Well, that's a sad thing.

[seawasp]

From wyjoe, we get the news that Jim Baen's Universe is closing up.

It was an ambitious experiment to create another, high-paying venue for short SF/F fiction. They gave it four years.

But it never quite reached the level necessary.

I'm afraid I'm not particularly surprised. It's not a real blow for me -- I don't write short stories, really -- but for those who aren't writing in the novel category this could hurt. There just aren't that many worthwhile venues available, and those that exist are getting more pinched. I wouldn't be surprised if, by the time I'm 60, all of the SF magazines are gone.

Comments

[katestine.livejournal.com]

Not terribly surprising. I should be their target market - disposable income, casual fangirl sci-fi reader - and while I subscribed at the beginning, I let it lapse bc I read maybe two stories in that year that made me glad to have a subscription :( Maybe they'll focus more on the main publishing business and bring me more books I can buy.

[seawasp]

That was always my view of ALL the magazines. One story that I liked per issue, maybe, and maybe not that. This simply wasn't worth it when I could always buy collections of short stories that were MOSTLY good.

Yes, most of those collections were gathered by cherrypicking from the old magazines. I'm afraid there will have to be some other way to manage short stories from now on, but I haven't any good ideas myself.

[meril.livejournal.com]

Same here. I subbed for two years, stopped reading it when my PDA broke, and forgot to check it again to see if there were stories by authors I was interested in.

(And, re the main publishing business--outside of the yearly Weber and Drake release and whatever seawasp comes out with...haven't been buying those either.)

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Without Jim Baen to drive it, I'm not surprised.

[kjn]

Jim Baen was hardly involved, apart of lending his name and giving the initial capital (which is no small thing, I grant). The actual running was very much divided from Flint and Resnick, and their staff.

But I'm not surprised anyway. I took the first year, but a combination of lack of a good e-reading device and a not-too-easily navigated web site meant I never subscribed for another year. And short fiction is dying a slow death commercially, even before JBU launched.

[wyjoe.livejournal.com]

That's not entirely accurate. Jim Baen would no doubt have been at least a little more involved, but fate intervened.

[baka-bacchus.livejournal.com]

Has anyone tried just including a short story or two with a novel. An established novelist can help out/mentor another but including the short story author's story at the end of their novel.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't take you up on your bet. I haven't been able to read Analog once the editorial policy got silly enough, and I haven't had an interest in any of the other mags. Hell, I can barely get the interest to check out Tor.com ever once in a while.

[rasmusb.livejournal.com]

I was there for the first year -- but I'm not so fond of short stories. I'll get the anthologies if it contains a story set in the universe where I have novels (aka. Michelle West's Sun Sword, Mercedes Lackey 'Heralds', etc). but not just for the short stories themselves. I don't find them as satisfying as true book.

science fiction magazines

[mzrosemary.livejournal.com]

Unlike most kids who started reading sf in the sixties, I never read magazines. I don't remember ever seeing them for sale in my small town. I was introduced to Asimov by a selection included in an SRA reading program in seventh grade and started checking books out of the library. Our public library bought quite a few best of anthologies. Some one else in town must have read SF, but I didn't know who they were. I went to my first Con in Feb. I was amazed, by the percentage of women in roughly my age group who attended. I did know another girl who read SF until I was in college. Most of the women I met at the Con started with fantasy and continued to read more of that. I started with "hard" SF.
I bought and subscribed to some mags as a young adult, but that was when downer SF and Harlan Elison type work seemed to dominate the magazines.
I wasn't interested. Most of the short work I read is in an anthology by a favorite writer, or set in a multiverse I enjoy, or is in an anthology with an interestng concept or catchy title. If I Were an Evil Overlord is one my favorite titles. I think that anthologies are where most short stories will be published. I'm afraid that new writers will almost have to write their stories in other author's multiverses because most other anthologies seem to be primarily solicited stories. I enjoy buying and reading Baen's ebooks. I have all the Grantville Gazette volumes. Their free library has introduced me to many writers that are new to me including Mr. Spoor. I assumed Ryk E. Spoor had to be a pen name until I searched it. I thought Digital Knight was excellent! I doubt I would have ever bought it because I hate 99% of the vampire stuff I see. Now I'll buy a couple of other titles where he is a coauthor. I bought a netbook specifically to read ebooks on. I don't understand the appeal of electronic readers. They are very expensive for machines whose uses are so limited.

Re: science fiction magazines

[seawasp]

Heh. You are far from the first to think my name HAS to be made up. I was asked if I wanted to use a different name for publication, but I figured that my real name had the specific virtues of being relatively short, distinctive, and memorable, all of which you'd want in an authorial name, and since I'm not a terribly private person, I had no particular reason to hide who I was. So I went with my real name.

Glad you enjoyed DK; I have posted two more Jason Wood stories on this forum (Shadow of Fear and Trial Run), in case you haven't read them and want to see a bit more of what happens to Jason after the end of DK.

I'm rather proud of the fact that your comment about hating most vampire stuff, but liking DK, is a pretty common one. In fact, that was Eric Flint's reaction.

My next solo novel, Grand Central Arena, comes out April 27th, 2010. That's set in another universe, but one thing you can count on from me is: no "downer" SF. My writing sensibilities in spirit are still firmly in the 1930s-1950s, though my science (when I want to use it) and some other attitudes are hopefully a few decades farther on.