Why I like McSweeney's:

For a start, it has things like this: HAMLET (FACEBOOK NEWS FEED EDITION) .

Shedding No Tears, part II: Linkfest!

So, based on my post yesterday, people might get the impression that I don't care if the SF magazines go down the tubes completely.  That would be correct; I consider the value received for the money spent to be completely not worth the hassle of dealing with their antiquated marketing and publishing methods.  One might also get the impression that I don't care if short story writers have any venue to be published, which would be incorrect.  So, one might well ask, where will we get our SF stories from when Analog, Asimov, and the rest go down the drain? 

Possibly from the same places I do- for example:

Fantasy Magazine

Clarkesworld Magazine

Tor.com

Free Speculative Fiction Online

Strange Horizons

Farrago's Wainscot

McSweeney's


The ironic thing is, the print magazines devoted to SF are obsolete, products of the last century that are just hanging on in the internet age.  They've become conservative, appealing to a more and more limited pool of readers. I can't see Analog for one, publishing the brilliantly drawn surreal comic The Leviathan; the artwork in the style of Paul Pope and the European graphic sensibilities would be lost on the editors, who would harrumph, and say something about how comics can't be LITERATURE.  Which makes sense; publishing anything for them is a massive commitment of time and paper, and if they make a mistake, they have to live with it for months.  

In short, I'm not going to mourn the slow decline of SF magazines, because theri replacements are already out there on the web.  I'm cautiously optimistic, thinking that we may see a revival in the short story format and speculative fiction as a genre.  If not, the next attraction is a click away.