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Alien Scarecrows, Strange Restaurants, and Mystery in a Spaceport Morgue: March-April 2023 Print SF Magazines

Alien Scarecrows, Strange Restaurants, and Mystery in a Spaceport Morgue: March-April 2023 Print SF Magazines

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March/April 2023 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction & Fact,
and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Dominic Harman
(for “Gravesend”), Shutterstock, and Mondolithic Studios/Jill Bauman (for “Mr. Catt)

It’s a bonanza of great fiction in the new print mags this month, with stories by some of the biggest names in the biz — including Peter S. Beagle, Greg Egan, Paul McAuley, Bruce Sterling and Paul Di Filippo, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Lavie Tidhar, Allen M. Steele, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Adam-Troy Castro, Howard V. Hendrix, Eleanor Arnason, Tade Thompson, Kathleen Jennings, Sheila Finch, Sam J. Miller, Rajnar Vajra, Buzz Dixon, E. Catherine Tobler, Gregory Feeley, Octavia Cade, Ray Nayler, Stanley Schmidt, and many more.

The fiction here covers the gamut modern SF, with tales set on Mars, a far-future Earth where mankind has been exterminated, an 8th grade math class taught by a witch, a restaurant run by an alien who sells off parts of his own body, an asteroid inhabited by giant ants, a mysterious house that sells ideas to science fiction writers, a department store that offers new bodies, a morgue on a spaceport, a climate-ravaged Europe, and more more. See all the details below.

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Infinity, June 1956: A Retro Review

Infinity, June 1956: A Retro Review

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Infinity Science Fiction, June 1956. Cover by Ed Emsh

In my previous Retro Review I covered If, which I called a “classic digest magazine of what might be called the “second tier” of SF magazines.” Infinity was another, though it lasted for a much shorter time — 19 issues from 1955 through 1958. (I note for the record that the magazines of the so-called “first tier” – that is, the Big Three of Astounding/Analog, Galaxy, and F&SF – all went through ups and downs in quality and sometimes other magazines surpassed them – notably Venture in the late ‘50s, If in the mid-60s, Thrilling Wonder and Startling in the early ‘50s, and others, including, as John O’Neill reminds me, Amazing and Fantastic in the early ’60s under Cele Goldsmith Lalli. I’ll also note that there was surely a third tier, magazines of lesser quality than the likes of If and Infinity.)

The editor of Infinity was the greatly respected Larry T. Shaw. The original anthology series Infinity, from the early 1970s, edited by Robert Hoskins, was published by Lancer Books, which was the successor company to Royal Publications, the firm responsible for the magazine. Indeed Robert Hoskins was the immediate successor to Larry Shaw as editor of the Lancer SF line. Hoskins did reprint the most famous story the magazine published, Arthur C. Clarke’s Hugo winner “The Star,” in the first volume of the original anthology, and therein he called the anthology the “lineal descendant” of the magazine.

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Quatro-Decadal Review: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1989, edited by Edward Ferman

Quatro-Decadal Review: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1989, edited by Edward Ferman

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The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,
November 1989. Cover by Bryn Barnard

I thought that Asimov’s was going to rule the 1988 roost, but MoF&SF gives it a run for its money.

The issue jumps straight into the fiction!

Fiction — “Icicle Music” by Michael Bishop

A story told in time jumps, starting on Christmas Eve 1957. Danny Pitts, living with his mother in a small boxy house near the waste dump — is up early, and finds his wished-for shotgun that his single mom must have saved for over the year. His father is a bum, out of the picture for a couple of years. Then Danny hears a strange sound, like icicles breaking and the pawing of something on the roof. Then a man comes down the chimney,

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Interzone 204 now on Sale

Interzone 204 now on Sale

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Interzone 294 (MYY Press, January 2023)

Last summer I reported that Interzone, the leading British science fiction magazine, had been sold. After 19 years and exactly 100 issues. Andy Cox at TTA Press brought his storied reign as editor to a triumphant close — though he does continue to produce his excellent magazine of modern horror, Black Static.

Interzone was acquired by MMY Press in Poland, and the new editor is Gareth Jelley. I ordered a copy of issue #294, the first with Jelley at the helm, for €15 (about $16.70 US, including shipping to the US), and was astonished when the massive 256-page issue arrived in my mailbox about a week later.

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Flood of AI-Written Fiction Shuts Down Clarkesworld Submissions

Flood of AI-Written Fiction Shuts Down Clarkesworld Submissions

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Recent issues of Clarkesworld magazine, edited by Neil Clarke

If you’re active on social media, or if you follow the major science fiction magazines, you’ve probably seen the headlines. It’s not every day that Neil Clarke, Sheila Williams, and Sheree Renée Thomas (editors of Clarkesworld, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, respectively) are quoted extensively in The New York Times. But that’s exactly what happened on Thursday.

It started with Neil, who reported on Twitter earlier this week that a sudden flood of AI-generated submissions, likely triggered by get-rich-quick schemes “making claims of easy money with ChatGPT,” had caused him to temporarily close submissions to Clarkesworld. (ChatGPT is the most popular of the new crop of chatbots capable of rapidly creating long-form text based on short prompts from users.)

As you can imagine, the news that a leading science fiction magazine had to close submissions because it was overwhelmed with AI-generated subs captured enormous attention, and that tweet garnered over 8 million views and, within a matter of days, national attention from press outlets like The Guardian and NYT.

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If, December 1957, A Retro-Review

If, December 1957, A Retro-Review

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IF, December 1957. Cover by Mel Hunter

If was a classic digest magazine of what might be called the “second tier” of SF magazines. (The term second tier might be a bit dismissive — there were a number of quality magazines that for a time surpassed one or more of the so-called “Big Three” (Astounding/Analog, Galaxy, and F&SF.) That said, those three magazines, via comparative longevity, consistent quality, and simply tradition were considered “the big three” by the SF community for most of the ’50s through ’70s.) It was founded by James Quinn (Quinn Publishing Company) in 1952, with Paul Fairman the initial editor. Quinn took over from Fairman fairly soon (though Larry Shaw was listed as Associate Editor but was apparently the actual editor from May 1953 to March 1954), and he edited it until 1958, after which Damon Knight briefly took over. Quinn sold the magazines to the publishers of Galaxy, and it was a companion to Galaxy for the rest of its existence; under the editorship, sequentially, of H. L. Gold, Frederik Pohl, Ejler Jakobsson, and Jim Baen, before folding after the November-December 1974 issue.

There was a single-issue revival in 1986, edited by Clifford Hong, officially called Worlds of If. Though that revival quickly failed, it should be said that the list of contributors is fairly impressive (Niven, Van Vogt, Salmonson, Schenck, Card, Zelazny, etc.) As far as I know the official title of the magazine (except for the last issue) was always If, sometimes subtitled “Worlds of Science Fiction,” but the cover, especially late in the run, often appeared to give the title Worlds of If. During Pohl’s editorship, when it was positioned as the somewhat lighter, more adventure-oriented, magazine in the Galaxy stable, it won three consecutive Hugos as best magazine, supposedly to Pohl’s slight dismay, as he considered Galaxy the better product.

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400 pages of the Best of the Modern Weird: Weird Fiction Review #12 from Centipede Press

400 pages of the Best of the Modern Weird: Weird Fiction Review #12 from Centipede Press

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Weird Fiction Review #12 (Centipede Press, October 2022). Front and back covers by Stephen Fabian

Weird Fiction Review, edited by John Pelan and published annually by Centipede Press, has gradually established itself as the premier magazine of modern dark fantasy. It’s published a dozen issues so far and has included fiction by Simon Strantzas, Steve Rasnic Tem, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, Victor LaValle, Stephen Graham Jones, Marc Laidlaw, Joseph S. Pulver, Brian Stableford, Darrell Schweitzer, John Shirley, and many, many more.

But I think the reason I love this mag — aside from its incredible production values and huge size (issues typically run around 400 pages) — is the excellent non-fiction. It brings genuine scholarship to fascinating topics, with lengthy and entertaining articles on things like a history of the legendary Gnome Press by Stefan Dziemianowicz, a brief history of Mexican Horror Comic Books by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a survey of The Horror Pulps 1933-1940 by Robert Weinberg, an essay on EC Comics by E. B. Boatner, Collecting Karl Edward Wagner’s Carcosa by Ron Clinton, 90 Years of Amazing Stories by Joseph Wrzos, and a regular column on Forgotten Masters of the Weird Tale by editor John Pelan that has covered Nictzin Dyalhis, Paul Ernst, Arthur Leo Zagat, Sax Rohmer, C. Hall Thompson, Walter Owen, Edmund Snell, and Wyatt Blassingame.

The latest issue features fiction by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, Victor LaValle, Stephen Graham Jones, Scott Bradfield and others, plus a full-color Stephen Fabian Art Gallery, an appreciation of the film Let’s Scare Jessica to Death by John Llewellyn Probert, an interview with Weirdbook publisher W. Paul Ganley by Darrell Schweitzer, an article on William F. Nolan by Jason V. Brock, an interview with Graham Masterton by Dave Roberts — and a celebration of the life and work of Weird Fiction Review’s editor John Pelan, who tragically past away on April 11, 2021.

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NEW EDGE SWORD & SORCERY Magazine Launches!

NEW EDGE SWORD & SORCERY Magazine Launches!

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Last October, Michael Harrington hosted an interview with Oliver Brackenbury on Black Gate; Brackenbury is the editor and champion of the New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine. That post coincided with the release of the teaser Issue #0 including short fiction & non-fiction (free in digital format, or priced at cost on Amazon Print-on-Demand, through the New Edge Website). And now we announce:

NEW EDGE SWORD & SORCERY launches

KICKSTARTER FOR ISSUES 1 & 2
Thirty-day crowdfunding campaign begins on Feb 2nd, with issues shipping in Fall 2023

    • The legendary Michael Moorcock will have a brand new, original story featured in issue #1.
    • He joins twenty other fiction & non-fiction authors, such as Canadian horror master Gemma Files, Margaret Killjoy, David C. Smith, Hugo Award-winner Cora Buhlert, Milton Davis, and more. There will also be a tale by Jesús Montalvo, an author from the burgeoning S&S scene south of the US border, translated from its original Spanish.
    • Nineteen artists are spread across the two issues, including Morgan King, who directed Lucy Lawless in his 2021 rotoscope-animated Sword & Sorcery film The Spine of Night (featured on Black Gate in 2021). Samples of the various artists’ work are available on the Kickstarter campaign page, while also being shared across the magazine’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts.
    • Each issue will feature seven original stories and four works of non-fiction: one book review, one essay, one in-depth interview, and one historical literary profile of figures like Charles Saunders or Cele Goldsmith. All stories, essays, and the profiles will be paired with at least one original B&W illustration.

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Colony Ships, Cowboy Ghosts, and Jeeves and Wooster in Space: January-February Print SF Magazines

Colony Ships, Cowboy Ghosts, and Jeeves and Wooster in Space: January-February Print SF Magazines

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January/February 2023 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Shutterstock, Tomislav Tikulin, and Kent Bash

The big news for print SF mags over the past few months has been price increases. Asimov’s SF and Analog, both published by Dell Magazines, increased prices by a buck in July of last year, from $7.99 to $8.99 per issue. Subscriptions increased from $35.97 to $47.94 for six issues/one year. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction increased from $9.99 per issue to $10.99 with the January/February issue, and subs jumped to $65.94 for one-year. Considering how much fiction and overall content you get per issue, all of the magazines remain a bargain.

Consider the January/February issues, for example. They contain brand new fiction from some of the biggest names in the biz, including Norman Spinrad, Alec Nevala-Lee, Robert Reed, James Van Pelt, David D. Levine, Maurice Broaddus, Mary Soon Lee, Bruce McAllister, Shane Tourtellotte, Dominica Phetteplace, Rudy Rucker, Tochi Onyebuchi, Genevieve Williams, Karen Heuler, and many others.

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Retro Review: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1955

Retro Review: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1955

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The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1955. Cover by George Salter

By 1955 J. Francis McComas had resigned as co-editor of F&SF, and Anthony Boucher was sole editor. George Salter remained art director. Both Boucher and Salter left the magazine in 1958. This issue also has a cover by Salter — his last but one for the magazine — he did one more in 1966. I really enjoy Salter’s work, and I learned today that he did the covers for such significant works as the first editions of The City and the Stars, Atlas Shrugged, and A Fine and Private Place. He also shares a birthday with me.

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