For most of the 1970s and part of the '80s, I had a subscription to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. At that time, in my teens, I was fully up on the state of the genre.
I’ve never enjoyed – nay, loved – another magazine as I did good old F&SF, during that period. Great stories by all the top writers (and new talents); cartoons by the great Gahan Wilson; movie reviews by Baird Searles (before sf became thoroughly mainstreamed in Hollywood); and a monthly science column by Isaac Asimov. Let me repeat that: a monthly science column by Isaac Asimov.
God, I wish I’d kept all of them. Wait – I did. But, evil burglar destroyed them all when they burned my house down in 1986. Whenever I see one of those old issues for sale at a used book store, I grab it.
For some reason, I’ve hardly read the magazine since. I picked up a few issues in the '90s, and it seemed like they were publishing clearly substandard stories, some of them barely qualifying as either science fiction or fantasy, as long as they expressed some vaguely feminist viewpoint.
Now, at 48, in the Year of Our Lord 2009, I’m clueless about what’s going on in the field. So I’m asking you youngsters – is the magazine worth subscribing to these days?
I would just buy a copy and read it to see what you think. Unless you get a really bad or really good month you can probably tell the quality by reading 1 issue.
I don’t follow the magazines. Never have really. But two days ago I was in the library with a half-hour to kill and picked up one of the Gardner Dozois best SF of the year anthologies.
It was labeled 2006 and the introduction dealt with the state of the field. Magazines, movies, publishers, obituaries.
Amazing had quit that year. Asimov and Analog had lost about 30% of their circulation in the last three years. I think Asimov was around 44,000 and Analog maybe 55,000.
F&SF was down to 14,000 I believe. My memory is that Dozois had some nice things to say about the quality of the magazine though. He encouraged anyone who had any interest in the magazines to subscribe to them.
Pretty much all sales are through subscription, for all the magazines.
Anyway, if you’re sentimental about F&SF it’s probably worth subscribing to. I don’t imagine anyone can make a living selling to the magazines exclusively anymore, but I like the idea that they are still there and paying a little money to anyone who feels compelled to write.
I’ve subscribed to F&SF since 1968, and have every issue except for maybe half a dozen. I’m really behind in my reading, but started reading from Jan 2008 again. The stories are better than the ones in Analog, if not quite as good as Asimov’s. They are certainly not up to the level they were during the Boucher, Davidson, Mills or early Ed Ferman years. I’m going to renew, both to maintain my collection and also out of loyalty.
There was nothing in any of the issues to make me want to throw the magazine across the room - unlike Analog, which had some really major stinkers.
The magazine just this month switched to a bimonthly schedule with extra pages. It was mainly due to shipping costs according to the editor. Lately they’ve been doing a lot of reprinting as well.
I did just re-up my subscription. Typically I find one pretty good story in an issue, two or three alright stories and a few that make me wish the author hadn’t bothered. Given the fee works out to about half the price of a paperback a month I figured it was still worth my time.
I suppose I should add that I subscribe to F&SF and Asimov’s but not Analog. I sampled all the magazines off the news stand for a couple months when I was considering subscribing a few years ago and those were the two I was enjoying the most.
In addition to F&SF going bimonthly, Asimov’s and Analog are dropping to 10 issues a year and Realms of Fantasy just folded.
They’ll all be gone within five years in their current forms. They don’t get much distribution because bookstores hate dealing with the digest format. F&SF tried trolling for really cheap subscriptions a few years back to raise circulation and got hammered when nobody renewed at the regular price. Penny Publications, the owner of Asimov’s and Analog, only cares about its crossword puzzle magazines. They get next to no advertising, most of which is done as a favor to writers because the readership is too low to make any advertising worth the money.
Lots of people are trying for new forms for short fiction online but nothing has broken out yet.
BTW, in my area I can find the three remaining sf mags in at least one library. Why not check locally for you and pick up several back issues if they’re available?
If I recall, Realms of Fantasy was the sister magazine to Science Fiction Age, which had a short life back in the '90s. I think I had every issue. Anybody remember a magazine called Galileo? I had the complete run of that, too. Maybe I somehow kill magazines.
I cleaned out my magazine closet last month. I found dozens and dozens of titles I had forgotten about. SF magazines have the lives of mayflies.
Thinking about it, they’re the perfect stimulus device. Start an sf magazine. You have huge costs in paying authors, illustrators, printers, postage, shipping. Advertisers spend money, so do subscribers. People go to bookstores to pick it up and spend money there.
Then the magazine goes belly-up. Only one person loses money: the rest of the economy gains.
And then another sucker steps in.
I tell ya, if everybody in the U.S were to start an sf magazine, the recession would be over by the end of the year!
(And everybody would be bankrupt. Except writers, who are far too smart to do anything as stupid as start an sf magazine. It’s a win-win!)
It does seem like a lot of the stories they published during that period of time were like that, luckily the magazine has nearly stopped printing that type of stories.
Maybe not, with Realms of Fantasy. It sounds like they may have a buyer. The magazine has been making money, and the cancellation was due to fear that the economy might wreck it. The publishers have a history of dropping magazines even when successful (they published Science Fiction Age and quit even though it was profitable).
F&SF went through several editorship changed. Ed Ferman, who was the editor/publisher for ages, quit as editor (replaced by Kristine Rusch) and later as publisher (with Gordon van Gelder as editor and publisher). I think that Rusch went for literary influenced SF to the detriment of more popular stories. Ferman would publish both, which is why he did such a great job with the magazine (he also wrote the best introductory blurbs in the history of the genre). Gorden is blazing a path somewhere in between, but is hampered by many factors – less interest in short fiction, restrictive definitions of what science fiction “really” is, writers finding that novels are more worth their effort.
OT: I was planning on giving my husband’s collection of Analog and Asimov to a local charity, but if anyone is missing particular issues and would like me to look for them, let me know.
As long as it’s long enough for them to buy and print the story they’re holding.
Right now, the only major print SF/Fantasy magazines are Analog, Asimov’s and F&SF. There are some good online magazines, too, but the print ones are definitely hurting.
I’ve got a bunch of them, but not a complete set. I believe it was published out of Boston, and I’ve been to the bookstore that more or less was its home.
I think I have a complete set of Twilight Zone magazines.
While the magazines pop up and shut down now, it is nothing like it was in the '50s, where, as the Day checklist will show, there were tons of short lived magazines, some even associated with big names, like Beyond with Galaxy.
