We Didn't Kill Them
by Raymond M. Coulombe

The old S/F magazines are dying. There is no nice way to say it. Analog, Azimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Locus are just shadows of what they once were. It's not my fault. Sure, I helped found Quantum Muse. Yes, we are growing and the old paper mags are shrinking. But Quantum Muse and the other on-line zines didn't kill the old boys. They were dying well before we even arrived on the scene.

It cost a lot of money to make a paper magazine, even though paper really does grow on trees. Trees are expensive. Magazine publishers are in the business of making money. Science Fiction Age was shut down because it was only making $200,000 per year. The same amount of effort could make more money publishing magazines about other interests.

Paper magazines are locked into an old system of printing and distribution that made more sense 50 or 100 years ago. There are better ways to do a paper magazine, but just make a few helpful suggestions to those editors and they foam at the mouth. New print technologies exist, with more and cheaper systems on the way. Even distrubution is changing. Come on you guys; read your Darwin. Evolve or die.

Of course, those guys have reason to fear. Iit doesn't help that when OMNI went from paper to on-line, it died. Sure, it was a slow death, but die it did. Maybe they were just ahead of their time. Even I wasn't on-line back when they first went on the web. Then again, maybe they were just stuck with a lot of the over head that comes with a paper magazine. At the time it helped that OMNI's parent was Penthouse, but now even Penthouse is in trouble. If you can't make money with pictures of naked women . . .

The common complaint about the dead tree magazines is that they publish the same handful of authors over and over again. That isn't a totally bad thing, especially if you are an S/F author trying to make a living. Believe me, most of those guys are barely getting by. Even getting a Hugo doesn't mean you'll eat on a regular basis. What are these guys going to do when the mags shut down? Move to the homeless shelter for brilliant writers?

There are a lot of good writers of speculative fiction. Quantum Muse was formed in recognition that not enough of them are being published, never mind paid. Authors better hope that us on-line people find a way to make enough to pay everyone a living wage. Before too long, we may be the only game in town. That would be sad. I, for one, would miss rolling up a magazine and stuffing it in my pocket. You can kill spiders with it.

Their drop from hundred's of thousands of subscriber's to thousands started around 15 years ago. What happened then? Video games were getting bigger and better. Personal computers were becoming more common. We were well into the Star Wars years. Maybe, just maybe, we got our science fiction fill from other sources. Perhaps the real world began to seem enough like science fiction that we didn't have to read it in magazines. I'm only guessing here, but I might be onto something.

Don't let this get you down. There is no reason to slit your wrists with a razor blade. There are plenty of people willing to do good fiction for arts sake. I'm heartened by publications like, Black October Magazine, the magazine of Gothic & psychological horror. Editor John DiDomenico, editor@blackoctobermagazine.com, and a small dedicated staff publish this slick paper magazine out of a basement. They are not too concerned about making money, but are concerned about publishing good authors. We at Quantum Muse salute their revolutionary spirit.

Technologies change. Society changes. Different media wax and wane. Through all the changes, one thing remains: Humans love a good story. We are a race of thinkers and dreamers. As long as people love a story, there will be those of us who will do our damn best to supply them.

Raymond M. Coulombe
Editor/Revolutionary/Vagabond
Quantum Muse

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