Элинор Арнасон: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection

If you’d like to see lots of good SF and fantasy published every year, the survival of these magazines is essential, and one important way that you can help them survive is by subscribing to them. It’s never been easier to do so, something that these days can be done with just the click of a few buttons, nor has it ever before been possible to subscribe to the magazines in as many different formats, from the traditional print copy arriving by mail to downloads for your desktop or laptop available from places like Amazon ( www.amazon.com), to versions you can read on your Kindle, Nook, or iPad. You can also now subscribe from overseas just as easily as you can from the United States, something formerly difficult to impossible.

So in hopes of making it easier for you to subscribe, I’m going to list both the internet sites where you can subscribe online and the street addresses where you can subscribe by mail for each magazine: Asimov’s site is at www.asimovs.com, and subscribing online might be the easiest thing to do, and there’s also a discounted rate for online subscriptions; its subscription address is Asimov’s Science Fiction , Dell Magazines, 267 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, N.Y. 10007–2352—$34.97 for annual subscription in the U.S., $44.97 overseas. Analog’s site is at www.analogsf.com; its subscription address is Analog Science Fiction and Fact , Dell Magazines, 267 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, N.Y. 10007–2352—$34.97 for annual subscription in the U.S., $44.97 overseas. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction ’ssite is at www.sfsite.com/fsf; its subscription address is The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , Spilogale, Inc., P.O. Box 3447, Hoboken, N.J., 07030—annual subscription—$34.97 in the U.S., $44.97 overseas. Interzone and Black Static can be subscribed to online at www.ttapress.com/onlinestore1.html; the subscription address for both is TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs CB6 2LB, England, UK, 42.00 Pounds Sterling each for a twelve-issue subscription, or there is a reduced rate dual subscription offer of 78.00 Pounds Sterling for both magazines for twelve issues; make checks payable to “TTA Press.”

Most of these magazines are also available in various electronic formats through the Kindle, the Nook, and other handheld readers.

With more and more of the print semiprozines departing to the digital realm, there isn’t a lot left of either the print fiction semiprozine market or the print critical magazine market. (It’s also getting a bit problematical to say which are print semiprozines and which are ezines, since some markets, like Galaxy’s Edge , are offering both print versions and electronic versions of their issues at the same time. I’m tempted to just merge the surviving print fiction and critical magazines into the section covering online publication, but for now I’ll keep it as a separate section.

The Canadian On Spec , the longest running of all the print fiction semiprozines, which is edited by a collective under general editor Diane L. Walton, again brought out three out of four scheduled issues; there have been rumors about them making the jump to digital format, but so far that hasn’t happened. There was only one issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet , the long-running slipstream magazine edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant. Space and Time Magazine (whose future may be in doubt) managed two issues, and Neo-opsis managed two. There didn’t seem to be any issues of Ireland’s long-running Albedo One released this year. Australian semiprozines Aurealis and Andromeda Spaceways have departed the print realm for digital formats.

For general-interest print magazines about SF and fantasy, about the only one left is the venerable newszine Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field , a multiple Hugo winner, for decades an indispensable source of news, information, and reviews, now in its fifty-first year of publication, operating under the guidance of a staff of editors headed by Liza Groen Trombi, and including Kirsten Gong-Wong, Carolyn Cushman, Tim Pratt, Jonathan Strahan, Francesca Myman, Heather Shaw, and many others.

One of the few other remaining popular critical print magazines is newcomer The Cascadia Subduction Zone: A Literary Quarterly ( www.thecz.com), a feminist magazine of reviews and critical essays, edited by Arrate Hidalgo, L. Timmel Duchamp, Nisi Shawl, and Kath Wilham, which published three issues in 2017. Most of the other surviving print critical magazines are professional journals more aimed at academics than at the average reader, including the long-running British critical zine Foundation , Science Fiction Studies , Extrapolation , and Vector .

Subscription addresses are: Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field , Locus Publications, Inc., 1933 Davis Street, Suite 297, San Leandro, CA 94577, $76.00 for a one-year first-class subscription, twelve issues; Foundation , Science Fiction Foundation, Roger Robinson (SFF), 75 Rosslyn Avenue, Harold Wood, Essex RM3 ORG, UK, $37.00 for a three-issue subscription in the U.S.; On Spec, The Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic , P.O. Box 4727, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6E 5G6, for subscription information, go to website www.onspec.ca; Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine , 4129 Carey Rd., Victoria, BC, V8Z 4G5, $25.00 for a three-issue subscription; Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant Street, #306, Easthampton, MA 01027, $20.00 for four issues; The Cascadia Subduction Zone: A Literary Quarterly , subscription and single issues online at www.thecsz.com, $16 annually for a print subscription, print single issues $5, electronic subscription—PDF format—$10 per year, electronic single issue $3, to order by check, make them payable to Aqueduct Press, P.O. Box 95787, Seattle, WA 9845–2787.

The world of online-only electronic magazines now rivals—and often surpasses—the traditional print market as a place to find good new fiction.

The electronic magazine Clarkesworld ( www.clarkesworldmagazine.com), edited by Neil Clarke, had another very strong year, publishing first-rate work by Kelly Robson, Naomi Kritzer, Rich Larson, Jack Skillingstead and Burt Courtier, Jess Barber and Sara Saab, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Finbarr O’Reilly, and others. They also host monthly podcasts of stories drawn from each issue. Clarkesworld has won three Hugo Awards as best semiprozine. In 2014, Clarkesworld co-editor Sean Wallace, along with Jack Fisher, launched a new online horror magazine, The Dark Magazine ( www.thedarkmagazine.com). Neil Clarke has also launched a monthly reprint ezine, Forever ( forever-magazine.com).

Lightspeed ( www.lightspeedmagazine.com), edited by John Joseph Adams, had a somewhat weak year, but still managed to publish good work by Indrapramit Das, Mari Ness, Cadwell Turnbull, Pat Murphy, Susan Palwick, Lina Rather, Greg Kurzawa, and others. Lightspeed won back-to-back Hugo Awards as Best Semiprozine in 2014 and 2015. Late in 2013, a new electronic companion horror magazine, Nightmare ( www.nightmare-magazine.com), also edited by John Joseph Adams, was added to the Lightspeed stable.

Tor.com ( www.tor.com), edited by Patrick Neilsen Hayden and Liz Gorinsky, with additional material purchased by Ellen Datlow, Ann VanderMeer, and others, published a mix of SF, fantasy, dark fantasy, soft horror, and more unclassifiable stuff this year, with good work by Greg Egan, Linda Nagata, Stephen Baxter, Allen M. Steele, Jo Walton, Julianna Baggott, Lavie Tidhar, Yoon Ha Lee, and others. They also launched a new program, Tor.com Publishing, which brought out many of the year’s novellas in chapbook form.