The Year's Best SF 11 # 1993 Read online

  Aboriginal SF had another rocky year in 1993, losing a further 37.8 percent in overall circulation, most of those losses coming in subscriptions, which have declined a whopping 45 percent overall since 1992—this is bad news, since almost all fiction magazines depend on their subscription list to survive, far more so than they do on their newsstand sales, which have been weak throughout the industry for several years now, even for magazines such as Omni. On the other hand, they managed to keep to their quarterly schedule this year, unlike last year, producing all four issues they were supposed to produce, and they did manage to convince the IRS to grant them the nonprofit status they’d been seeking, which ought to help them continue to publish, so it may be that Aboriginal SF is past the hump as far as its troubles are concerned, for the moment, anyway. It was also a tough year for Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine, as money problems at Pulphouse Publishing (which came very close to going under in 1992 and struggled to recover throughout 1993) continued to affect the magazine adversely. Last year, Pulphouse published only six out of a scheduled thirteen issues of Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine—not even keeping to their announced every-four-week publication schedule, let alone to their original ambitious but unrealistic intention of making it a weekly magazine—and in 1993 they managed to publish only two issues. On the other hand, there are signs that the worst of the crisis at Pulphouse Publishing may be past, and publisher Dean Wesley Smith has pledged to devote more resources and time to the project, now that the situation at Pulphouse is stabilizing, so perhaps the magazine will finally achieve a reliable publication schedule in 1994. Former editor Smith stepped down in 1993, to be replaced by Jonathan E. Bond, who seems to have taken Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine even further in the direction of “dark suspense” and nonsupernatural “psychological horror,” so that very little in the magazine even qualifies as fantasy anymore, let alone science fiction.

  Weird Tales also had problems this year, once again managing to publish only two issues out of a scheduled four. On the other hand, there were also some encouraging signs for Weird Tales this year—it’s now being carried by most of the nationwide bookstore chains, and the circulation did rise in 1993, up 14 percent overall, with direct sales up 11 percent and subscriptions up 16 percent. Winning a World Fantasy Award, which they did this year, could probably also be legitimately counted as an “encouraging sign,” and can certainly only help their reputation; let’s hope it helps their sales as well. Omni’s circulation was down 10.3 percent from last year, down 30 percent overall from their high point in 1988. Rumors circulated in the spring of 1993 that Omni was up for sale, but figures at Omni quickly denied these rumors, and I must say that I don’t put much credence in them myself. What should be remembered is that, even with a 30 percent decline, Omni’s circulation remains immensely higher than any other magazine we’ll discuss here, more than 700,000 copies per year, and I don’t think they’ll run out of gas anytime soon, especially as the internal reorganization they went through in 1992 and the consequent changes in format and production methods should make the magazine considerably cheaper to produce than it once was, which, of course, probably increases its profitability. I’d be very surprised to see Omni either sold or folded any time in the foreseeable future (although, of course, in the publishing business, anything can happen).

  Analog and Asimov’s Science Fiction went through their first full year as part of the Dell Magazine stable. Overall circulation was up slightly at Asimov’s, up by 1.4 percent, with all of the gain coming in subscriptions; newsstand sales remained unchanged from last year, in spite of an increased effort to put more of both magazines out on the newsstands. Longtime Asimov’s book reviewer Baird Searles died, and was replaced by a “rotating” three-man reviewing staff consisting of Peter Heck, Paul Di Filippo, and Moshe Feder, joining Norman Spinrad, whose column will continue as usual. Starting in mid-1994, Robert Silverberg’s “Reflections” column, which has been running in Amazing for a number of years, will transfer to Asimov’s as a regular monthly feature. Overall circulation held steady at Analog, which lost a thousand newsstand sales but gained a thousand new subscribers. Artistically, Analog had one of its strongest years in some time in 1993, placing several stories on this year’s Nebula Ballot. Overall circulation at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction was up slightly, 2.5 percent higher than last year, with an 8 percent gain in subscriptions but an 18 percent drop in newsstand sales. Newish editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who took over from longtime editor Ed Ferman in mid-1991, seems to be doing a good job, and F&SF placed more stories on this year’s Nebula Ballot and Locus Recommended List than it has for some time. Charles de Lint will be replacing Orson Scott Card as one of F&SF’s rotating book reviewers, the others being John Kessel and now Robert Killheffer. Gregory Benford and Bruce Sterling continue as the rotating science columnists, although there are rumors that Sterling is about to quit. The British magazine Interzone completed its third full year as a monthly publication, and managed to weather a crisis caused by the failure of its perhaps ill-advised attempt to create a companion nonfiction and critical magazine, called Million, which has subsequently died and been “incorporated” into Interzone. Circulation remained steady in 1993, and literary quality is still high, although they seemed to publish a good deal more fantasy this year than they usually do, which may account in part for the fact that they placed fewer stories on the Locus Recommended List this year than they did the year before.

  Two new SF magazines successfully completed their first full year of publication in 1993, each putting out their scheduled six issues—Science Fiction Age and Tomorrow. Science Fiction Age, a large-size full-color magazine, was not quite as instantly successful as it had been reported to be last year, when it was rumored to have achieved a circulation of over 100,000, but it did manage to establish a solid overall circulation of about 61,000, which is very impressive for a brand-new magazine; unusually, the bulk of that was in newsstand sales. That is probably because, now that Amazing is nearly dead (at least in its large-size format), Science Fiction Age is the best-looking SF magazine on the newsstands—it’s a very slick-looking magazine, with nice art and layout, interior color, and high production values. This, in turn, probably explains why it is attracting some advertisers who have rarely if ever bothered with SF magazines before. It also carries an interesting mix of nonfiction and criticism, with columns covering the worlds of books, movies, comics, games, science, and fantastic art. Science Fiction Age has been successful enough that they are reported to be about to launch both a companion fantasy magazine (entitled Realms of Fantasy) and the Sci-Fi Channel magazine in similar formats, which worries me a little, since these might be premature moves; because, of course, the downside of Science Fiction Age’s slick format is that it must be very expensive to produce, which means they need a higher level of profitability than a digest-sized magazine just to break even; it’s also expensive to maintain the kind of prominent rack-display that it has been getting so far in many of the national bookstore chains, often as much as ten dollars per register per store. All of which makes me wonder if the magazine is really profitable enough at a circulation of 61,000, even with all the advertising they’re getting, to balance the expenses—which in turn makes me wonder if it wouldn’t be more prudent of them to wait another year or so to see before launching another new magazine. Tomorrow, the year’s other new magazine, is an interesting contrast to Science Fiction Age: Tomorrow is not a particularly slick or “upscale”-looking magazine, and they’re obviously getting little advertising—the paper-stock and production values are considerably inferior to Science Fiction Age, the layout is dull, there’s no interior color, the interior illustrations are often crude, and there’s very little nonfiction or criticism about any topic in the magazine, except for editor Algis Budrys’s continuing how-to-write column. On the other hand, the fiction that Tomorrow has published this year has by and large been livelier and more substantial than that published by Science Fiction Age, which so fa
r has tended to publish a lot of solid professional stuff of the second rank, but little that’s really exceptional or exciting. Tomorrow has yet to publish anything of absolutely first-rank quality either, or it would be in this anthology, but the magazine does have a certain panache, and several stories from it came closer to making the cut this year than did most of the stories from Science Fiction Age; Tomorrow publishes quite a few long stories, while Science Fiction Age doesn’t publish many novelettes or novellas, which may have helped to give Tomorrow the edge in “substantial” stories. In spite of Tomorrow’s claim that they publish only Good Old-Fashioned science fiction, both magazines published a good deal of fantasy, but Science Fiction Age was perhaps willing to move further away from the core of the field, and seemed more open to literary experimentation. (It’s fascinating to see the editorial personalities of these two magazines developing right before our eyes!) Hard to tell yet what Tomorrow’s chances of survival are. Tomorrow must be considerably cheaper to produce than Science Fiction Age, but, on the other hand, Budrys, who is publishing the magazine himself, probably has considerably shallower pockets than the company backing Science Fiction Age, which might make it harder for him to deal with a crisis or a cash-flow crunch if it occurs. The field needs both of these magazines, and both of them deserve to survive.

  Several other new fiction magazines were struggling to be born, including Expanse, Crank!, Offworld, a reborn version of Galaxy, and others, but as yet they barely qualify even for the semiprozine category, and it’s very hard to tell which of them, if any, have any chance of survival.

  As most of you probably know, I, Gardner Dozois, am also the editor of a prominent SF magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction. And that, as I’ve mentioned before, does pose a problem for me in compiling this summation, particularly the magazine-by-magazine review that follows. As the editor of Asimov’s, I could be said to have a vested interest in the magazine’s success, so that anything negative I said about another SF magazine (particularly another digest-sized magazine, my direct competition) could be perceived as an attempt to make my own magazine look good by tearing down the competition. Aware of this constraint, I’ve decided that nobody can complain if I only say positive things about the competition … and so, once again, I’ve limited myself to a listing of some of the worthwhile authors published by each.

  Omni published good fiction this year by Terry Bisson, Bruce Sterling, Harlan Ellison, Simon Ings, Carol Emshwiller, and others. Omni’s fiction editor is Ellen Datlow.

  The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction featured good work by Walter Jon Williams, Jack Cady, Robert Reed, R. Garcia y Robertson, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, D. William Shunn, Bridget McKenna, Valerie J. Freireich, Lisa Goldstein, Jack Williamson, Jane Yolen, and others. F&FS’s editor is Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

  Asimov’s Science Fiction featured good work by Ian R. MacLeod, Connie Willis, Nancy Kress, Steven Utley, Maureen F. McHugh, Mike Resnick, Mary Rosenblum, Brian Stableford, Michael Swanwick, R. Garcia y Robertson, Jonathan Lethem, Neal Barrett, Jr., Robert Reed, and others. Asimov’s editor is Gardner Dozois.

  Analog featured good work by G. David Nordley, Charles Sheffield, Rob Chilson, L. Sprague de Camp, Harry Turtledove, Stanley Schmidt, Michael Flynn, Geoffrey A. Landis, Bud Sparhawk, Phillip C. Jennings, and others. Analog’s longtime editor is Stanley Schmidt.

  Amazing featured good work by Ursula K. Le Guin, Don Webb, Brian Stableford, J. R. Dunn, Jack Dann, Ian McDowell, Howard Waldrop, Eleanor Arnason, Phillip C. Jennings, Jack McDevitt, Eric T. Baker, and others. Amazing’s editor is Kim Mohan.

  Interzone featured good work by Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, Nicola Griffith, Chris Beckett, Brian Stableford, Lawrence Dyer, Jamil Nasir, Paul Di Filippo, Astrid Julian, Kim Newman, Paul J. McAuley, and others. Interzone’s editor is David Pringle.

  Tomorrow published good work by M. Shayne Bell, Avram Davidson, Gene Wolfe, Kandis Elliot, Robert Reed, Valerie J. Freireich, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Virginia Baker, Norman Spinrad, and others. Tomorrow’s editor is Algis Budrys.

  Science Fiction Age published good work by Rick Shelley, Charles Sheffield, Barry N. Malzberg, Tony Daniel, Phyllis Gotlieb, Allen Steele, and others. Science Fiction Age’s editor is Scott Edelman.

  Aboriginal Science Fiction featured good work by Valerie J. Freireich, Patricia Anthony, Howard V. Hendrix, Alexander Jablokov, Jamil Nasir, and others. The editor of Aboriginal Science Fiction is Charles C. Ryan.

  Weird Tales published good work by Tanith Lee, Ian Watson, John Brunner, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and others. Weird Tales—which has just changed its name to Worlds of Fantasy and Horror—is edited by Darrell Schweitzer.

  Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine published good work by Ray Vukcevich, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Sonia Orin Lyris, Carrie Richerson, and others. Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine’s editor is Jonathan E. Bond.

  As usual, short SF continued to appear in many magazines outside genre boundaries, from respectable literary magazines all the way to an odd combination cyberpunk/porno magazine called Future Sex. Playboy in particular continues to run a good deal of SF, under fiction editor Alice K. Turner, this year publishing stories by Joe Haldeman, Robert Silverberg, Dan Simmons, and others.

  (Subscription addresses follow for those magazines hardest to find on the newsstands: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Mercury Press, Inc., 143 Cream Hill Road, West Cornwall, CT, 06796, annual subscription—$26.00 in U.S.; Asimov’s Science Fiction, Dell Magazines Fiction Group, P.O. Box 5130, Harlan, IA, 51593-2633—$34.95 for thirteen issues; Interzone, 217 Preston Drove, Brighton BN1 6FL, United Kingdom—$52.00 for an airmail one-year [twelve issues] subscription; Analog, Dell Magazines Fiction Group, P.O. Box 5133, Harlan, IA, 51593-2633—$34.95 for thirteen issues; Tomorrow, the Unifont Company, Box 6038, Evanston, IL 60204—$18.00 for a one-year [6 issues] subscription; Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine, P.O. Box 1227, Eugene, OR 97440—$26.00 per year [13 issues] in U.S.; Aboriginal Science Fiction, P.O. Box 2449, Woburn, MA 01888-0849—$18.00 for 6 issues in U.S.; Weird Tales, Terminus Publishing Company, 123 Crooked Lane, King of Prussia, PA 19406-2570—$16.00 for 4 issues in U.S.)

  The semiprozine market was in a state of flux, particularly in the fiction area, where we have lost several of the established fiction semiprozines over the last couple of years, while a host of new ones struggled to be born. There were two issues of Steve Pasechnick’s Strange Plasma this year, but it has subsequently announced that its next issue will be its last, and I have to assume that New Pathways and Whispers are dead as well, since nothing has been heard from either of them in several years. Midnight Zoo was reported to be in serious trouble, and its future may be questionable. We lost Science Fiction Review, Midnight Graffiti, and Iniquities the year before last. Grue, 2 A.M., Deathrealm, Weirdbook, and The Leading Edge produced only single issues this year, while Tales of the Unanticipated, Next Phase, and Xizquil produced two. It was hard to tell from this remove exactly what was happening in the confusing British semiprozine scene, but I believe that Back Brain Recluse, REM, Nexus, and Strange Attractor are still alive, and I saw a copy of Nova, Nova 5, which apparently is the last issue. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine published four issues this year, but continued to remain unimpressive in quality.

  Of the already established fiction semiprozines, your best bets in SF are the Canadian magazine On Spec, and two Australian magazines, Aurealis and Eidolon. All of these seem to be fairly firmly established, so there’s a decent chance that they’ll still be around next year, and all of them publish fiction a lot closer to professional level than 90 percent of what you’ll see in most of the other SF fiction semiprozines. In horror, as far as I’ve been following it, Cemetery Dance seems to have established itself as the most prominent of the horror semiprozines, and is now available on many large newsstands.

  As I mentioned above, there are a lot of new fiction semiprozines struggling to establish themselves, especially in SF: Crank!, Expanse, Offworld, Harsh Mistress Science Fiction Adventure
s, the revamped version of Galaxy, Argonaut Science Fiction, and so on. At this point, it’s almost impossible to say which of these magazines will even survive to produce a second issue—if any of them do—let alone which will have a shot at eventually establishing themselves as professional magazines, which makes it hard to recommend any of them with confidence. By the measuring-stick of literary quality, the most sophisticated and professional of these magazines by a considerable margin—although perhaps also the one the furthest out on the fringes of science fiction—was Crank!, which featured good professional-quality work by A. A. Attanasio, Gwyneth Jones, Michael Blumlein, Garry Kilworth, and others, and which is probably the only one of these magazines I’d really feel comfortable with recommending so far. (A second issue of it appeared as I was finishing this Summation.)

  As always, Charles N. Brown’s Locus and Andrew I. Porter’s SF Chronicle remain your best bet among the semiprozines if you are looking for news and/or an overview of what’s happening in the genre. The New York Review of Science Fiction (whose editorial staff includes David G. Hartwell, Donald G. Keller, Robert Killheffer, and Gordon Van Gelder) has firmly established itself as by far the most reliably published of the “criticalzines,” keeping to its twelve-issue schedule once again this year; it also is highly eclectic, publishing a far-ranging and sometimes downright odd mix of different types of material, and I find that there is something to annoy, educate, entertain, bore, and enrage me in almost every issue, which I’m sure is as the editors intended. Stephen P. Brown’s Science Fiction Eye only published one issue, early in 1993, but when it does publish an issue, that issue is usually a fat one stuffed full of interesting, eclectic, and (sometimes deliberately) controversial material. Nova Express—edited by Lawrence Person, Glen Cox, and Dwight V. Brown—is also entertaining, when you can find it, although they too only produced one issue this year, in early 1993. The long-running Quantum (formerly Thrust) published one last issue this year and then “merged” with SF Eye, although it’s unclear as yet just what that’s going to mean in practical terms. There was a new criticalzine called Non-Stop Magazine that published some interesting stuff in its premiere issue, although, in spite of a good deal of self-congratulatory rhetoric about how Hip, Cool, and utterly Cutting-Edge they are; by far the most interesting item here was an autobiographical article by L. Sprague de Camp about his early days as a writer in the thirties and forties (they also publish some fiction, including, for some reason, a reprint of a Paul Di Filippo story that appeared in New Worlds a few years back). There was also a new magazine devoted to the reviewing of short fiction, Tangent II, edited by David A. Truesdale, and although the quality of the criticism varied widely from competent professionalism to inept amateurism, it’s a welcome addition to the critical scene, and an important one, since very little short fiction gets reviewed anywhere in the genre during the course of the year, with the almost single exception (until now) of Mark Kelly’s column in Locus. A third issue of the Damon Knight–edited Monad seemed to receive poor distribution, as I never saw a copy of it and have to rely on my editor’s good word to believe he saw it.