I’ve slowly been expanding our coverage of fantasy magazines here at Black Gate. Despite how dramatically the industry has changed over the decades since I started reading it, I still consider magazines the heart of the field. Our coverage is not nearly as comprehensive as I’d like it to be, but we’re getting there. I thought I’d pause for a moment and take stock of those publications we currently cover, and see if there are any obvious holes. They are:

Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by C.C. Finlay
Beneath Ceaseless Skies, edited by Scott H. Andrews
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, edited by Adrian Simmons, David Farney, William Ledbetter and James Frederick William Rowe
Nightmare, edited by John Joseph Adams
Clarkesworld, edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace
The Dark, edited by Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace
Uncanny, edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota
Weirdbook, edited by Douglas Draa‎
Interzone, edited by Andy Cox
Black Static, edited by Andy Cox
Weird Tales, edited by Marvin Kaye
Swords and Sorcery Magazine, edited by Curtis Ellett
Shimmer, edited by E. Catherine Tobler
Fantasy Scroll, edited by Iulian Ionescu, Frederick Doot, and Alexandra Zamorski
Gygax, edited by Jayson Elliot
Weird Fiction Review, edited by S.T. Joshi

Whew. That’s more than I thought.

(The links above will take you to our latest articles on each magazine.)

This list doesn’t include defunct magazines, like the much-missed Subterranean and Electric Velocipede, or John Joseph Adams’s excellent Fantasy, which was absorbed into Lightspeed and now only publishes special issues, like the recent Women Destroy Fantasy (issue #58).

It also doesn’t include magazines we cover only irregularly, like Cemetery Dance, Lackington’s, The SFWA Bulletin, and the marvelous (but erratically published) Adventure Tales, or magazines that don’t include fiction, like the indispensable Locus.  If I have time, I may increase our coverage of them.

The list also neglects magazines that studiously ignore fantasy in favor of science fiction, such as Analog, or Neil Clarke’s new reprint magazine Forever.

Looking over the list, I can already see some glaring omissions, such as:

Asimov’s Science Fiction, edited by Sheila Williams
Lightspeed, edited by John Joseph Adams
Apex, edited by Jason Sizemore

I’ve tended to overlook both Asimov’s and Lightspeed because they visibly focus on science fiction, and Apex chiefly because it was ably covered by our short fiction reviewers Derek Künsken and David Soyka. But all three magazines are excellent sources of fantasy (even if in small doses), and starting this month, we’ll begin reporting on the new issues of each.

I’ve also focused chiefly on print magazines, which means I’ve neglected a handful of new digital magazines. I’m especially curious about the publications from FictionMagazines.com, including:

New Realm
Under the Bed

I’ll add New Realm to our coverage this month and see how it goes.

Am I missing your favorite fantasy magazine? Are there any on the list that you think should be replaced with more deserving candidates? Let us know in the comments.

See all of our recent magazine coverage here.