This is an essay about Science Fiction and Fantasy magazines, that publish mostly short fiction, but sometimes poetry and novelettes and serialised novels too.
Off the bat, I want to make it clear that this essay is not addressed to the start-ups, the indies, and the D-I-Yers. In a world of consumption, I have the utmost respect to the people who create.
No. This is to the establishment. The kinds of magazines that have been publishing speculative fiction for more than a decade, and the kinds that often have lineages running back deep into the 20th century. The kinds of magazines that regularly get nominated for Hugos, or Nebulas or Locust Awards and that publish fiction likely to appear in years best anthologies that nobody buys.
I’m not writing this essay as a critic, or as an impartial observer but as a fan, as a writer, and someone that wants to see the world of short speculative fiction thrive. Who wants it to once again return to the dizzying heights of its past, with hundreds of thousands or eager readers and the stars of tomorrow lining its pages. I am writing as someone who feels passionately that these magazines need not languish in the far corners of the internet and continue on as the closed-door circle jerk they’ve become.
I am writing the essay because I believe you’ve been complacent. I think you’ve lost touch with the modern world. I think you’ve stepped away from the heart of what made these magazines great in the first place, and I think you publish fiction for each other and for the approval of your peers, and not for the masses.
I am writing this essay because in a world were sites like Royal Road get tens of millions of visitors every month, were BookTok has racked up billions of views, were the hunger for genre fiction is at a fever pitch, you are less relevant than you have ever been.
And more than anything else, lest I be accused of moaning about a problem rather than offering a solution, I am writing this essay because I believe you can do better, and I know exactly how.
Refusal to adapt
Let’s start with an irony so obvious that I hesitate even to point it out. How did these magazines that once defined the future become unable to even keep up with the present?
Look around you. Look at what’s happening in the culture. Look at where readers are ask yourself seriously why you are making no effort to reach them?
Where are your social media accounts? Where are your monthly podcasts where you interview authors, discuss new releases, or break down classic work? Where are the TikToks and Reels? Where are the editor’s personal YouTube channels where they make video versions of their editor notes, break down the months stories, or answer questions about the process?
Many of the biggest magazines in the industry have almost zero social media presence, and the ones that do show no real effort to increase their reach. Their profiles are just, “Hey, this is out now” or, “We got nominated for an award.”
Your Instagram page is not a diary. This isn’t Facebook in 2008. We don’t need a running update of what you’ve got going on. Make us laugh. Inspire us. Teach us things. Make us better writers. Make us better readers. Participate in the culture. Do something.
It doesn’t have to be you. Hire a young ambitious social media manager, and task them specifically with bringing in new readers, and let them do whatever they want.
There are a million things you could do but it boils down to this. You need to meet readers where they are. You might think you’re some prestigious institution and that readers should know about you already, but you’re wrong, and you’re refusal to adapt is leaving millions of potential readers on the table. Maybe you think that engaging with that energy would somehow cheapen you, but the fact is that whilst you cling to your prestige, you are letting a whole generation of readers pass you by, and find their wonder elsewhere.
I made a TikTok the other week talking about how I like to submit to Clarkesworld first because their generally a good quality magazine and their response times are quick, and a bunch of people favourited it and thanked me for the info. Now imagine these magazines were on these platforms doing that themselves. Imagine how many more readers they would have not even by being good, but just by being there at all.
The Turn away from print
I understand why when I pick up any random copy of Asimov’s from the eighties it feels like a high-end curated experience, with premium materials, custom interior artwork and typography for each story, and the feeling that care and attention has gone into of every page. And if I pick up a physical copy of any modern magazine, it’s either low-end print-on-demand style with basic interiors, or else mass-market flimsy, cheap feeling efforts that feel like they’ve been printed on tissue paper.
I understand why, during the early days of the internet, with readership declining, newsstand culture changing, and the economics of print magazines making less and less financial sense, that you made the switch to mostly digital only with print as an afterthought.
The stories, after all, are the important bit. It was a fair decision to make with the information you had at the time. But step back for a second, and look at he world we live in now.
We live in a world were ebooks made a valiant effort to overthrow print books, but print won. Books shops are thriving. We live in a world were Vinyl made a comeback, and physical music stores are popping up all over high streets again. We live in a world were Brandon Sanderson makes millions by selling $200 editions of his books, even though it’s never been easier to pirate them for free.
You think people don’t care about print editions of your magazines, but you only think that because you haven’t given anyone a reason to care. Imagine what you could do if you took a bit of pride in what you put out into the world, and you made issues of your magazine that people would actually want to buy, that they’d want to keep and treasure, that they’d never want to miss an issue of. “Yeah, but that would mean charging double.” They’d pay it. I promise you, if you made it beautiful, they would pay. And if you’re really worried try a limited release. Just 300 to collectors. I bet you’d even be able to sell them in advance each month to cover the print costs.
The point is that a quality print edition is more than just a format, it’s a statement that these stories matter enough to justify their presentation. A beautiful printed book says we care about these stories, and you will too.
The Neglect of Emerging Voices
When John Campbell took over at astounding, he prided himself on finding and showcasing new voices, and new styles of Sci-Fi that hadn’t been seen before. And in doing so he ushered in a new generation of talent that would go on to define the rest of the century. For Campbell, the hunt for new talent was part of the thrill.
You speak to many new writers now, especially unpublished ones, and you get a strong sense that they believe a lot of these magazines aren’t for them, and they’ve got no chance of getting published in them. Why? Because they see the same names over and over and over again. And if their ever is a new voice, it’s rare and it’s not highlighted — it’s not treated like the special moment it is.
Many writers now feel they have a better chance first publishing somewhere like Royal Road, or Wattpad, or Substack, growing an audience their, and then republishing in print later. That’s how you end up with something like Alchemised that’s probably going to be one of the best selling books of the year. And by the way, as most readers of short fiction are writers of short fiction, if you lose the writers, you lose the readers as well.
I have a simple two-step solution to this problem.
Step 1 — Reserve one spot in your magazine each week for an emerging voice. That doesn’t mean you can’t have more, but if you promise it’s at least one, you will see a huge spike in submissions, but also in readers, because other first timers will want to know what this story had that theirs didn’t.
The second step is to actually highlight the fact that you are giving a writers their first credit. This is a special moment. Special for you and special for them. Treat it that way. Make a show of it. The writer will be grateful for the attention, and up and coming writers will know that this is a space for them, that their work will actually be considered.
Lack of Dangerous Visions
I know that for many of you this will fall on deaf ears. But somewhere along the line the gatekeepers of the speculative fiction genre got caught up in culture, in social justice, in diversity quotas, and started publishing safe, stagnant work that they knew would be acceptable to their circles of influence.
I don’t want to say that there aren’t great writers working and publishing in these magazines today because there are, some of their books are sitting behind me on the shelf, but even when the stories are great, they fall within the accepted bounds. They deliver the right message, flatter the right sensibilities, make sure no one is too uncomfortable.
When is the last time we had a story that felt radical? That pissed everyone off? Where we had a debate about were we should draw the lines? That tackled taboo and unsettling topics? I’l wait…
The best stories of the golden age, or especially of the new wave, pushed buttons and boundaries. They asked questions that people on at the time weren’t ready for. And here’s something novel. They risked being wrong. They may have even revelled in it.
And it’s a loop of degradation, because writers know you won’t publish transgressive work, or lets face it, work with more right leaning philosophies, they don’t send it. You only get what they think you’ll publish. The real stuff. The stuff with teeth. It either stays on their hard drive or ends up in some more alternative token market with barely any readership.
Their might be a further degrading loop here as well, which is editors will only publish what they think will win awards, and the only things that win awards are wet, didactic sermons. Read any issue from the first twenty years of Galaxy Mag. Then read any story nominated for a Hugo in the last ten years and tell me I’m wrong.
Creativity Crisis
The real crisis here is that the people currently publishing science fiction and fantasy seem to have run out of imagination.
The model hasn’t changed in decades: a website that looks like it was built in 2009, a few stories a month, a polite static social post or two, and then silence until the next issue. It’s astonishing how little thought goes into how the work is presented, discovered, or celebrated.
Most of them don’t even have apps! If you type Clarkesworld into Google play, do you know what comes up? Royal Road. Which has an incredible app by the way, packed with features to make finding and reading stories as accessible as possible.
Imagine this:
Imagine one of these magazines partnered with a big names author in the industry. Sanderson, or Jemesin, or Abercrombie and agreed to serialise a new novel of theirs, but not only serialise it, but make a cultural event out of it.
The serial would feature alongside new short stories from established and emerging writers
What if they produced a limited-edition high-quality print run with original artwork throughout, elegant typesetting and formatting that felt intentional and not just functional.
What if they launched a monthly podcast to coincide with it where authors and fans discussed the latest instalment and speculated about what was tom come.
What if people made reaction videos and unboxing videos on TikTok?
Are you telling me with all that, we couldn’t make these publications relevant again?
I know I’m thinking big, but come on… We are in the business of science fiction and fantasy. If we don’t think big, who will?