Gregory Benford was the first sf writer to have a story in Issues in Science and Technology but he won’t be the last. “The National Academy decided to confront the future with sf, and chose a story of mine to open with, on geoengineering – ‘Eagle’”
Next year there will be an sf story in every issue – the winning entries in the Issues Science Fiction Contest. However, the deadline to enter was June 1, so I won’t go into additional details.
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Congratulations!
New Scientist and a few other science magazines are doing similar publishing of SF stories. At one time, in the distant past, scientists use to sneer at science fiction and science fictional ideas. Then young people who grew up reading the stuff grew up, became scientists, engineers, software developers, spaceship tycoons, etc. Now, we find these same scientists confronting science fiction writers at conferences and in print complaining that all they’re producing is endless dystopias and fantasy adventure crap; they say that the writers are failing to inspire, and seem to agree with Benford’s statement that writers are “playing with the net down” when they fail to deliver on old fashioned hard and/or visionary sf. And they’re unfortunately correct – every time I see some silly jackass interviewed in Locus or similar venues say that “oh, science is just another kind of magic”, I want to barf. I’ve been buying and collecting SF for 45 years, but I can barely stand walking through the “sci-fi” section of bookstores, where it’s almost impossible to find real SF amongst all of the zombies, vampires, dragons, werewolves, elves, hobbits, fairies, etc., ad nauseum, that have taken up residence. In his brilliantly but sadly perceptive October 2010 interview in Locus (a rare exception to the just described trend in that magazine), Barry Malzberg points out that since perhaps the death of Asimov the decline of SF has been accelerating, and has spread to fandom and the conventions, wher 90% of what goes on is fantasy. Perhaps in the future, the only place science fiction will find appreciation and a safe birthplace will be in science magazines…… How ironic!
If I remember correctly, Hugo Gernsback first published “scientifiction” in his electrical hobbyist magazines, so science fiction started out in practical-application-of-science magazines. The circle is just rolling around again.