Asimov's SF, April-May 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The magazine was originally conceived as a science fictional version of EQMM: no serials, almost entirely stories of six thousand words or less, and strictly science fiction with no fantasy content. And—because both Isaac and I have a weakness for humor—the magazine had very much of a light touch. We even picked up the Feghoot series of outrageous science fiction puns by Reginald Bretnor, writing as the anagrammatic Grendel Briarton.

  As it turned out, Joel was right: there was indeed room for a new science fiction magazine. IA'sfm sold some sixty-five thousand copies of its first issue on the newsstands, and rapidly converted many of them to subscribers, some of whom are still with the magazine. The renewal rate for those initial subscribers was the best the company had ever seen, which reinforced Joel's decision to go from quarterly to bi-monthly publication for our second year, and to full monthly publication the year after. Our first cover was a photograph of Isaac; we soon shifted to science fiction paintings—a few illustrating specific stories, other, being general science fictional scenes. In those early years, Joel let me assign interior artwork and—in consultation with the company's art department—the covers as well.

  By the time the magazine went monthly, it became apparent that there weren't enough pure science fiction short stories to keep the pages filled. We (who by then included the always capable Shawna McCarthy as full-time assistant editor in the Davis offices in New York. I had also left my railway planning job to become a full-time editor, commuting to New York once or twice a week) added fantasy and longer works. No serials—though there were works by Fred Pohl and by Jack Williamson that we presented as episodic novels appearing in successive issues rather than serials labeled as such.

  Somewhere along the line, Joel asked if we could put together a companion magazine, 8.5 by 11 inches in size rather than the traditional digest format, which appeared as Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine with splendid covers repeated as double-page centerfolds. Shawna and I promptly assembled the new magazine, and we loaded it up with some of the best material we had in inventory. Notable stories included one of John Brunner's “Traveller in Black” tales, and Roger Zelazny's “Unicorn Variations.” Alas—it only lasted four quarterly issues; at the time, there was simply no room for a 8.5-by-11-inch science fiction magazine on the newsstands. It tended to be put with the comics, and the comics readers of the time weren't interested in stories told in words rather than pictures.

  Back at IA'sfm, we—editors, writers, and artists—were still having fun. I got some notable covers out of Alex Schomburg and Frank Kelly Freas. We ran one of L. Sprague de Camp's sword-&-planet short novels with a lovely Freas cover. And Schomburg and the IA'sfm gang of writers concocted what I remember as one of the most fun issues of my stay at the magazine.

  A few years before, Don Wollheim had worked out the perfect cover for a Romance novel: a brooding manor (castle, watchtower, whatever) against a darkening sky. A female figure, fleeing in the foreground. And—Don's inspired touch—a single light in the manor's window.

  Alex Schomburg's version: a very science fictional building grounded-spaceship/whatever in the background. A male figure fleeing in the foreground, and—again—a single light in the structure's window. Then the writers produced a half-dozen stories all built around that cover scene!

  Ah—those were the fun times!

  * * * *

  Kathleen Moloney

  Kathleen Moloney lives and works—as a freelance writer—in New York City. She is married to Dominick Abel, a literary agent.

  I was editor-in-chief of IAsfm for only seven months, from July 1982 through the end of that year. Frankly I'm not quite sure how I got the job. I'd had several publishing gigs but no science fiction or fantasy background unless you count reading Animal Farm in junior high. Despite my lack of experience I was hired, by Carole Dolph Gross and Joel Davis.

  It took me a while to learn the ropes at IAsfm, and as I did so, I relied heavily on senior editor Shawna McCarthy, especially as a reader. She had superb taste, I thought. I liked just about everything she recommended—stories by John Brunner, Gregory Benford, Connie Willis, Robert F. Young, Sharon Webb, Glen Cook, Madeleine Robins, Richard Bowker, Steve Vance, and dozens of others. Our cover story in November was David Brin's “The Postman.” I really liked that one.

  While Shawna dug through the mail, I concentrated my efforts on trying to get Isaac Asimov to write more for us (with some success) and introducing new features. During my tenure we added a Profile (starting with Alvin Toffler, Harry Harrison, William Burroughs, Lewis Thomas, and Stephen Jay Gould), a cartoon we called “Mooney's Module,” and a crossword puzzle, edited by Merl Reagle. In December of 1982, my swan song, we did a terrific special issue devoted to the publication of Isaac Asimov's Foundation's Edge. After that I went off to be an editor at Times Books, and Shawna McCarthy got my job.

  Working in the world of science fiction was a strange but excellent adventure, and it remains the only time in my life I went to a convention with a weapons policy.

  Happy thirtieth anniversary to IAsfm.

  * * * *

  Shawna McCarthy

  Shawna McCarthy is a literary agent (The McCarthy Agency—what else?) and the fiction editor of Realms of Fantasy magazine. She has also at one time or another been senior editor at Bantam Spectra Books and Workman Publishing. She edited Asimov's during the Iron Age, and helped discover fire. Shawna was also the first woman to win the modern Best Editor Hugo Award.

  I have two words to say regarding my time at Asimov's: Dream Job.

  Seriously, I would walk home from the subway at night and think, I am the luckiest person in the world. First of all, I got to work in the genre I loved, doing something I was good at. Second of all (actually, maybe this should be first), I was working with ISAAC ASIMOV!!! Omigod! (Yes, I have teenage children.) Third of all, I got to hang out in interesting places with some of the most interesting people in the universe. My job took me to cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis (wait, what?), and Austin, where I got to stay in nice hotels, eat great meals with huge groups of people, appear on panels, go to parties, and flirt like crazy. For an unmarried twenty-five-year-old woman there was no better sphere to move in than the SF world—the male to female ratio was at least six to one, and they'd all been more or less pre-selected for brains and creativity, if not grooming.

  Perhaps this sounds flip, but I'm sincerely trying to get across the joy that I took in working at Asimov's. All parts of it, even down to reading the slush and laying out the issues, gave me great pleasure, and while most middle-aged people will say, when reflecting on their youth, “I didn't know how good I had it,” I must admit that I absolutely did know how good I had it. From the first day I walked into the office as George Scithers’ assistant to the day I left to help found Bantam Spectra, I reveled in my job.

  Now might be a good time to point out though, that much as I loved my job, my job did not always love me back. As I mentioned above (albeit in a somewhat different context!), SF had (dare I say has?) always been a bit of a boys’ club; in fact, George and Isaac actually knew one another from a literal boy's club, the Trap Door Spiders. As a woman, and as someone who did not come out of fandom, I think I brought a somewhat different spin to the magazine, one which was not entirely appreciated by the charter subscribers. Not unreasonably, they felt they had signed up for a magazine that reflected Isaac Asimov's sensibilities and style, one that offered straightforward stories with transparent prose, clear-eyed heroes, intriguing scientific puzzles, and awful puns. And while George published quite a few groundbreaking new authors (Connie Willis, anyone?), for the most part, under his editorship the magazine delivered exactly what the readers wanted.

  Those halcyon days were not to last, however—I became editor and started publishing things that were, umm, controversial (anyone remember “Her Furry Face"?), things which caused the mailbox to fill with hate mail and caused Isaac no end of tsuris. That brave man was kept qu
ite busy defending my choices, and saying in editorial after editorial that while he personally might not like some of my selections, they were all certainly well written and worthy of publication and that maybe the readership might want to try to keep an open mind. For my part, I hung in there, hoping that the “new” Asimov's would win over charter subscribers and find its new readership, and luckily for me, eventually it did. My happiest day came about a year into my editorship when I opened the Nebula nomination list and found that stories from the magazine dominated the ballot. I felt vindicated and I'm sure Isaac felt relieved!

  When, after much soul searching, I decided to try my hand at editing books, I was not about to leave the magazine in the hands of an unkindred spirit, and so I turned to the most kindred spirit I could find, Gardner Dozois. To my delight, he agreed to take over the editorship, and I knew my baby was safe in his and Sheila's capable hands.

  I've been trying to sum up what I got from Asimov's, and I'm finding it almost impossible, because in the end, what I got was my life. What I do—hell, who I am—today, from editing Realms of Fantasy, to running my literary agency, to raising my children (yes, I met my husband through my work!) springs directly from my time there. The only thing I can say at this point is: thank you. Thank you, George; thank you, Joel; thank you, Isaac (wherever you are); thank you, Gardner; thank you, Sheila; thank you, readers; thank you, whatever powers might be, for everything.

  * * * *

  Gardner Dozois

  Gardner Dozois was the editor of Asimov's Science Fiction for almost twenty years, and still edits the annual Year's Best Science Fiction anthology series from St. Martin's Press, now up to its twenty-fourth annual collection. He is the author or editor of more than a hundred books, and has won fifteen Hugo Awards for his editing work and two Nebula Awards for his own short fiction.

  Although I had been associate editor for a year or so under George Scithers, we had parted ways years before, and I had no formal connection with Asimov's until the spring of 1985, when then-editor Shawna McCarthy took me aside during that year's Nebula Award Banquet (just after I'd gotten down from the stage for winning a Nebula for my story “Morning Child"), told me that she was stepping down, and asked me if I'd like to be the new editor of the magazine. The idea of returning to the magazine in an editorial capacity again had never occurred to me, and I was at first almost more surprised by the idea of Shawna leaving (like everybody else, I'd assumed that she'd be in the job for years if not decades to come) than by the idea of me taking over. After thinking about it for a few moments, though, I tentatively accepted.

  Of course, technically the choice wasn't Shawna's to make, and I had to submit a formal resume in writing and go through a long interview with Joel Davis, then the magazine's publisher, and wait on pins and needles for awhile, before I was formally offered the job. Shawna's support of me as her candidate for the job, though, was the main reason why I got it, and to this day I'm not entirely sure why she wanted me as her replacement, except that I'd had some magazine experience in the past, reading slush for the UPD group of Galaxy, Worlds of If, Worlds of Tomorrow, and Worlds of Fantasy, and working on the first few issues of Asimov's way back at the beginning of the magazine. I'd also done a decent job of editing a “Best of the Year” anthology, and I had been selling stories to her at Asimov's (winning a Nebula for the magazine with my story “The Peacemaker") in the previous couple of years. The fact that Isaac Asimov had agreed with some of the things I'd had to say about SF magazines on a convention panel the year before may have helped, as did, oddly, the fact that there were a number of other candidates for the job, some of whom wanted to produce a very different magazine indeed from the one I ended up producing, the proposed trajectories of which Isaac thoroughly disliked.

  Things moved very quickly, and so, almost before I'd had a chance to get used to the idea or fully appreciate the fact that it was actually happening, I found myself installed as the new editor of Asimov's Science Fiction (then called Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine). I didn't expect to last long. Although I had cut my shoulder-length hippy-style hair before the interview, and had a cheap suit I used for occasions such as award banquets, I'd not shaved my beard and I was clearly not a corporate kind of guy, as the odd looks I got from others in the hallways attested. I'd also thought that Joel Davis had been squinting at me with deep suspicion during my interview, and had clearly had to have his arm twisted by Shawna into accepting me. So I thought that I'd last a few months, and then they'd fire me. Curiously, this may have been my greatest advantage. Figuring I'd only be there a few months, I decided that I had nothing to lose by taking as many risks as possible, and worked hard to completely and radically transform the tone of the magazine in as short a time as possible. If I'd known I was going to be there for almost the next twenty years, I might have been more cautious and taken fewer literary risks, and so quite possibly have produced an inferior magazine.

  Looking back at my days as editor, I can say that stories that I bought won thirty-four Hugo Awards (some years winning all three of the short fiction categories), fifteen Nebula Awards, and four World Fantasy Awards, that under my reign Asimov's itself won the Locus Award for Year's Best Magazine fourteen times in a row, and that I myself won the Hugo Award for Best Editor fifteen times. Not too bad a track record, I like to think, although now that my career as Asimov's editor is behind me, it'll be up to the critics and historians to evaluate it, and decide what it is I did and what—if anything—it all was really worth.

  (I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank everybody I worked with at the magazine over the years, especially Sheila Williams, who worked side by side with me for all of those years, for helping to make the magazine what it was—and is.)

  * * * *

  Sheila Williams

  Asimov's was founded by Isaac Asimov and Joel Davis, the owner of Davis Publications, a relatively small, family-owned publishing house. Fifteen years later, the magazine was sold to Bertelsmann, a publishing giant that now includes Random House, Doubleday, Bantam, Dell Books, the SF Book Club, Del Rey Books, and many other well-known publishing lines. One of Doubleday's top-selling authors was Isaac Asimov, and the parent company was excited to have his books and his magazine under one roof. With the sale to Bertelsmann, we became part of Dell Magazines, a venerable publishing company that was perhaps best known as the world's first crossword-magazine publisher. The Bertelsmann era, however, proved a short interlude. Four years later, Dell Magazines was sold to Penny Press, a family-run puzzle-magazine publisher. Dell and Penny had been competitors, and their merger into Penny Publications created a major force in the puzzle-magazine field. The purchase of Dell Magazines gave Penny an opportunity to diversify as well, since the sale included Dell Horoscope,Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and, of course, Asimov's Science Fiction.Asimov's continues to flourish today because of the support we receive from our publisher, Peter Kanter.

  Starting professional life as an editorial assistant in a small company was an educational and nurturing experience. It was an opportunity to learn almost everything there was to know about magazine publishing. At first, it felt like I was making every single mistake that could be made once. Luckily, there were a number of supportive and demanding colleagues who saw to it that I learned from those mistakes. I was immediately thrust into the mechanics of creating a magazine. Before the days of desktop publishing, that meant working with repro proofs and blue pencils. Last minute typos were eliminated by the art editor with an Exacto knife. In the days before fax machines, communication with our economical typesetter in Holyoke, Massachusetts, held to a tight schedule. One week was generally the best we could do to turn around corrections, so sudden changes of heart could only be accomplished by cannibalizing old repro. I was constantly in motion, dragging the heavy repro boards down out of the closet and running the hallways that separated the editorial department from the art department. In addition to the a
rt department, I worked directly with the advertising, accounting, circulation, contracts, production, and subsidiary rights departments.

  Moving to a large company, located in Times Square, was exciting. At first, the work didn't really change, but we all got corporate credit cards! Departments were more spread out, and there were a lot more meetings and memos. Eventually, our new publisher instituted desktop publishing. It had taken years to convince Davis Publications to give me a correcting typewriter. Now I could load an entire issue onto my computer—although doing so usually made it crash. The typesetter was gone, and I became less dependent on the art department. I could make all the corrections myself. Somehow, this change didn't make my job any easier, but it did make it more sedentary.

  The Internet didn't happen for Asimov's until after our second sale. Our website went live in February 1998, and email became a way of life. Almost from the start of my employment, I had been responsible for writing all the biographical notes that accompany each story. Information was mostly collected through the US mail, but I got some of it by telephone. I got to know the authors very well, but I'm afraid my phone bills were correspondingly large. These days author corrections and biographical information usually arrives via email. Corrections can be made up until the day the magazine is released to the printer, and the entire issue sent electronically to the printer. Communication by email is a lot more impersonal than a phone call, but it's faster and cheaper. There's no handwriting to decipher, and no misheard information to garble in the blurbs.

  Working for a large publishing outfit was an exciting experience, but adapting to Penny Publications felt a lot like coming home. Not too long ago, I was surprised to realize that I had been working for them longer than I had for Joel Davis. Over the years, many assistants have helped me pull the magazine together. Nowadays, I've handed over much of the magazine's production to the steadfast Brian Bieniowski. Asimov's has always had its talented authors to thank for the quality fiction that shows up in its pages every month. That the magazine shows up in your mailbox and on your newsstand is in many ways thanks not only to Brian and Peter Kanter, but to all the people you see listed on our masthead.