Spec Fic & Science Fiction

[silk_noir]

So a couple of weeks ago I picked up the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, at the local Dillon's no less. A bit of solidarity for my siblings of the pen (er, wordprocessor), support for a market that I have wished to be published in some day, a quest to read something science-y and fiction-y

Comments

[silk_noir]

Sure, as long as you're not saying I'm an ass. :^D

[joycemocha]

Oh, the sf is getting submitted.

Getting bought is the other question.

[txtriffidranch]

Geez. I seemed to remember significantly lower numbers on all three, but that's still damning compared to reader numbers 25 years ago. Of course, that was back when the Big Three magazines were regulars with Publisher's Clearing House, and I suspect three-quarters of those subscriptions were from Grandma to Star Trek-loving grandkids. Now, apparently the only people buying them are the individuals who never get past the submission information.

[soon_lee]

That would make me an edge case; a reader who hasn't submitted.

[txtriffidranch]

Now you know how I felt during the final years of OMNI. There was a dark point in the very late Eighties where I finally gave up. Each issue had one or maybe two short stories, and the rest was filled with piffle such as "the sex lives of dinosaurs". Don't even get me going on when I subscribed to Asimov's back in the late Nineties when I was writing for Tangent. (Yes, there are worse things than the short run of F&SF when Kristine Kathryn Rusch was publishing her own stories in every damn issue. When Harlan Ellison quit his film review column, I stopped buying.)

[valr]

You gotta go to the next medium - internet delivered audio.
Check out EscapePod for Sci-Fi and PseudoPod for horror fic.
Once you have an author you want to get more from, start searching places like PodioBooks by author, or just by genre.

[soon_lee]

Cognitively, it's a different experience. Unless the reader of the audio is outstanding, it's a frustratingly slow.

[valr]

True enough, but they are buying what print isn't.
Is the means more important than the content? If so, you're going to limit the available content to what print wants to sell. And, it was problematic content that initiated this post, yes?

[soon_lee]

Personally, I'd like to have solid (or at least well thought out & internally consistent) science in my SF whether the medium is text, comic, audio or movie.

So content is important, but content is informed by medium; when I want to read a nice crunchy SF book, that same urge won't be satisfied by listening to a nice crunchy SF story. They scratch different itches for me.