Reference: The SFF Magazine Canon (now with foreign magazines)
The SFF Magazine Canon
Last month I talked about โThe Web Fiction Canonโ, which ended up being by far our most popular post. As a follow-up, I have made a rundown of the complete opposite side of speculative fiction: SFF magazines. There are countless lists of SFF magazines on the Internet, but most of them donโt really place tโฆ
Last week, I posted a comprehensive guide to the major SFF magazines, as well as a general overview of how the current landscape came to be. This addendum to that piece is a thorough list of all the magazines I was able to find. Please keep in mind that this list will never be fully up to date, and you can find a much more up-to-date (albeit less organized) list on Duotrope or The Submissions Grinder (see below). I also have a brief overview of the Foreign Magazine Canon, which you can find at the end.
With that being said, here is the list (major entires in bold):
Magazine Index Index
Duotrope (directory + submission tool for authors)
The Submissions Grinder (directory + submission tool for authors)
American SFF Magazine Index
American Fiction Prozines (General SF)
Asimovโs ๐
Analog / Astounding ๐ ๏ธ
Clarkesworld + Forever ๐งฌ
Lightspeed ๐จ
Apex ๐ฝ
American Hybrid Prozines (General SF)
Major American Semiprozines (General SF)
Fantasy Magazines
Beneath Ceaseless Skies [Literary Adventure Fantasy] ๐
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly [Sword and Sorcery] โ๏ธ
Cirsova [PulpRev] ๐ก๏ธ
Fantasy Magazine [All Fantasy]
Wyngraf [Cozy Fantasy]
Dirty Magick [Urban Fantasy]
Tales from the Magicianโs Skull [Sword and Sorcery]
Fairy Tale Review [Fairy Tales]
Coreopsis Journal [Mythopoeia]
Horror / Weird Fiction Magazines
Nightmare ๐๏ธ
The Dark ๐
Cemetery Dance ๐ชฆ
The Deadlands ๐
Critical Magazines
Locus ๐บ๐ธ
Tangent Online ๐
Identity-Forward Magazines
FIYAH / Ignyte Awards [Black SFF] โ๐พ
khลrรฉล [Diaspora SFF] ๐งญ
Luna Station Quarterly [Female SFF]
Anathema [QPOC SFF] [hiatus]
Scigentasy [Gender SFF]
Inner Worlds [Neurodiverse SFF]
Cli-Fi / Solarpunk Magazines
Policy / Political / Philosophical
Future Tense Fiction (ASU / Slate)
After Dinner Conversation / [Philosophical]
[Religious]
[Protocol Fiction]
Radon Journal [Anarchist]
Seize the Press [Anticapitalist]
Positive SFF
Minor American Semiprozines (General SF)
Subterranean [Defunct-ish]
Podcasts
Flash Fiction
Foreign Magazine Index
The most notable omission from last weekโs post was foreign magazines, which are their own beast. I donโt have a ton to say about each of these magazines, especially the non-English ones, as information is scattered and hard to find. However, I can say that historically the biggest non-American SF markets have been:
UK + British Commonwealth ๐ฌ๐ง๐ฆ๐บ๐จ๐ฆ
Eastern Bloc ๐ท๐บ๐ต๐ฑ๐ง๐ฌ
Japan ๐ฏ๐ต
France ๐ซ๐ท
China ๐จ๐ณ
in approximately that order. However, this dynamic has been rapidly shifting due to shakeups in the magazine landscape and the rise of SF globally. East Asia is arguably now far more central to international science fiction, while European science fiction is not as prominent as it once was.
The bolded magazines below will be among the top SF magazines in their home country, which are often prozines in their own right. That being said, their influence is heavily limited by the America-centric nature of mainstream sci-fi institutions. As a result, many of these country have their own institutions: the BSFA Awards in the UK, the Ditmar Award and Aurealis Awards in Australia, the Aurora Awards in Canada, the Seiun Award in Japan, the Galaxy Award and Nebula Award in China, and the ESFS Awards in Europe.
Below I will give a very brief intro to each region of science fiction and the magazines that define them. Each magazine will be accompanied by a country flag emoji, as well as a language emoji if there are multiple languages often published in that country.
British Commonwealth
While the most popular British sci-fi author is undoubtedly hard sci-fi titan Arthur C. Clarke, British sci-fi as a scene peaked when its magazine New Worlds became the center of the international New Wave movement under its editor Michael Moorcock. For much of the 1960s, the UK was the center of experimental sci-fi, inspiring trends in the United States rather than the other way around.
New Worlds folded in 1971 with no clear successor until Interzone was founded in 1982. Interzone definitely the most well-known of the foreign magazines historically, and at its height it was often mentioned alongside the American โBig 3โ. It was quite popular into the 1990s, launching the careers of authors like Alastair Reynolds and Charles Stross. However, in the 2000s it started to lose its stride, missing issues and eventually losing its prozine status. But Interzone and its sister horror magazine Black Static are still widely respected for its contributions to the genre.
Australian magazines tend to punch above their weight. Despite their small writer population, Australian magazines like Aurealis and Andromeda Spaceways receive a lot of attention in global genre circles. This is partially due to their state support and partially just due to their institutions running a tight ship. Their Aurealis Awards are also relatively prestigious, even amongst non-Australian readers.
Canadian speculative fiction is interesting in that it is very bilingual, with the top Francophone magazine (Revue Solaris) and the top Anglophone magazine (On Spec) both being relatively well-represented in the awards. In recent years, the newer magazine Neo-Opsis has also become quite popular. Canadian SF hasnโt broken out in the way that Australian SF has, but it still has plenty of grassroots activity.
Interzone ๐ฌ๐ง
Aurealis ๐ฆ๐บ
Andromeda Spaceways ๐ฆ๐บ
On Spec ๐จ๐ฆ๐ฌ๐ง
Revue Solaris ๐จ๐ฆ๐ซ๐ท
Black Static / The Third Alternative ๐ฌ๐ง
Shoreline of Infinity ๐ฌ๐ง
Neo-Opsis ๐จ๐ฆ๐ฌ๐ง
BFS Horizons ๐ฌ๐ง
Augur ๐จ๐ฆ๐ฌ๐ง
Etherea ๐ฆ๐บ
ParSec ๐ฌ๐ง
Pulp Literature ๐จ๐ฆ๐ฌ๐ง
Hexagon ๐จ๐ฆ๐ฌ๐ง [hiatus]
East Asia
The Chinese and Japanese sci-fi scenes are both quite prominent globally but also very different. Japanese sci-fi has been internationally popular for a long time, and it is inextricably linked to the countryโs manga, anime, and film industries. On the other hand, Chinese sci-fi has also existed for a long time, but certainly not in its current form. The excitement surrounding sci-fi literature in particular is unique not just in Chinaโs history but also the world.
The scenes in East Asia are far more centralized than their Western counterparts, with both China and Japan having a single flagship magazine that is far more popular than the others (Science Fiction World and S-F Magazine respectively). These two magazines dominate the industry in terms of both popularity and critical acclaim.
China used to have a more diverse prozine scene that included magazines like King of Science Fiction, but now SFW largely stands alone. Despite this, SFW is quite healthy for a SFF magazine in 2025โ not as popular as it was at its peak but still circulating widely among SFF fans. Most of the countryโs other sci-fi output comes from sci-fi anthologies also affiliated with SFW, but I also found a few award nominees from ไธๅญๅจ็งๅนป (possibly Impossible SF), a magazine which has almost no information about it on the English Internet. If anyone reading this knows anything about the magazine, I would be very interested to hear!
Japanโs science fiction industry is dominated by Hayakawa Publishing, which also runs its flagship magazine S-F Magazine. Interestingly, S-F Magazine actually started out as a branch of F&SF, but it has since diverged rapidly in both ownership and style. The most successful sci-fi in Japan is typically adapted into manga and then anime, so sci-fi is sometimes relegated to just a stage in the manga / anime pipeline.
This means that Japanese sci-fi is simultaneously less and more isolated than Chinese sci-fiโ it has greater cultural penetration due to anime and manga adaptations, but this also means that actual sci-fi prose is crowded out. As a result, there isnโt any existing mainstream effort to translate sci-fi stories into English (RIP Haikasoru). However, the Seiun Award is evidence that the prose scene is still alive and well, just overshadowed. Anecdotally, Japanese sci-fi also seems to be quite popular in China.
Outside of China and Japan, there doesnโt seem to be much sci-fi magazine activity. There was a short-lived attempt to launch a Korean magazine in 2019 called ์ค๋์ SF, but it doesnโt seem like that effort survived the pandemic. Clarkesworld occasionally publishes South Korean authors, but it seems like the scene is mainly centered around web fiction outlets like Naver. But given the success of Chinese sci-fi and web fiction generally, I wouldnโt be surprised if Korean sci-fi becomes a force in the near future.
Science Fiction World ๐จ๐ณ [inaccessible for some reason]
S-F Magazine ๐ฏ๐ต
Transistor Gijutsu ๐ฏ๐ต
ไธๅญๅจ็งๅนป / Impossible SF ๐จ๐ณ
Nightland Quarterly ๐ฏ๐ต
Kai To Yu ๐ฏ๐ต
Eastern Europe
The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc were home to several prominent SF authors during its existence, most notably the Strugatsky brothers from Russia and Stanislaw Lem from Poland. They thrived in a giant state-sponsored sci-fi ecosystem, much of which has never been translated. The biggest magazines from that time were state-sponsored hybrid magazines that with an idealistic view of technological progress.
Russian language sci-fi has declined the fastest amongst the global sci-fi scenes due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and thus sci-fiโs significant state funding in 1991. The longtime Soviet sci-fi magazines like Tekhnika Molodezhi and Znanie-Sila all shut down with no clear successors. A new magazine called Esli was founded in 1991 with some success, but it too shut down in the 2010s. The most popular surviving mag in Russia, Mir Fantastiki, is more of a hybrid magazine with general pop culture content.
In recent times, the most popular SFF author from Eastern Europe is actually also from Poland: Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of The Witcher series. The magazine in which The Witcher first appeared, Nowa Fantastyka, is the preeminent SFF magazine in the region, and has been publishing issues since 1980.
Outside of Russia and Poland, Finland and Croatia also have hardy domestic scenes but donโt really influence sci-fi much beyond their borders. Eastern European sci-fi has a lot of history, but I wouldnโt say it has a ton of momentum behind it.
Nowa Fantastyka ๐ต๐ฑ
Mir Fantastiki ๐ท๐บ
Portti ๐ซ๐ฎ
XB-1 / Ikarie ๐จ๐ฟ
Tรคhtivaeltaja ๐ซ๐ฎ
Morina Kutija ๐ญ๐ท
Sirius B ๐ญ๐ท
Dracus ๐ง๐ฌ
Western Europe
The center of Western European sci-fi has historically been France, largely due to the legacy of Jules Verne and similar authors. Like Japan, France also had a branch of F&SF in the country simply called Fiction that was quite popular, but it folded in the 2000s. Since then, the magazine scene has been dominated by Bifrost, a prozine run by the most prominent sci-fi press in the country LโBรฉlialโ. Itโs hard to say for sure, but the French scene seems to be in alright shape. There is also a French bilingual magazine, Anglo Morte, that is trying to attract American (and Canadian?) readers.
There are many sci-fi magazines scattered across Europe, which are less able to form into a single scene due to linguistic diversity. One notable pan-European magazine is Sci Phi Journal, which was initially founded to support the controversial Sad Puppies movement. At the time, it was unsurprisingly associated with somewhat reactionary politics. However, since this movement has come and gone, it is now associated with European sci-fi that is more politically neutral, heady, and philosophical (potentially under new ownership as well).
There is also a history of Nordic magazines, as many stories were collected into the anthology Nordic Visions, However, I couldnโt find examples of any magazines that were still regularly publishing. Despite their linguistic diversity, these magazines (as well as some of the Eastern European ones) are honored together at a well-established convention called EuroCon. You can probably find out more about European sci-fi by perusing their websiteโs pages.
Bifrost ๐ซ๐ท
Sci Phi Journal ๐ช๐บ๐ฌ๐ง
Anglo Morte / Blind Spot ๐ซ๐ท / ๐ฌ๐ง
Galaxies ๐ซ๐ท
Quarber Merkur ๐ฉ๐ช
Dimensione Cosmica ๐ฎ๐น
Metal Hurlant ๐ซ๐ท
Windumanoth ๐ช๐ธ
phantastich! ๐ฉ๐ช
Chimรฉres ๐ซ๐ท
Speculatief ๐ณ๐ฑ
Other
Outside of the core regions, there are still active magazine scenes, but all are new and growing. The most prominent of these are Omenana (an English-language magazine from Africa and central hub for Afrofuturism) and Future Fiction (a multi-language outlet with reach into Europe, Asia, and the Americas). The other existing regions for science fiction and fantasy are Latin America and South Asia.
Latin America probably has the most history with science fiction, especially given that Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges was one of the genreโs main influences. However, the domestic magical realism scene is far different from sci-fi / fantasy in organization despite its superficial resemblance, and so Latin American SFF hasnโt formed up into a short story magazine economy in the way that it has in the West. Many sci-fi magazines have risen and fallen over the years, but there isnโt any one magazine that is especially central.
South Asia is one of the fastest-growing SF scenes globally, and every magazine on this list was founded in the last few years. Most of the sci-fi in the region is actually published in English due to it being Indiaโs primary language in many cases. Mithila Review is India-focused, while Tasavvur aims to be a more inclusive outlet for the entire subcontinent. Kapalbiswa is unique in that it publishes fiction in Bengali. You can find much more comprehensive coverage of South Asian SF on Words for Worlds, the Substack of
.Sci-fi in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world havenโt quite gotten off the ground yet (RIP Lontar), but you can likely expect to see more of it in the future!
Omenana ๐๐ฌ๐ง
Future Fiction ๐บ๏ธ
Mithila Review ๐ฎ๐ณ๐ฌ๐ง
Tasavvur ๐๐ฌ๐ง
Kapalbiswa ๐ฎ๐ณ๐
Constelacion ๐๐ช๐ธ
The Future Fire ๐บ๏ธ
Sengkang SF Quarterly ๐ธ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ง
Axxon ๐ฆ๐ท๐ช๐ธ
Eita! ๐ฆ๐ท๐ช๐ธ
IMAGI ๐จ๐ฑ๐ช๐ธ
Feel free to leave a comment if you think weโve missed anything! Thanks for reading!
For Canada, Pulp Literature should be included. https://pulpliterature.com