reusable or recyclable programmable paper replacing grab-and-read magazines at the supermarket check-out line (if indeed we will still have supermarkets). I think Neal Stephenson in "The Diamond Age" did a great job describing future books and magazines with multimedia graphics dancing on the pages in place of plain old static ink.
Since there's still a huge market for creating compelling content, it stands to reason that we'll find a way to charge for it. Maybe in the end it will come down to advertising or else a pay-if-you-like-it approach that will probably eliminate the large production houses that make movies and TV shows today.
I used to love taking home a science fiction magazine--Analog was my favorite--but today there's just so much stuff available for free, and real life has caught up with so much of science fiction today that it seems more interesting to read about real world developments. Isaac Asimov in an introduction to one of his collections wrote about growing up in the 1920s and 1930s when real world science progressed at a much slower pace, and every new issue of Analog had this special glow around it as he retrieved it from the magazine rack and paid his ten cents. Now that was a time!
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
As an author I'd rather publish online than in a magazine. With a magazine I get an artificially limited readership (due to subscription cost) and am paid indirectly if at all. By publishing online I get unlimited potential readership and can earn revenue directly.
I was reading in my comfortable chair, three feet away from where I'm now typing this.
Am I the only one who still finds it more comfortable to curl up with a book than to read a screen?
I really, really like modern digital stuff as much as any slashdotter out there but a book, or magazine, is still a superior technology in many ways: it needs no power, it's durable, I can stuff it into a pocket and take it with me, I can read anywhere there's enough light, from any position I find comfortable; if I lose it or drop it in the bathtub, no big whoop.
Some of these advantages would go away if I had one of these new-fangled readers, I suppose, rather than the laptop I mostly use but dead trees are still more "user-friendly".
Can't someone post an oppositional opinion on slashdot without being modded "troll" or "flamebait" or the even more senseless "overrated"?
Well said.
Maybe if I change his text as follows:
That, or they're like me and choose to spend their reading time with Joyce, Fitzgerald or Faulkner instead of reading about some imaginative distance future that will be outdated in 10 years. Fantasy is even less appealing to me.
I'm not into sci-fi and fantasy, you insensitive clods!
You know, he has a point. I think a reason why "2001: A Space Odyssey" is so popular is because it's so far ahead, that people are willing to suspend their beliefs. Imagine producing this film in 1990. People will be laughing and criticizing it.