I first caught a whiff of this over at Mr. Ellis's establishment, and now there's more on it at Slashdot. To wit: Realms of Fantasy is ceasing publication, and rumor has it that all three major American fantasy and science fiction print magazines will be going to a bi-monthly schedule.1
Times are tough for magazines in general, what with this Intratubes thing the youngsters these days are using to steal food from the mouths of Metallica's children while refusing to pay to read Paul Krugman, and the ceaseless videogamery that eats up their free time while turning them into soulless, efficient killing machines. But these magazines, Asimov's and Analog in particular, are giants, institutions of the genre. I've still got my rejection slips from all three of them somewhere, well-deserved responses to the terrible stories I sent off to them during my teens.
Subscribing to all three of them for a year would total exactly one hundred dollars and ninety-one cents (although that might change if their publishing schedules get halved). I can't really swing all of that at once, but I do believe I'll start having at least one of them sent to my home soon.
This is for entirely selfish reasons. I don't think that the future of periodical SF publishing lies in printed matter.2 But I want them all to hang around in meatspace long enough for me to get at least one thing published, so that I can run my grubby little paws over the pages of an issue that I've somehow managed to get into. After that they can ascend into virtuality if they need to.
With that in mind, I've stepped up work on a short story with an eye towards making the rounds of the big three. It's got cyborg monkeys and poets in it. A shoe-in for sure! Everybody likes cyborg monkeys.
1F&SF has in fact already done so.
2See Jim Baen's Universe.
Times are tough for magazines in general, what with this Intratubes thing the youngsters these days are using to steal food from the mouths of Metallica's children while refusing to pay to read Paul Krugman, and the ceaseless videogamery that eats up their free time while turning them into soulless, efficient killing machines. But these magazines, Asimov's and Analog in particular, are giants, institutions of the genre. I've still got my rejection slips from all three of them somewhere, well-deserved responses to the terrible stories I sent off to them during my teens.
Subscribing to all three of them for a year would total exactly one hundred dollars and ninety-one cents (although that might change if their publishing schedules get halved). I can't really swing all of that at once, but I do believe I'll start having at least one of them sent to my home soon.
This is for entirely selfish reasons. I don't think that the future of periodical SF publishing lies in printed matter.2 But I want them all to hang around in meatspace long enough for me to get at least one thing published, so that I can run my grubby little paws over the pages of an issue that I've somehow managed to get into. After that they can ascend into virtuality if they need to.
With that in mind, I've stepped up work on a short story with an eye towards making the rounds of the big three. It's got cyborg monkeys and poets in it. A shoe-in for sure! Everybody likes cyborg monkeys.
1F&SF has in fact already done so.
2See Jim Baen's Universe.
