ePulps.

 

It's the end of November, which means that the holiday season will be coming up surprisingly soon, as it generally does.  As such, Karli and I are in the early stages of gift negotiations.  Karli is looking at streaming service subscriptions such as Britbox™ for her two sisters (and it's been suggested that an Amazon Prime™ subscription would be suitable for her), but to the best of my knowledge, there isn't a similar service for science fiction fans.*

However, it occurred to me that many years ago I used to subscribe to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which I found to be a great collection of fiction and fact to have show up in my Muskoka mailbox.  I certainly don't need to increase my burden of physical media (I actually still have those vintage copies of F&SF**) but this is the future, there must be a digital equivalent for those monthly mail drops.

Magazines featuring short fiction have been the backbone of science fiction and fantasy writing for close to a hundred years, ever since the 1920s. Weird Tales, which most famously featured the work of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, made its debut in February of 1923, and Hugo Gernsback launched Amazing Stories, the first publication dedicated solely to science fiction, in 1926.

Later publications such as Galaxy, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Astounding (to be renamed as Analog in 1960) allowed legendary Golden Age editors such as John W. Campbell Jr., Horace Gold, and Anthony Boucher to place their stamp on science fiction, defining and shaping the development of the genre.

The early pulp magazines found an avid readership, a readership which then produced the next generation of authors:  authors who also became editors, reviewers, and, in some cases, publishers. 

Almost all of the classic science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke were primarily short story writers during the early phases of their careers.  (Asimov's award-winning Foundation trilogy is actually a collection of short stories collected as book chapters in three volumes.)  In fact, up until well into the 1960s***, science fiction magazines were still the primary starting point for aspiring science fiction authors, giving New Wave writers like Roger Zelazny and Ursula K. Le Guin their first sales, and allowing Harlan Ellison to build a reputation based almost entirely on his short fiction.

I still see F&SF and Analog for sale on the magazine shelves at Indigo, which demonstrates that they're alive and well - or at least still printing paper editions - but what are the options for virtual subscriptions?

My old friend The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has chosen to do its subscriptions through an e-book distributor called Weightless Books, six issues for $36.97 - presumably in US dollars - MOBI, EPUB and PDF formats are available.

No questions with Analog - six different digital subscription options, including an app-based version with a $35.88 USD 12-issue annual subscription.

Asimov's Science Fiction, which was Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine when I subscribed, now seems to be under the same publishing umbrella as Analog.  Same page format, same subscription outlets - and same price, $35.88 USD for six "double issues", whatever that means.

Interzone, the United Kingdom SF magazine, doesn't seem to have a digital subscription on their site, but I found one, again at Weightless Books. $24.99 for six issues, probably USD.

For some Canadian content, there's On Spec, which charges $14.99 for a quarterly subscription.  This is also through Weightless Books, so I assume it's USD. 

As a wild card, while I was researching the above options, I suddenly remembered Cinefex, which my friend Colin had introduced me to back when we were at Ryerson together.  Cinefex is a serious offering of special effects filmmaking commentary, aimed predominantly at the professional market but still accessible by the casual reader.  It didn't exclusively look at science fiction and fantasy movies - historical films often rely heavily on digital effects as well - but the greater part of the content dealt with SF movie effects.

I initially didn't see a digital subscription option for Cinefex, but then I spotted the Cinefex for iPad link: "Carry the entire history of modern visual effects with you on your iPad."  A six-issue subscription through the app is $27.99 USD.

In conclusion, I feel that I should recognize the TOR Books website, which has excellent articles, free short fiction, and offers a free book download on a monthly basis. It's a pretty impressive offering for free.

- Sid

Postscript:

If anyone is interested in reading any of the classic magazines in their original formats, there's a surprising range of free opportunities available online.

• A selection of classic pulps can be downloaded in HTML, Flipbook, and PDF format at The Pulp Magazine Project, including a handful of vintage issues of Planet Stories and Weird Tales.
• I was surprised to see that 356 back issues of Galaxy Magazine are available for free at archive.org, although the quality of the scans varies. The issues can be read online or downloaded in a variety of formats.
• Close to the full run of long-running British SF magazine New Worlds is available at the Luminist Archive in PDF format, along with quite a wide range of scanned material - some of which, by their own admission, the site's creators did not obtain permission to reproduce.

* There's a channel dedicated to Japanese anime called Crunchyroll, but as far as I know, that's it, with the possible exception of some less-than-mainstream SF offerings.

**And, to my astonishment, when I went to look at them on my bookshelf, I realized that I had that subscription when I was 13 years old.

*** I'm open to argument regarding this timeline, but the 1950s witnessed the demise of many of the pulp magazines, and the 1960s began a shift toward novels over short fiction in the publishing marketplace.  Although, even then, portions of classic novels such as Dune were originally serialized in magazine form.

"See you around, kid."

  

I have to say that Omaze.com, the online fundraising site, has nailed it in terms of their business model:  offer a wide range of donation levels to win a unique prize or experience, generally in association with a celebrity representative.  And it works: as an example, the opportunity to be in The Force Awakens that I contributed to in 2014 raised over 4.26 million dollars for UNICEF.

And, really, it's brilliant.  As opposed to charity ticket draws with large cash prizes, there's almost no serious expenses involved for most of the prizes.  Win a chance to be in a Star Wars movie?  Real costs, flights and a hotel - maybe meals, or a cab to the set.  Value of experience? PRICELESS.

Similarly, breakfast with a bunch of Doctor Whos?  How much would breakfast for eight people cost on top of airline tickets and accommodations?  But to the right person, it's the experience of all time.

I've entered a couple of other opportunities that haven't made it here, including a chance to take selfies with the cast of Schitt's Creek that was really on Karli's behalf, but the most recent charity offering takes the prize, so to speak.

Dinner with Mark Hamill.

Oh, sure, you get to attend the premier of The Rise of Skywalker, too, but really - DINNER WITH MARK HAMILL!

In addition to his unique contributions to the genre, most people are unaware that Mr. Hamill is also a major comic book geek in his own right.  There's also some of his lesser-known work that I'd love to discuss - does anyone else reading this remember his voice-over work from the Jeannie animated series, which was a California surfer dude re-imagining of the I Dream of Jeannie series from the 1960s?  Or how about The Black Pearl, the comic book he created for Dark Horse Comics in the 1990s?  Not to mention his incredible body of voice-over work as the Joker, which has come very close to eclipsing Star Wars in terms of its notoriety.

No offense to Daisy Ridley or Adam Driver, who also have Star Wars charity packages up on Omaze, but even ignoring Mark Hamill's stature as a geek icon, they haven't really offered anything close to the same level of involvement.  It's one thing to take someone to the premier and take a selfie or give them a signed souvenir light saber, or even get them into the afterparty, but I feel that Mark has gone the extra mile in offering up some of his own time in the interests of charity.

I really don't expect to win, I generally don't have any sort of luck at all in draws, but whoever does win?  You're a lucky person in more ways than one, and I very much hope you appreciate it.

- Sid

"Hear that? It's the cosmic rays!"

Okay, let's all just be a little careful here, as soon as you say "cosmic particles" this starts to feel way too close to the Fantastic Four's origin story.

- Sid