The SFF Magazine Canon
Last month I talked about “The Web Fiction Canon”, 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 don’t really place the magazines in context of the broader canon. In this post, I would like to give a general sense of not just what magazines are popular now, but also how the current magazine landscape came to be.
For the purpose of this post, SFF magazines are magazines that are primarily known for publishing original short speculative fiction. These magazines often select stories from a slush pile, to which anyone can send their stories during open submissions periods. But some magazines instead commission submissions from specific writers, only publishing work by authors that are already known to the magazine staff.
SFF magazines are important because they are generally where genre writers get their start; once a writer has proven themself as a short fiction writer, they can move on to the big leagues and start scoring novel deals. Many of the greatest SFF works of the 20th century actually first appeared in magazines in serialized form.
SFF magazines are typically sorted into three categories: prozines, semiprozines, and fanzines. Prozines pay professional rates for story acquisitions and are usually run by some kind of company, while fanzines are more volunteer-run and generally don’t pay for submissions. Fanzines typically focus on critical commentary and/or scene news (like
)! Semiprozines essentially cover everything in between.Below I have sorted 25 of the most notable SFF magazines into seven categories based on their general position within the canon:
The “Big 3”
Blogosphere SFF / Hybrid Zines
The “Big 5”
Horror / Dark Fantasy Magazines
Adventure Fantasy Magazines
Critical Magazines
Rising Magazines to Watch
Escape Pod
PodCastle
PseudoPod
Cast of Wonders
These sections will include a bit of general magazine history to put the category in context, and then they will into the specifics of each magazine listed. The magazine entries will each contain a brief blurb and some basic info, which will include their current editor, professional classification, and publishing history. Let’s dive in!
The “Big 3”
Analog, F&SF, and Asimov’s are collectively known as the “Big 3” of American SFF magazines due to their historical prestige and longevity. Analog (previously known as Astounding) became the first modern science fiction magazine under the leadership of editor Joseph W. Campbell, who took over in 1937. F&SF (1949) was the first magazine to blur the lines between genres in the way that it did, laying the groundwork for the SFF ecosystem that we have today. And Asimov’s (1977) was a more reactionary project, attempting to be a middle ground between the genre fluidity of New Wave and the often inaccessible hard science fiction of Analog. However, in recent decades these magazines have become less differentiated from each other than they once were.
The Big 3 have been going through some shake-ups as of late, with every single one of them changing hands in 2025. Now they appear to be all under one roof, as a group of investors called “1 Paragraph” seem to have bought them. This might be a welcome change, as F&SF in particular had been going through some difficulties as of late. But it remains to be seen how the Big 3 will operate under new ownership. The story was originally reported by
right here on Substack:While the Big 3 have been losing ground in recent years due to both the success of online magazines and the declining readership of print magazines in general, they still have a level of prestige that cannot be replicated by digital upstarts. No matter how low their circulation falls, these magazines will likely always be able to attract quality submissions due to their storied history.
Asimov’s 🚀
Classification: Prozine
Founded: 1977
Head Editor: Sheila Williams (since 2004)
Asimov’s became the premier sci-fi magazine in the 1990s, and despite challenges from newcomers like Clarkesworld and Uncanny, it is still probably the most prestigious SFF magazine out there. As I mentioned above, Asimov’s was founded in reaction to both poles of SF— it wanted to avoid the genre squishiness of F&SF but also the technical coldness of Analog. In the end, Asimov’s published plenty of genre-fluid stories over the years, but its explicit “Goldilocks approach” has served it well. While Analog and F&SF have really dropped from their peaks, Asimov’s is still hanging in there.
Asimov’s has continued to find success despite the changing media landscape, which I would mostly attribute to three factors: stability, adaptability, and the Gardner Dozois pipeline. Unlike its competitors, Asimov’s has had just two editors since the 1980s: Gardner Dozois and his successor Sheila Williams. This has allowed the magazine to maintain a much more consistent rhythm and focus.
Asimov’s founding mission also gave it a lot of freedom to change, allowing it to do what other magazines could not. Analog declined in large part due to its style losing mainstream popularity; it reflected an engineer mindset that is no longer as popular among fans, especially as increasing complexity has made it harder and harder to keep up to date with the latest science. Meanwhile, F&SF lost a lot of its fans to up-and-coming webzines— it was revolutionary in print, but compared to magazines like Clarkesworld it didn’t seem as novel. So while it might seem like tacking to the center would make it harder to forge an identity, Asimov’s was able to use this to thread the needle and stay relevant thanks to its savvy editors.
The final thing that really helped Asimov’s reach its current position was Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best SF collection, an annual collection of stories from across science fiction that ran from 1984 to 2018. This collection was highly regarded for its curation and commentary, but it also obviously featured lots of stories from Asimov’s itself. As a result, Asimov’s came to be somewhat synonymous with prestige— if you appeared in Asimov’s, then your chance of cropping up in Year’s Best was that much higher. Similar collections exist today, but none are nearly as prominent as this particular series.
Today, Asimov’s has stylistic preferences that are bit more conservative than the other magazines, but it has plenty of stories that wouldn’t feel out of place in a more hip web magazine. It is perhaps best thought of as simply the prestige first choice of SFF writers, as it has something for pretty much every type of fan.
Analog Science Fiction and Fact 🛠️
Classification: Prozine
Founded: 1930
Head Editor: Trevor Quachri (since 2012)
Analog pioneered the modern sci-fi magazine under the name Astounding, and that history still carries weight. Editor Joseph W. Campbell was one of the first figures to try to bring science fiction out of the world of pulp and into the world of literature, and as a result tons of classic science fiction world originally appeared in its pages: Foundation, The Forever War, and Dune, to name a few. Until the 1960s, it was the most popular science fiction magazine.
But Analog hasn’t been hot for a long time— most younger fans in the 1970s instead went for former Big 3 member Galaxy Magazine, and these people mostly ended up flocking to Asimov’s after Galaxy went under. Still, Analog maintains a loyal following, and it is probably one of the most popular magazines relative to its visibility.
Again, the reason for Analog’s muted visibility is that its brand of engineering-forward conceptual science fiction is rather marginalized in the modern day. Literary science fiction became popular around the same time that popular science was becoming less popular. Asimov’s was able to recognize that “hard” science fiction just wasn’t the draw that it once was. As a result of this divergence, Analog actually hasn’t been nominated for a Hugo Award since 2004, which is kind of crazy given its status!
So now Analog feels like a blast from the past, since it isn’t so concerned with being “relevant” and is thus able to lean into this old style. If there’s one modern author that feels distinctly Analog, it would be Greg Egan, whose stories are light on characters and prose but heavy on ideas, almost reading like math papers. And the “Fact” part of “Analog Science Fiction and Fact” refers to the popular science articles that can also be found within its pages, which is also quite unusual for a modern day SFF magazine. It very much centers the science in science fiction!
The Magazine of Fantasy & SF (F&SF) 📖
Classification: Prozine
Founded: 1949
Head Editor: Sheree Renée Thomas (since 2021)
While it was never the biggest SFF magazine in terms of circulation, F&SF dominated the literary SFF conversation in the 1950s and 1960s and racked up a crazy amount of Hugos and Nebulas. They have published some of the most iconic SFF stories ever, like Golden Age classics “Flowers for Algernon” and “Starship Troopers”, as well as more recent classics like “The Paper Menagerie”. In general, F&SF was known as the magazine that pushed the literary boundaries of the genre.
But like Analog, F&SF is generally considered to be past its peak due to the changing SFF landscape. You could argue that it lost prominence for the opposite reason that Analog did: while Analog’s style became less central to the genre, F&SF’s style became more central, as most newer magazines adopted a similar genre-blending literary perspective. This made it harder for F&SF to stand out as online supplanted print— it’s hard to be the boundary-pushing magazine while relying on printed copies. Still, F&SF is considered one of the most prestigious outlets due to its history.
F&SF is having a bit of a crisis of identity right now, and there is lots of drama and gossip regarding the magazine’s current status. This is clearly bad in the short term, but it is also a sign that they are still trying to reinvent themselves. In 2021, F&SF hired Sheree Renée Thomas as editor, a frequent advocate for more global and diverse perspectives. It will be interesting to see how F&SF navigates this transitional period.
Honorable Mentions: Two old members of the Old “Big 3” are Amazing Stories and Galaxy Magazine, which were very prominent before going out of business in the second half of the 20th century. Both of these magazines have actually been brought back from the dead as of late, but it seems unlikely that they will regain their former prestige. Another magazine that is frequently mentioned is British magazine Interzone, but the magazine is significantly less prestigious than it once was. It may be covered in a future post!
Blogosphere SFF
Speculative fiction going online was always a question of when, not if. Early online speculative fiction was messy; random scenes were started on forums, blogs, and LiveJournal pages, but nothing with serious heft. The first real scene to challenge the Big 3 in original fiction was the blogosphere, a collection of New Media online pop culture engines that rose in the aughts— think Gawker, Boing Boing, Slashdot. These magazines published news, literary essays, and thinkpieces on technology, so for a while they thought, why not try original science fiction, too?
The first big blogosphere outlet to publish original fiction was tech magazine Wired, and it was soon followed by SCI FICTION, (fiction project of the TV channel SyFy), Tordotcom (web arm of Tor Publishing Group), iO9 (tech arm of Gawker’s web empire), and Terraform (fiction project of VICE’s Motherboard). SCI FICTION was especially influential, as it was helmed by the famous anthology editor Ellen Datlow.
A big difference between most Blogosphere SFF and other magazines is that almost all such outlets would acquire stories through commission rather than submission. Media companies were less willing to take a chance on unproven authors, and they also had the resources to recruit and pitch more famous authors to a mainstream audience (i.e. their regular readers). At their peak, Blogosphere SFF magazines likely surpassed SFF magazines in pure readership due to the sheer reach of their platforms.
But as the blogosphere lost the monetization race to social media platforms, its fiction lost steam as well. Most of these outlets have since either closed down or slowed their rate of fiction publishing to a trickle. These outlets all kind of petered out at different times—SCI FICTION in 2005, iO9 in 2015, and Terraform in 2023—but all due to a lack of money in the blogosphere economy that made it harder to justify their expense.
In the end, the blogosphere era wasn’t completely without consequence, as it paved the way for the modern SFF webzine. It also led to the rise of
and , two solid take-havers who co-host the influential Our Opinions Are Correct podcast and are responsible for a good chunk of the mainstream coverage of science fiction. But compared to the waves of SFF magazines that came before and after, the blogosphere era has a relatively quiet legacy.Reactor / Tordotcom 🎬
Classification: Hybrid Zine
Founded: 2008
Head Editor: Chris Lough (since 2018)
Reactor is powered by Tor Publishing Group, the biggest SFF publisher in the world. Unlike other magazines on this list, Reactor commissions stories rather than pulling from a slush pile. This makes their output quality more consistent (especially since they are able to draw big names), but also safer— they’re not going to take a chance on an unknown, which has its positives and negatives.
Reactor also has much more of an emphasis on longer short fiction, often publishing longer novelettes and even entire novellas straight to their website. This makes their stories the most cinematic on average, with a heavy emphasis on worldbuilding and engrossing emotional narratives.
In 2024, Reactor confused everyone by rebranding from their old domain Tor.com. This change was supposedly meant to emphasize that Reactor doesn’t just write about stuff from Tor— they cover other sci-fi, too! This came alongside a big web redesign, as Reactor is now even more of a mirror of its blogosphere origins, featuring pop culture commentary of all kinds. Some people loved this change while other people hated it; it really depends what kind of reading experience you’re looking for.
It’s not really a mystery why Reactor has stuck around: while other blogosphere outlets pivoted away from fiction, Tor had nothing else to pivot to being a publisher itself. At the same time, the blogosphere has lost most of its initial momentum, so there’s not really an opening for any other publisher to start their own venture. Tor just really lucked out— score one for taking business risks!
The “Big 5”
The next wave of SFF webzines (which I unofficially call the “Big 5”) actually stuck around. These magazines all started out as more informal volunteer projects (not arms of a media company) but have gradually professionalized as a result of becoming more successful. While these magazines didn’t all start at the same time (Uncanny started a full 14 years after Strange Horizons), they have slowly formed into a relatively cohesive prestige ecosystem.
Since 2010, the Big 3 of SFF magazines has been losing ground to the Big 5— both in terms of popularity and in terms of mainstream awards. While the legacy of the Big 3 is difficult to touch in several key aspects, the Big 5 are more representative of what the average SFF fan actually reads and are typically closer to the genre’s bleeding edge. Also, the Big 5 release almost all of their stories for free online (unlike the Big 3), making them far more accessible to casual fans.
Of course, you can split hairs over which magazines should be included— most SFF fans would probably include Reactor (I would say it has core structural differences) and many people would include Beneath Ceaseless Skies (I would say it is too limited in scope). To me, the Big 5 are defined not by their popularity or common style, but their origins outside of legacy media and perennial contention for mainstream SFF awards.
It’s worth nothing that the online world is much more dynamic than the print world, so what’s popular today may be gone tomorrow. Fireside, Subterranean, and Shimmer are just a few once-popular magazines that have since gone under. If you’re reading this a few years from now, expect the Big 5 to be a bit different than it was in 2025!
Clarkesworld / Forever 🧬
Classification: Prozine
Founded: 2006
Head Editor: Neil Clarke (since 2006)
Clarkesworld is a magazine founded by Neil Clarke, an influential editor who is quite interested in the history of science fiction. It may not have the backing of any large institution, but it has managed to become quite a respected prozine on its own.
Clarkesworld is perhaps the most curation-forward of the Big 5. Some people describe Clarkesworld as “cold” or cerebral compared to the rest of the Big 5, but I would just say that it has a stronger emphasis on fiction that will stand the test of time. It is concerned with questions like, “How does this story fit into the canon of science fiction as a whole?” and “How does this story converse with past works?” This is perhaps most evident in their sister project Forever, which tries to spotlight works from recent years that Clarke feels may have been overlooked at the time of release.
Clarkesworld is also invested in publishing acclaimed Chinese science fiction authors, partnering with the company Storycom to release translated fiction to their website. While their operation is still based in the US, this makes them an interesting bridge between East and West. Not only does Clarkesworld host Chinese SF, but they are also the only one of these magazines to publish a regular Chinese edition. Because of this, as well as the Chinese sci-fi community’s relatively larger size, it is quite possible that Clarkesworld has more active readers in China than the US.
In the end, Clarkesworld isn’t really at the top of any one category domestically, but it may just have the most global influence. As someone who is also interested in sci-fi in the context of space and time, I have a fondness for their singular curatorial vision.
Uncanny 📢
Classification: Semiprozine
Founded: 2014
Head Editor: Lynne and Michael Thomas (since 2014)
Uncanny is a volunteer-run semiprozine with a strong focus on politically relevant, heart-driven narratives. Uncanny can be thought of as a child of the aforementioned blogosphere: that part of the Internet that included sites like Jezebel and Salon, and writers like Roxane Gay and Jia Tolentino. While Uncanny publishes its fair share of “typical” science fiction, its main focus is on stories with sharp social commentary and lush, lyrical prose.
Uncanny is definitely the fastest growing of all nine “big” magazines, and it seems to reflect where SFF is heading, at least for now. Its stories certainly play well with the WorldCon crowd, as it is far ahead in both Hugo wins and nominations in short stories since 2016 (including three of this year’s nominees). But its commentary is often bounded to a very particular American cultural context, which leads to it having a bit less prestige abroad.
One thing that is appealing to us at Synthesized Sunsets about Uncanny is that they seem the most interested in exploring alternative storytelling formats. Their interview with Arkady Martine about “Three Faces of a Beheading” gestures in the direction of interactive fiction, and their essays often mention alternate modes of storytelling. And while we didn’t like “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather”, we still think it is cool that stories like this are being attempted in mainstream magazines.
In the end, you can think of Uncanny as most opposite to Analog in form. Don’t expect to find overly technical exposition here but rather stories about people.
Lightspeed 🎨
Classification: Prozine
Founded: 2010
Head Editor: John Joseph Adams (since 2010)
Lightspeed is an online prozine founded by John Joseph Adams, an influential editor who is in charge of the “Year’s Best”. While Lightspeed originally only published science fiction, it now publishes both science fiction and fantasy under Adamant Press. It also shares distribution with Nightmare Magazine, which is covered below.
While many of the magazines I have mentioned so far are curated in the pursuit of a specific angle, Lightspeed is instead curated for balance. Lightspeed’s explicit goal is to publish the widest range of speculative fiction possible: everything from fantasy flash fiction to cerebral hard sci-fi novelettes. Adams also puts together a yearly Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy anthology that is fittingly assembled with a new guest editor every year (to provide balance).
Lightspeed is unusual in that it often does reprints of classic short stories, like George R. R. Martin’s “The Way of Cross and Dragon”. This can be quite helpful for finding stories that would otherwise have to be found in some janky university pdf, or even (gasp!) an actual printed book. I also quite enjoy their author interviews, which are typically very well done.
Full disclosure, Lightspeed is my current favorite sci-fi / fantasy magazine! I really like what they’re doing there, and I can always expect to find something new.
Strange Horizons / Samovar 🌏
Classification: Semiprozine
Founded: 2000
Head Editor: (since 2021)
Strange Horizons is one of the oldest surviving webzines (only one left from 1990-2000), with a strong emphasis on global voices and postcolonial themes. Members of the Big 4 publish international fiction, but I think it’s fair to say that Strange Horizons has a deeper connection to the global scene. They regularly publish special issues on a specific region of the world, and many of the full-time staff are globally distributed.
Perhaps what most sets Strange Horizons apart is its nonfiction, which often focuses on colonialism, diaspora, and similar topics. It is probably the most essay-forward of the magazines, and special issues of the magazine are often built around a certain theme that is made implicit in the fiction but explicit in the essays.
Strange Horizons also has a sister magazine called Samovar, which publishes some of the widest range of translated fiction. In general, the diversity and specificity of the Strange Horizons ecosystem makes it ideal for exploring many non-American topics.
Apex Magazine 👽
Classification: Prozine
Founded: 2005
Head Editor: Lesley Conner (since 2024)
Apex Magazine began as Apex Digest in 2005, a printed quarterly magazine that was far more in line with the “Dark Fantasy” category below. But in 2008, Apex Digest pivoted away from both print and horror and became Apex Magazine, which was more digital-forward and published a wider range of speculative fiction. The most influential editor during this period was Lynne Thomas, who then went on to found Uncanny.
I think of Apex Magazine as “Dark Uncanny”. It has that politically relevant, heart-driven style (not even necessarily horror), but it still sells itself as a “dark” magazine. Some of its stories, like “Mountain” by Cixin Liu, aren’t so much scary as they are formidable: inspiring awe in the face of some imposing entity. But its acclaimed story “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience TM” by Rebecca Roanhorse is the closest to its typical tone: timely, diverse, and just a little bit fucked up.
In general Apex Magazine has gone through the most dramatic evolution among the Big 5— from pulpy horror print mag to genre-fluid webzine. In recent years it has taken an increasingly international focus, publishing essays like this fascinating account of being a writer in Pakistan. Apex Magazine also has the most recent new Editor-in-Chief, so it will be interesting to see how it changes in focus.
Horror / Dark Fantasy Magazines
Horror and dark fantasy are somewhat peripheral to science fiction but nonetheless interconnected, as many of the same people write and edit both. Horror giants like Stephen King and Ellen Datlow have spent lots of time in mainstream science fiction circles, and there are a surprising amount of stories that wouldn’t feel out of place in both worlds. Ultimately, a lot can be learned about science fiction through reading horror and vice versa.
For a while, the go-to magazine for dark fantasy was Weird Tales, a long-running magazine that popularized H. P. Lovecraft, among others. This magazine has gone through so many changes that it is hard to argue it has been the same institution throughout, but it went through a renaissance in the early 2000s under the leadership of Ann VanderMeer. She made Weird Tales into the trendsetting hub for the “New Weird”, a speculative style focusing on the cosmic, the strange, and the unknowable.
However, Weird Tales took a shocking and unexpected editorial turn in 2012 under new ownership, opting to publish a bizarre reactionary piece called Save the Pearls about a future where light-skinned “Pearls” are oppressed by dark-skinned “Coals”. The backlash destroyed the credibility of Weird Tales in genre circles and led to the rise of the current generation of horror magazines.
Even though Weird Tales has been disgraced, the stuff published in mainstream horror magazines today have a lot of that same “weird” DNA. Nightmare and The Dark are the prestige publications in the genre, with smaller magazines filling their own niches. But perhaps even moreso than the rest of SFF, a lot of dark fantasy and horror makes it out through anthologies, often tightly wrapped around some specific theme. Since horror is very person-dependent, it makes sense that a lot of readers go for specificity rather than generality. Still, Nightmare and The Dark continue to draw a reader base that rivals the most successful semiprozines.
Nightmare 👁️
Classification: Prozine
Founded: 2012
Head Editor: Wendy N. Wagner (since 2021)
Nightmare was founded by John Joseph Adams of Lightspeed in response to the Weird Tales scandal. In that sense, it is a sort of spiritual successor to the Weird Tales that existed under Ann VanderMeer. John Joseph Adams is not primarily a horror editor, but he was well-respected in horror circles for curating the most iconic modern zombie anthology. Nightmare has horror as its primary focus, but it definitely veers into science fiction as well, carrying a wide range of stories in adjacent genres.
Since then, Wendy N. Wagner has taken over as editor-in-chief. She has embraced the John Joseph Adams approach of publishing the widest possible range of horror, adopting the motto “horror is for everyone”. So while the content is obviously quite different from Lightspeed in terms of genre, you can expect it to be similar in spirit.
The Dark 🌑
Classification: Prozine
Founded: 2013
Head Editor: Sean Wallace (since 2016)
The Dark is a horror fantasy magazine run by Sean Wallace. It is closely associated with the small press Prime Books, which publishes a decent amount of long dark fiction as well. Wallace actually ran Lightspeed before John Joseph Adams took over, so he has some common history with the genre mainstream.
The Dark is a bit more specific with their taste in horror, focusing more on stories that are atmospheric and creepy rather than ones that jump out and shock. They explicitly discourage submissions that are graphic or bloody. Instead, you can expect something like a professional version of r/nosleep— stories that keep you second-guessing long after you’ve read the final word.
Cemetery Dance 🪦
Classification: Semiprozine
Founded: 1988
Head Editor: Richard Chizmar (since 1988)
Cemetery Dance is the only legacy horror magazine on this list, and it is most famous for publishing the last big generation of horror writers, including Stephen King and Dean Koontz. It probably reached its peak in the 90s, when it won several World Fantasy Awards. However, recurring issues with delays and a decision to double down on print rather than go online led to declining circulation in the 2010s and beyond.
Cemetery Dance is definitely from an older tradition of horror, and it hasn’t embraced the weird, genre-fluid trends of the modern day. The stories typically have a more traditional narrative arc, and it also goes for long stories in the vein of Reactor. The design of the magazine is also a selling point— its high production value and slick covers were a big draw for readers and part of the reason they decided to stick with print. Cemetery Dance likely has the least overlap with the other magazines that I have listed here, but any list of horror magazines would feel incomplete without it.
Adventure Fantasy Magazines
Science fiction and fantasy have gone through phases of being closer and further apart, but there was a legitimate low point in the 1970s when science fiction had basically excised fantasy from its magazines. At the same time, fantasy was taking hold in tabletop game spaces and in mass-market paperbacks, providing a new ecosystem within which fantasy could thrive. Unfortunately, this meant that the classic fantasy short story didn’t really have anywhere to go. For a long time, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction was the only venue that short fantasy had.
There were eventually some serious attempts to revive the short fantasy genre. 1994 saw the rise of Realms of Fantasy, a magazine that tried to bring back poetic, mythic short fantasy. And in 2000, Black Gate took the more traditional adventure fantasy route: pulpy, sword and sorcery stories that might resemble a tabletop game. Both magazines had their time in the sun but failed to survive the digital transition intact.
But by the late aughts, both of these magazines had successors. Realms of Fantasy was succeeded in 2008 by Beneath Ceaseless Skies when editor newcomer Scott H. Andrews basically started a magazine all on his own. And in 2009, Black Gate was succeeded by Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, a similar homage to the world of sword and sorcery. Finally, Cirsova was founded as a reactionary alternative to the increasingly progressive SFF magazine world. These magazines may not have the highest circulation, but they have secured the relatively durable following that their predecessors sought.
This dichotomy between sword and sorcery and mythic fantasy is quite present here, making this category rather heterogeneous. Does a meditative, lyrical magazine like BCS really have much in common with a swashbuckling, PulpRev magazine like Cirsova? However, I decided that these magazines’ shared origins still made them a relatively coherent category.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies 🐉
Classification: Semiprozine
Founded: 2008
Head Editor: Scott H. Andrews (since 2008)
Beneath Ceaseless Skies brands itself as “literary adventure fantasy”, and it prides itself on its ability to create fantastical, vivid worlds. The magazine was founded by Scott H. Andrews in 2008, and it was created specifically to reward secondary world fantasy— that is, no portal fantasy, no urban fantasy, no science fiction— purely realms of the imagination. As a result, I’ve found BCS to be the most consistently immersive of the SFF magazines; when paired with the hypnotizing user interface, the stories really makes you feel like you’ve been transported somewhere else.
BCS has a unique “two stories every two weeks” release schedule, which also features convenient recommendations to similar works. This focus has served it well, as it gets a really high proportion of award nominations, frequently recommended by critics in the field and receiving a Best Semiprozine nomination at the Hugos every year from 2013 to 2022. In general, BCS has the most specific scope of any magazine on this list, and I really appreciate that clarity of vision.
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly ⚔️
Classification: Semiprozine
Founded: 2009
Head Editor: David Farney and Adrian Simmons (since 2009)
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly tries to honor the classic adventure fantasy, in particularly the “sword and sorcery” genre pioneered by pulpy stuff like Conan the Barbarian. It is not as ambitious as Beneath Ceaseless Skies in literary terms; rather, it tries to honor the tropes that were found in the pulp magazines of old. The stories are typically driven by action and dialogue, without a ton in the way of introspection.
Its editorial mission may read reactionary, but HFQ isn’t associated with political movements in the way that Cirsova is. Instead, HFQ is laser-focused on being a home for straightforward, unapologetic adventure fantasy that doesn’t feel any particular need to justify itself.
Cirsova 🛡️
Classification: Semiprozine
Founded: 2016
Head Editor: P. Alexander (since 2016)
Cirsova is in an interesting position as the only existing magazine associated with PulpRev: a reactionary conservative movement trying to bring back the aesthetic of the pulp magazines of old. The author has explicitly decried progressive “message fiction”, arguing that direct social commentary has no place in the world of fantasy. While they don’t make explicitly political statements in their stories very often, they do function as a sort of lightning rod for culture war stuff in the literary world.
The magazine tends to lean in an even pulpier direction than HFQ, trying to write stories for shocks and thrills. That being said, the magazine publishes a much wider range of stories than HFQ, even dipping into science fiction (albeit science fiction that is not particularly hard). The magazine prioritizes snappy, shorter stories that display an awareness of old pulp authors, and it also cares a great deal about the old pulp magazines as cultural artifacts. In the end, Cirsova’s uniqueness has made it quite visible in the SFF world considering its countercultural politics.
Honorable Mentions: Fantasy Magazine was a prominent magazine that used to run under Lightspeed’s oversight, but it was recently acquired by Psychopomp. It is unclear how much impact the magazine will have under new management. Tales from the Magician’s Skull was a pulpy magazine more explicitly aligned with TTRPG circles that is also under new management; it was quite well-regarded during its short life but its future is also unclear.
Critical Magazines
Several of the magazines above have critical commentary inside (particularly Strange Horizons), but there are a few magazines that focus specifically on criticism. Coverage of short fiction has been dwindling steadily over the past few decades, but there are still a few magazines holding down the fort. While this role has typically been played by fanzines, institutions will sometimes sponsor criticism as well.
Locus 🇺🇸
Classification: Prozine
Founded: 1968
Head Editor: Liza Groen Trombi (since 2009)
Locus is a long-running professional sci-fi magazine from the Bay Area that reports on the latest genre trends. It is considered the de facto “newspaper” for the industry, and its Recommended Reading List is perhaps the single most influential publication on determining the success of various science fiction during awards season. It also runs its own Locus Awards (voted on by readers), which I hold in particularly high regard.
Locus employs a full team of reviewers that give detailed commentary on short fiction, something that is increasingly difficult to find. It has done a lot to curate the world of sci-fi literature, both past and present. When it comes to exploring the universe of science fiction, Locus is a pretty good place to start.
Tangent Online 📐
Classification: Fanzine
Founded: 1993
Head Editor: Dave Truesdale (since 1993)
Tangent Online is a short fiction review site that has been running for over 30 years. Its editor, Dave Truesdale, employs a team of volunteers that reviews a very impressive share of the science fiction and fantasy being put out today. While Tangent Online is often criticized for its bluntness, it is also appreciated for its scope and consistency, often being the sole review source for a given short story. It has been a perennial contender for the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine, notching five total nominations.
Truesdale is quite outspoken about his opposition to political correctness and the current cultural climate, and Tangent Online tends to highlight magazines with more traditional sensibilities (think Analog or Cirsova). This attitude has unsurprisingly led to Tangent Online becoming a more countercultural institution since 20161, and many members of the SFF community view him as a conservative ideologue. With that being said, Tangent Online does still lend its attention to most short stories out there, and it is not uncommon for them to give outlets like Apex their flowers. If you’re seeking complete coverage of short SFF, there isn’t really a better place to visit.
nerds of a feather, flock together 🤓
Classification: Fanzine
Founded: 2012
Head Editor: The G and Vance K (since 2012)
Perhaps more of a general fanzine than a critical outlet, nerds of a feather is a blog run by several fans that covers various sci-fi topics. However, I included it because it puts out a well-regarded Hugo Awards nominations list every year that it is pretty well-aligned with the sensibilities of the Hugo electorate. They tend to have lighter, more whimsical reviews that feel a bit more in line with a typical blog or podcast.
Compared to the other magazines in this category, nerds of a feather is much more casual and modern in vibe, acting as a balance to the strong institutionalism of Locus and the traditionalism of Tangent Online. You can get a pretty good picture of the shape of science fiction and fantasy by triangulating between all three.
Honorable Mentions: The Ancillary Review of Books (long fiction), Vector (long fiction), Quick Sip Reviews (defunct), Rocket Stack Rank (aggregator), Worlds Without End (aggregator), ISFDB (aggregator)
Magazines to Watch
I also wanted to highlight some magazines that didn’t fit into the above categories but are still hot in the world of SFF. These magazines are not quite as established as the magazines mentioned above, but they make up for it in momentum.
Escape Artists (Escape Pod, PodCastle, PseudoPod, Cast of Wonders) 🎤
While not “magazines” in the traditional sense, the podcasts Escape Pod (sci-fi), PodCastle (fantasy), PseudoPod (horror), and Cast of Wonders (YA) have been very influential on the short fiction scene. The podcast format allows them to reach a completely new audience, allowing them to act as “gateway drugs” into the SFF magazine economy. Many episodes are re-recordings of existing stories, but these podcasts also produce original fiction as well. I wouldn’t say Escape Artists has a particularly distinctive style, but they of course select for stories that can take advantage of their talented professional narrators.
It is hard to compare readership across mediums, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Escape Pod rivals the Big 5 due to its access to the size of the podcasting audience in general. In time, I would expect institutional success to follow.
FIYAH ✊🏾
FIYAH is a magazine primarily by and for Black American authors. It was inspired by Fire!!, a short-lived but iconic Harlem Renaissance magazine that tried to challenge Black stereotypes of the day with transgressive commentary. FIYAH is less a place for individual stories and more an entire ecosystem. Its stories aren’t fully accessible on the site (only a free preview to entice you to buy a full digital copy), so it’s hard for them to go viral and thus win awards. But FIYAH focuses more on the whole package: visual art and poetry are both prominent in the magazine, and it even hosts its own SFF awards called the Ignyte Awards, which honor works by BIPOC writers.
When FIYAH started, Black authors in SFF were a relatively rarity. But now FIYAH is at the center of an Afrofuturist wave, platforming several now-prominent Black authors and winning the Hugo for Best Semiprozine in 2023. Really, the only thing that FIYAH is missing prestige-wise is success at the story level: despite overall success, no story from FIYAH has been nominated for a Hugo or Nebula Award. But considering the momentum it has, this will likely only be a matter of time.
The Deadlands / Psychopomp 💀
The Deadlands was founded in 2021 by the creators of Shimmer, a magazine that was quite popular in its own right. This magazine focuses on death as a central subject. Despite being quite macabre due to the subject matter, the magazine takes a more neutral perspective on death than its horror counterparts. A lot of the times the magazine is simply meditative rather than scary.
The Deadlands is produced by Psychopomp, a growing small press that also recently acquired Fantasy Magazine. They also publish their own fiction independently from the magazine, including full-length novellas. Their recent debut Best Semiprozine nomination signals good things to come.
khōréō 🧭
khōréō is an up-and-coming magazine focused on authors of various disaporas. It focuses on stories that center a displacement of place and identity. It already has quite a following and has been nominated for major awards. khōréō is a young magazine, and it definitely feels that way in terms of style. Their stories just feel very youthful! The whole project also has much more of a “zine” feel to it despite having such a professional website, which I find quite charming.
Upon opening khōréō, I was very impressed by their super sleek interface and web-native chops. Each story has these nice dropdown menus to display potentially spoiler-y info about the work, and the entire website has a very clean look and feel. Their Reddt-inspired story “AITA for telling my genetic double she can’t be transgender?” was very believable as an Internet post, and I was also impressed by how they were able to display comments in a non-clunky way.
✉️
The Sunday Morning Transport is a publication right here on Substack that curates high-quality speculative fiction every week. The publication is run by industry veterans Julian Yap and Fran Wilde, who lead a small team of editors and staff. Like Reactor, SMT commissions stories rather than drawing from a slush pile, which makes them a bit different. It will be interesting to see whether SMT will find success on this platform and whether it will be successful in bridging the gap between those worlds.
I’d like to cover it more in depth in a future post about the SFF scene on Substack!
This concludes my rather long tour of the SFF magazine ecosystem. There are of course many SFF magazines that didn’t make the cut (GigaNotoSaurus, Abyss & Apex, Lunar Station Quarterly, and Diabolical Plots to name a few), and the original version of this post had 118 (!) magazines. I also had a whole section on hybrid magazines that didn’t make the cut (Nature, Future Tense), as well as a section on foreign magazines. If you would like to see any of that compiled in a separate post, please leave a comment! (I know suggested that they were interested in making a comprehensive list of speculative fiction magazines.)
With any post this long, there are bound to be errors. I am by no means an industry veteran, and I welcome any and all corrections! Thanks for reading!
Truesdale was also kicked out of WorldCon in a high-profile incident, which contributed to the rift between him and the mainstream SFF community.