* * * There were more losses from the print semiprozine market this year, with Zahir transitioning from print to electronic format and then dying altogether, Weird Tales being sold, with its future in doubt, and Electric Velocipede, Black Gate, and criticalzine The New York Review of Science Fiction on the verge of transitioning to electronic formats as well. I suspect that sooner or later most of the surviving print semiprozines will transition to electronic- only online formats, saving themselves lots of money in printing, mailing, and production costs.
The semiprozines that remained in print format mostly struggled to bring out their scheduled issues. Electric Velocipede, edited by John Kilma, managed two issues, publishing interestingly eclectic stuff from Peter M. Ball, Karl Bunker, Genevieve Valentine, William Shunn, and others; they announced their intention to go online exclusively in 2012. Sword and Sorcery print magazine Black Gate, edited by John O’Neill, managed one large issue with strong work by Chris Willrich, Emily Mah, and others, and also announced their intention to transition to electronic format in 2012. The longest running of all the fiction semiprozines, and usually the most reliably published, the Canadian On Spec, which is edited by a collective under general editor Diane L. Walton, managed only three of its scheduled four issues this year, somewhat atypically. Another collective-run SF magazine with a rotating editorial staff, Australia’s Andromeda Spaceways In-flight Magazine, managed only four issues this year. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, the long-running slipstream magazine edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, managed only one issue in 2011, as did Neo-Opsis, and Ireland’s long-running Albedo One. Fantasy magazine Shimmer managed two issues, as did Space and Time Magazine and Weird Tales before being sold. The small British SF magazine Jupiter, edited by Ian Redman, produced all four of its scheduled issues in 2011, as did the fantasy magazine Tales of the Talisman. A new start-up SF magazine, Bull Spec, produced three issues. If there were issues of Aurealis, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Sybil’s Garage, Space Squid, or Tales of the Unanticipated out this year, I didn’t see them.
With The New York Review of Science Fiction, a long-running critical magazine edited by David G. Hartwell and a staff of associate editors, scheduled to move to electronic format in 2012, the venerable newszine Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field is about all that’s left of the popular print critical magazine market. It was always the best of them, though, and certainly your best bet for value, a multiple Hugo winner, which for more than thirty years has been an indispensable source of news, information, and reviews. Happily, the magazine has survived the death of founder, publisher, and longtime editor Charles N. Brown and has continued strongly and successfully under the guidance of a staff of editors headed by Liza Groen Trombi, and including Kirsten Gong-Wong, Carolyn Cushman, Tim Pratt, Jonathan Strahan, Francesca Myman, Heather Shaw, and many others.
Most of the other surviving print critical magazines are professional journals more aimed at academics than at the average reader. The most accessible of these is probably the long-running British critical zine Foundation.
Subscription addresses are: Locus, The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field, Locus Publications, Inc., P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA, 94661, $72.00 for a one-year first-class subscription, 12 issues; The New York Review of Science Fiction, Dragon Press, P.O. Box 78, Pleasantville, NY 10570, $40.00 for a one-year subscription, 12 issues, make checks payable to “Dragon Press”; The Science Fiction Foundation, Science Fiction Foundation, Roger Robinson (SFF), 75 Rosslyn Avenue, Harold Wood, Essex RM3 ORG, UK, $37.00 for a three-issue subscription in the U.S.; Black Gate, New Epoch Press, 815 Oak Street, St. Charles, IL 60174, $29.95 for a one-year, four-issue subscription; On Spec, The Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic, P.O. Box 4727, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6E 5G6, for subscription information, go to www.onspec.ca; Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine, 4129 Carey Rd., Victoria, BC, Canada V8Z 4G5, $25.00 for a three-issue subscription; Albedo One, Albedo One Productions, 2, Post Road, Lusk, County Dublin, Ireland; $32.00 for a four-issue airmail subscription, make checks payable to “Albedo One” or pay by PayPal at www.albedo1.com; Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027, $20.00 for four issues; Electric Velocipede, Spilt Milk Press, go to http://www.electricvelocipede.com for subscription information; Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, go to www.andromedaspaceways.com for subscription information; Tales of the Talisman, Hadrosaur Productions, P.O. Box 2194, Mesilla Park, NM 88047-2194, $24.00 for a four-issue subscription; Jupiter, 19 Bedford Road, Yeovil, Somerset, BA21 5UG, UK, 10 Pounds Sterling for four issues; Shimmer, P.O. Box 58591, Salt Lake City, UT 84158-0591, $22.00 for a four-issue subscription.
In only a few years, the online world of electronic magazines has become one of the most reliable places to find quality fiction; already more reliable than most of the print semiprozine market, they’re giving the top print professional magazines a run for their money too, and sometimes beating them.
The online magazine Subterranean (http://subterraneanpress.com), edited by William K. Schafer, perhaps didn’t have quite as strong a year as they did last year, but still published good stuff, SF and fantasy both, by Jay Lake, K. J. Parker, Catherynne M. Valente, Robert Silverberg, Daniel Abraham, Mike Resnick, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and others.
Clarkesworld Magazine (www.clarkesworldmagazine.com), had a strong year, publishing good SF, fantasy, and slipstream stories by Yoon Ha Lee, Lavie Tidhar, Ken Liu, David Klecha and Tobias S. Bucknell, Cat Rambo, Jason Chapman, Nnedi Okorafor, Gord Sellar, and others. Sean Wallace, who announced that he was stepping down in 2010, is returning to join publisher and editor Neil Clarke as an editor on the magazine; apparently he has been working unofficially on Clarkesworld behind the scenes throughout 2011.
The new online magazine Lightspeed (www.lightspeedmagazine.com), edited by John Joseph Adams, was weaker in its sophomore year than it had been in its freshman year, although it still published worthwhile stuff by Robert Reed, David Farland, Vyler Kaftan, An Owomoyele, and Genevieve Valentine. The online magazine Fantasy, on the other hand, recently taken over by Lightspeed editor John Joseph Adams, had a strong year, publishing good fiction by Lavie Tidhar, James Alan Gardner, Sarah Monette, Cat Rambo, Tim Pratt, Kit Howard, Jeremiah Tolbert, Genevieve Valentine, and others. As mentioned earlier, Fantasy has now been merged with Lightspeed into one electronic magazine, called Lightspeed, that publishes both fantasy and science fiction.
I’d still like to see the long-running online magazine Strange Horizons (www.strangehorizons.com) publish more SF and less fantasy and slipstream, but they did run good stuff by Lewis Shiner, Gavin J. Grant, Nisi Shawl, Genevieve Valentine, Charlie Jane Anders, Tracey Canfield, and others. Karen Meisner stepped down as fiction editor of Strange Horizons.
Tor.com (www.tor.com) has established itself as one of the most eclectic genre-oriented sites on the Internet, a Web site that regularly publishes SF, fantasy, and slipstream, as well as articles, comics, graphics, blog entries, print and media reviews, and commentary. It’s become a regular stop for me, even when they don’t have new fiction posted. This year, they published too many promotional slices of upcoming novels, but also some good fiction by Michael Swanwick, Michael F. Flynn, Harry Turtledove, Catherynne
