Longevity
One of the great things about the internet is that you can change your mind from one day to the next, and put it down to the fast-moving dynamic environment.
So yesterday my Interzone piece was a blog post, today it’s an article. What changed? After I’d posted the first half I realized that there was more to say — much more. Since it’s now almost 900 words and has shedloads of stats, by my mind that’s an article. Blame that fast-moving, dynamic environment….
Regardless of whether it’s a blog or an article, what started it all off was a couple of conversations in which I voiced my frustration at the number of small presses and magazines and anthologies that spring up, take their subscriber’s money, and then never produce a second issue, or make it past the first subscription renewal.
Bob Nielson (one of the Albedo One team who have –to my surprise– produced the 13th longest running magazine* in SF history, and the next oldest magazine to Interzone) made the comment that it’s hard to find the time, the money and the enthusiasm to keep producing a magazine at all, let alone year after year. It seemed to me at the time that maybe we ought to acknowledge that effort.
And next September Strange Horizons is ten years old. It’s a damned fine achievement, but celebrated in total contrast to the way that IZ sneaked past its own tenth anniversary, and pretty much every other anniversary ever since. We Brits don’t like to blow our own trumpets, so I thought I’d toot the TTA team’s horn for them….
* I’m counting magazines as those periodicals that pay to publish, as distinct from fanzines. No disrespect toward the latter, but it’s not in my purview.
