Top 5: Modern SF/F Magazines

I've often spoken and written about how short fiction is the life blood of sci-fi and fantasy. I grow more convinced of this all the time. Almost every great, well-known SF/F author has a massive backlog of short stories that you could peruse. Hell, some of them made their entire living on short fiction.

But that lifeblood doesn't flow if nobody can pay for those short stories… so magazines. People have to read magazines for the magazines to pay authors. And there's a lot of them out there. The list I have here is in no way extensive. These are just my five favorite SF/F rags this week. They're all magazines I think deserve a little support, because they do good work. They put out quality fiction, and that should be rewarded, in my opinion.

5: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

It would be hard to do this list without mentioning this particular magazine. It's been around since before the web (This marks year 67 of publication), and it's collected a lot of just straight-up quality pieces in that time. It's hard to apply a general qualifier to all of the work they publish, as it really ranges across the board. The only thing that ties it all together is how plain-old good the fiction is.

You can get a subscription to them starting at around $37. Why such a steep price? We're talking physical magazines in your mailbox.

4: Daily Science Fiction

While the whole body of work isn't going to be to everyone's tastes (They publish five days a week, 52 weeks per year.), something in DSF is going to appeal to everyone. My main reason for including this one is that it's free. Completely free, a short (Very short) story delivered to your inbox five days a week, entirely free of charge.

So if you want to subscribe, just go over here.

3: Shimmer

Shimmer is a weird one. I'm not judging – they'll admit it. Their fiction is beautifully written and stylistic. A lot of magazines focus on how their fiction isn't pretentious and doesn't take itself to seriously. Shimmer is pretentious and it does take itself seriously. Very seriously, in the best of ways. It's the very fact that the authors take their work so seriously that makes Shimmer such an incredible magazine to read.

Shimmer is just $15/year, so why not give them a chance?

2: Fireside Magazine

Shimmer is strange. Fireside is strange, but more accessible to the general populous. Very heavy focus on character and concept If those are the kinds of things you like to see in your stories, I really can't recommend Fireside heavily enough. They're very selective, and it really shows.

They're also free, but they pay their authors very well, and they're entirely kept afloat by crowdfunding, so consider throwing something atthem, if you enjoy their work.

1: Clarkesworld Magazine

Now, I love all the magazines before this, as well as a lot of others that didn't make the list (Basically just because I didn't have space.). But this one was always going to be on the list. It was always going to be number one on the list. If I had to pick one SF/F mag to read for the rest of my life, it would be Clarkesworld. There's just something about these stories. They are purely character-driven, more than any other selection of short fiction I've ever seen. Their stories are consistently up for various awards when that season rolls around. It's one of very few sources of fiction that has provided me with a story that changed the way I think about science fiction and writing and the way short stories should be structured.

They run as low as $2.99 per issue, so it's pretty hard to beat that, in my opinion. I can't recommend a Clarkesworld Subscription enough. I really, really can't.

And that's my little primer on SF/F mags. As I said, there are a lot more of them out there that I didn't get to put in. Maybe I'll put them into another post… or two… or three. However many it takes.

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Voss