Wouldn't it be great, I thought, if one of the popular SF magazines available from your newsagents also contained some fiction? After all, contrary to my initial assumptions, they don't just concentrate on TV and films. There are sections about novels, even interviews with authors. With the limited number of professional markets for short SF, there would be no shortage of talented authors available. Some popular science magazines like Cosmos and Nature publish a story every issue, so why not in an SF magazine too?
Rather than just ponder the question, I decided to ask the editors. Here's what Matt Bielby, editor of Death Ray had to say:
It's something we've talked about and it might happen, but the mag's pretty packed already and fiction would eat up quite a lot of space, so something would have to give.
Plus, we wouldn't have the time to be proper literary editors, so stuff would have to come to us very clean and ready to use, which almost certainly means we'd only be using the most experienced writers; the sort of people we'd interview, perhaps.
It doesn't mean we won't give it a try, but exactly how and when we'd do it I'm not sure of yet.
So, he's not ruling it out, but no immediate plans. I shall let you know if I hear of any developments.
