The mid-May Fantasy Magazine Rack
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The mid-May April magazine rack is crowded with a mix of print (Asimov’s, Knights of the Dinner Table) and online (The Dark, Clarkesworld, BCS, and HFQ) magazines. This month we say goodbye to Innmouth Magazine, which published its last issue last summer. Click on any of the images above to see our detailed report on each issue.
As we’ve mentioned before, all of these magazines are completely dependent on fans and readers to keep them alive. Many are marginal operations for whom a handful of subscriptions may mean the difference between life and death. Why not check one or two out, and try a sample issue? There are magazines here for every budget, from completely free to $7.50/issue. If you find something intriguing, I hope you’ll consider taking a chance on a subscription. I think you’ll find it’s money very well spent.
Our late April Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.
I’ve been expanding our magazine coverage here at Black Gate over the past month. It still isn’t as comprehensive as I’d like it to be, but we’re getting there. We report on the 24 following magazines currently (links will take you to our latest coverage):
Adventure Tales edited by John Betancourt
Apex, edited by Jason Sizemore
Asimov’s Science Fiction, edited by Sheila Williams
Beneath Ceaseless Skies, edited by Scott H. Andrews
Black Static, edited by Andy Cox
Cemetery Dance, edited by Richard Chizmar
Clarkesworld, edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace
The Dark, edited by Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace
Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by C.C. Finlay
Fantasy Scroll, edited by Iulian Ionescu, Frederick Doot, and Alexandra Zamorski
Grimdark Magazine, edited by Adrian Collins
Gygax, edited by Jayson Elliot
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, edited by Adrian Simmons, David Farney, William Ledbetter and James Frederick William Rowe
Interzone, edited by Andy Cox
Knights of the Dinner Table, edited by Jolly Blackburn
Lightspeed, edited by John Joseph Adams
New Realm, edited by Doug Lance
Nightmare, edited by John Joseph Adams
Shimmer, edited by E. Catherine Tobler
Swords and Sorcery Magazine, edited by Curtis Ellett
Uncanny, edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota
Weirdbook, edited by Douglas Draa
Weird Fiction Review, edited by S.T. Joshi
Weird Tales, edited by Marvin Kaye
The following magazines are now defunct:
Amazing Stories
Arcane
Bull Spec
Cosmic Crimes Stories
Dark Realms
Electric Velocipede
Fantasy
Inhuman Magazine
Innsmouth Magazine
Jabberwocky
Kobold Quarterly
The Last Province
Level UP
Port Iris
Reader’s Digest
Realms of Fantasy
Shadis
Spellbound
Subterranean
Wizard
Zahir
And we’ve covered the following magazines intermittently:
Against the Odds
Alter Ego
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine
Ares Magazine
Betwixt
Crossed Genres
Dark Worlds
Entertainment Weekly
The Excellent Travelling Volume
Goblin Fruit
Granta
Lackington’s
Locus
Lovecraft eZine
The New Yorker
The New York Review of Science Fiction
Primeval: A Journal of the Uncanny
Rue Morgue
The SFWA Bulletin
Strange Horizons
Stupefying Stories
Vanity Fair
Check out our complete magazine coverage here.
Just curious. Any reason Galaxy’s Edge magazine is not covered?
Hi Charles,
Same reason we don’t cover ANALOG, really. From what I’ve read, GALAXY’S EDGE is exclusively an SF magazine — they don’t include fantasy at all.
Asimov’s SF includes at least one fantasy tale every few issues (sometimes more); the same with Interzone. Most of the rest publish a mix of SF and fantasy.
Although I do want to do an article on the special 1000th issue of ANALOG this month (as soon as I can find a copy.)
I wonder how much it is to produce some of these magazines.
It cost about $12,000 – $13,000 to produce an issue of Black Gate (the big double issues; about $3,000 less for the regular ones). That broke down as about $3,500 for the contents, $300 – 400 for the cover, $8,000 for printing, and a few hundred in expenses (bar code, supplies, fees, etc.). That doesn’t including shipping or mail costs, of course, which were about $2,700, or any of the costs of running the business (the website, etc.) All told, those years I produced one issue a year, my annual bill was about $19,000.
I expect most of the magazines cost much less to produce than BG. At least, I hope so!
Yeah, that “Swords and Sorcery Magazine” is pretty good, isn’t it? What, me have an ulterior motive? Never.
Ken – As a matter of fact, it is. 🙂
Hey, are you going to do any more “Appendix N” posts on your blog? I enjoyed your recent entry on Lin Carter.
(I also enjoyed your “Top Ten Most Influential Fantasy Writers of the Twentieth Century”… you should let us reprint it some day.)
John, re: “Appendix N” posts, I do intend to continue writing them. I’d hoped to consider August Derleth next. The thing is, with most of the “Appendix N” authors I can simply rely on my bookshelves, however with Derleth I need to go shopping. But I’m encountering a dearth of Derleth. Not even the venerable Powell’s Books is brimming with the low-cost Derleth I’m hoping to find. So, to be continued.
Re: reprinting from my web log. Consider it done. Let me know what you need from me.