Monthly Archives: March 2025

Update on Sale of Digest Fiction Magazines

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I recently posted about the sale of the five major digest fiction magazines: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Analog Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Locus Online has posted an update with comments from the science fiction editors.

Here are the key points:

…have been acquired by Must Read Magazines, a division of a new publishing company, Must Read Books Publishing. All editorial staff from the magazines have been retained in the acquisitions. Jackie Sherbow has been promoted to editor of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. P.L. Stevens joins the group as publisher.

Must Read Magazines is financially backed by a small group of genre fiction fans. A major investor and board advisor is Michael Khandelwal, the founder of a writing nonprofit and Virginia’s Mars Con toastmaster. Macmillan Learning Ebook consultant and developer Franco A. Alvarado has joined the group as director, design & operations. Leading the executive board is former Curtis Brown literary agent Steven Salpeter, who will manage the distribution, translation, and Film/TV rights for the company, as he does for other companies at his new firm 2 Arms Media.

The link above will take you tot he  complete post, which includes further details and statements from  the editors of Analog and Asimov’s and Gordan Van Gelder, who was the publisher of F&SF.

My (not necessarily well-thought out) thoughts.

I think the fact that the people behind the purchase are a group of readers and fans iwth real-world business and publishing experience is a potentially good sign. It implies that they aren’t using the magazines as some corporate financial maneuver that won’t be in the best interests of the magazines or the readers. I hope they realize their goals of expanding the readership of all the magazines.

I agree 80% with keeping the same editorial staff for now. I’m sure there will be changes over the next few months or more, but for now everything, at least with the four Penny Press/Dell magaziines will continue with little interruption.

I do wish t hey would do something about the Alfred Hitchcock’s response time to submissions, thought. A year or more is too long a response time for a professional magazine.

Maybe now F&SF will begin publishing on a regular schedule again. I’m glad things seem to  be looking up for this particular publication. I’ve had a subscription for nearly 40 years, and I’ve got a complete running going back nearly 50 years. I don’t want to see it die.

What do you think, will this revialtize the genre digests? Or am I being overly optimistic?

Novalyne and Howard

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Today, March 9, is the birthday of Novalyne Price Ellis (1908-1999). Novalyne dated Robert E. Howard during the last two years of his life.

She kept a diary while they were dating, and it was published under the title One Who Walked Alone. It was filmed in the nineties as The Whole Wide World. The movie starred Vincent D’Onofrio as Robert E. Howard and Renee Zelwegger as Novalyne.

Without Novalyne’s diary/book, our understanding of Howard’s final years would be must less complete than it is now.

I think she was in some ways  a stabilizing influence on his life, especially as Hester Howard’s health declined. Sadly, their relationship wasn’t stable enough for her to be there for him when his mother died.

I don’t mean that last sentence to be a form of blame for his suicide. I’m not sure that could have been avoided. And that sort of speculation isn’t a game I’m interested in playing tonight. So, raise a glass to Novalyne Price Ellis tonight if you’re so inclined.

William F. Nolan

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Today is March 6, and that means 1) it’s the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo, and 2) it’s the birthday of William F. Nolan (1928-2021).

Nolan was a member of the California school, which included such luminaries as Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, and Charles Beaumont. There were others who drifted in and out, either because of geographic relocation, such as Chad Oliver, or who simply didn’t write as much, like chrles E. Fritch.

Nolan’s best known works isn’t dark fantasy. It’s dystopian science fiction, Logan’s Run, which he wrote in collaboration with George Clayton Johnson. Nolan wrote two sequels alone. I heard somewhere that Johnson had written his own sequel, but the ISFDB doesn’t list it. I saw the movie on television when I was a kid, although I suspect it had been edited for content a little. I also watched the television series that followed. I won’t say how many years ago that was.

There was a short-lived Twilight Zone type anthology show in the early eighthies called Darkroom. I remember an adaptation of one of Nolan’s stories, “the Partnership”.  It was a good story, and a good episode.

Nolan’s strengths were at shorter lenghts, though. (None of the Logan novels are very long. They might be considred novellas today.) It’s been a while since I read any of his short fiction. I will try to work a few stories in here and there over the next few month.

I’ve looked at some of Nolan’s short fiction here before. He was part of a group that excelled at shorter lengths. Bradbury. Matheson. Beaumont. Harlan Ellison came into that group as ti was beginning to splinter and the members go their separate ways. I’m not aware of any group today that is writing short fiction as consistently as the California school did.

I’ll raise a glass in their honor tonight, especially Nolan’s.