For thirty-five years (1984-2018) I depended on Gardner Dozois to tell me about the state of short science fiction in his annual The Year’s Best Science Fiction. After he died, there were still many best-of-the-year anthologies to consult, but none had the extensive wrap-up of the year in science fiction that Dozois produced. By 2024 some of those anthologies have died off, making me wonder if the science fiction short story is dying off too.
Print magazines have lost subscribers for decades, and influential online publishers continually complain about a lack of funding. Today I read an article in Business Insider about how the plurality of companies selling online makes it hard to know what to buy. My theory is there are too many publishers for science fiction short stories. It’s great for new writers wanting to get published, but it’s bad for us readers because we’re reading stories that would have remained in the slush pile decades ago.
Before the internet, fans of short science fiction bought The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Asimov’s, and an occasional original anthology like Orbit. There were semi-pro magazines, but few read them. Because there were fewer slots where a story could appear the competition to get into one was greater.
John Joseph Adams in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 gives a fair overview of science fiction short story publishers. His anthology publishes twenty stories each year. Ten science fiction and ten fantasy. As the series editor, he picks 80 stories to give to the guest editor, who picks the 20 that are published. Here are the publications he used, with the number of stories included in the 80 in parentheses.
- Lightspeed (7)
- Clarkesworld (5)
- Uncanny (5)
- Beneath Ceaseless Skies (4)
- The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (4)
- Reactor (formally Tor.com) (4)
- Asimov’s Science Fiction (3)
- The Sunday Morning Transport (3)
- Fantasy Magazine (2)
- McSweeney’s (2)
- Bourbon Penn (1)
- Cast of Wonders (1)
- Escape Pod (1)
- FIYAH (1)
- Nightmare (1)
- PseudoPod (1)
- The Dark (1)
Since this is only 46 stories, the other 34 must have come from author collections and original anthologies. Adams said he also read these periodicals:
- Analog
- Apex Magazine
- Apparition Lit
- Baffling Magazine
- The Kenyon Review
- khōréō
- Vastarien
- Weird Horror
This doesn’t cover all the publishers of short science fiction. By the way, some of these periodicals are for fantasy and horror. I only care about science fiction, so I’m disappointed with every other story in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024. You can read Adams’s introduction by reading the sample at Amazon. It’s mostly about his selection process but it gives a good insight into what’s being published.
Because so many science fiction short stories are being published I’ve given up trying to follow the genre during the year by reading the periodicals. I just wait for the annual best-of-the-year anthologies. I occasionally buy F&SF, Analog, or Asimov’s, but F&SF has too little SF, Analog has too many minor stories, and Asimov’s has become rather hit-and-miss. I can’t but wonder if they’d get better stories if the online markets didn’t exist.
Neil Clarke’s The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 8 is more to my taste, but it’s over a year behind. Volume 8 covering 2022 stories, came out in September 2024.
Clarke reports finding a huge number of print magazines:
- Analog
- Asimov’s
- Bourbon Penn
- Clarkesworld
- Cossmass
- Infinities
- Dark Matter
- The Dread Machine
- Dreamforge
- Fusion
- Fragment
- Galaxy’s Edge
- Infinite Worlds
- Lady Churchhill’s Rosebud Wristlet
- Luna Station Quarterly
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF)
- Interzone
- Metaphorosis
- On Spec
- Planet Scumm
- Pulphouse
- Pulp Literature
- Reckoning
- Shoreline of Infinity
- Space and Time
- Underland Arcana
- Weird Tales
- Wyldblood
That blows my mind. I never see most of those titles. Clarke’s State of the Union of SF short stories is comprehensive. I guess he’s the new Gardner Dozois. Even if you don’t buy Clarke’s anthology, you can read his introduction in the sample at Amazon. I won’t summarize what he says, it covers what my title above claims but only hints at. Go read his overview.
Allan Kaster publishes two best-of-the-year anthologies. They showcase SF stories about hard science fiction and AI/robots. Kaster comes closest to what I want to read. I think Kaster succeeds because he defines his science fiction narrowly and only publishes twelve to fifteen stories. Before Gardner Dozois blew up the size of annual best-of-the-year SF anthologies, editors like Donald Wollheim, David Hartwell, and Terry Carr just picked ten to fifteen stories each year too. Check out his two series: The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories and The Year’s Top AI and Robot Stories.
There is an overwhelming number of science fiction short stories to read coming out. In that regard, the industry is doing great. Remember the lament in Business Insider, there are too many sellers. It makes selecting difficult and lowers overall quality. Back in 1953, there was an SF magazine boom, with over forty titles published. That boom crashed because the genre couldn’t support that many titles. I wonder if that will be true today? Or does the Internet allow for countless tiny markets supported by a handful of faithful fans? If that’s true, it might be better to ignore the larger genre, and just find a comfortable niche.
James Wallace Harris, 11/10/24
