Genre Grapevine for Last Half of February 2025
For other news from February, see my previous grapevine. This report is available free to the public. If you like my writings on genre issues, consider backing my Patreon.
Big 3 Magazines Update
My report three days ago revealing the sale of Asimov's Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and Fantasy and Science Fiction merely covered the facts I'd confirmed about the purchase of the genre's historic "big 3" print magazines. Figured I'd now share my personal opinion on what all this means, followed by a few updates.
First, we'll have to wait and see what the official announcement states. Judging from responses on Bluesky and other social media platforms, there's some concern among genre people to one company owning all the magazines. But it's worth noting that's not much different from the previous situation, where the Big 3 plus Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine were owned by Penny Press.
Now one company will still own all those magazines, plus F&SF. And since F&SF has been teetering on collapse the last two years, I personally prefer the magazine gets a new lease on life even if it's in a company already owning multiple genre magazines.
Of course, the devil's in the details. But based on what sources told me, the magazines will remain in print and the current editors will be retained. As for payrates and contract rights for stories, we'll have to wait for that info.
Another thing people are concerned about is new owner Steven Salpeter purchasing the magazines with a group of investors. I know the term "investors" has major negative connotations in today's hedge-fund, techbro riddled world, but let's be honest: Those are unlikely to be the type of investors we're talking about here because genre magazines don't have the types of financials hedge funds and techbros typically demand. Instead, the investors we're talking about here are likely people who see potential in the magazines and, importantly, love the SF/F and mystery genre.
This doesn't mean the investors don't want to make money – they obviously do. But I'd still bet this isn't a typical hedge fund style investor group.
On a very positive note, I was told by multiple sources that Salpeter purchased the magazines because he's a SF/F fan. His being a former literary agent lends support to this, as does the fact that he ran a genre magazine, Assemble Artifacts, while at Assemble Media.
There were also concerns raised in the genre that because Salpeter worked for Assemble Media, which is what Variety Magazine called "a literary incubator which concurrently develops its book projects for film and TV adaptation," the new owners would use the magazines to lock in potentially valuable IP content.
I don't believe this is true because 1) Writers would raise a major stink over such onerous contract terms; and 2) it appears Salpeter is no longer with Assemble Media. In December he was still listed as one of the executives for Assemble Media (according to the Wayback Machine), but as of today he isn't listed as being there. So any potential conflict of interest there no longer exists.
For more about Salpeter's views, check out this 2019 interview with him.
Again, the devil is in the details and we'll have to see what the official announcement says, along with the long-term plans for the magazines, contract terms and payrates. But as someone who both reads these magazines and publishes fiction in them, for now I'm optimistic.
Other news related to the purchase:
In a public post on the official Facebook page of Asimov's Science Fiction, the magazine's editor Sheila Williams said "We're excited about Asimov's future with our new owners. We have lots of great stories lined up. There's no change to our editorial staff. Our new owners are readers who love genre magazines and we're looking forward to working with them."
Asimov's senior managing editor Emily Hockaday expressed similar sentiment, saying "I wanted to echo Sheila Williams' comment that we are still working hard on the excellent fiction our authors send us, along with our Associate Editor Kevin. We are excited to continue putting out our fabulous magazine and for possible future projects. We're so grateful for all of the concern and support from fans and authors. As always we hope you'll continue to support us in this transition including gifting subscriptions to friends, requesting us at your local libraries, and sharing the free content that we put out there like our podcast series and the features on our blog & website."
The Astounding Award for Best New Writer has long been run by Dell Magazines, which was owned by Penny Press and the publisher of Analog and Asimov's. John Scalzi noted that if the new owners of the magazines didn't want to continue sponsoring the award, the Scalzi Family Foundation would be happy to do so. However, in a response on Scalzi's post, Sheila Williams announced that "Analog and Asimov's new owners fully intend to support the awards that we and the mystery magazines bestow each year. We are also grateful for your continued support and love that you are determined to help keep Analog's legacy going."
I added the following as an update to my original article about the sale, but in case you missed it Salpeter's company 1 Paragraph also purchased Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. These magazines along with Asimov's and Analog were previously owned by Penny Press and likely sold as a sort of package deal.
Correia Denies Claims He's Leaving Baen Books
Prominent right-wing SF/F writers have been exchanging fire over the possible fate of Baen Books in recent weeks. This started when Fandom Pulse, a conservative genre news site on Substack, reported on January 30th that a new SF/F publishing company named Ark Press had been launched by "Peter Thiel and his investment group, putting a big target on the back of Toni Weisskopf's Baen Books." The article, titled "How Donald Trump advisor Peter Thiel completely upended science fiction and fantasy publishing," also reported the publisher would launch with a new series by Larry Correia.
In addition, the article implied that Baen Books was in trouble, having "laid off several employees in the past year, including longtime editor Jim Minz and company publicist Sean CW Korsgaard." Fandom Pulse also wrote that Thiel had previously come "to Baen Books with an offer to buy the company and inject capital to modernize it and preserve Baen for the next generation," but Baen editor Toni Weisskopf declined the offer.
Fandom Pulse followed that initial article with another one two days later titled "Baen Books author Larry Correia announces going fully independent in reaction to Ark Press news while others circle the corporate wagons," followed by a third article titled "Baen Books editor Jason Cordova responds to speculation surrounding Larry Correia's Ark Press announcement: 'I guess it's time I risk my job at Baen.'"
Those headlines pretty well sum up the articles' content.
I honestly don't know how accurate Fandom Pulse's reporting is, which is why I didn't link to the site's articles. Because of that I'd caution people to take what they said with a grain of salt the size of Texas.
In addition, one of the major focuses of the Fandom Press articles, Larry Correia, directly refuted the allegations that he's going independent or abandoning Baen. As Correia said: "So I hear certain people are trying to stir up outrage clicks spreading dumb rumors about some publishers again, this time because I'm writing books for other publishers too."
Correia added:
"I still have several projects under contract with Baen, and I love Toni Weisskopf, but I am an independent contractor who enjoys bouncing around and they are one publisher who does one specific thing. … I started out indy. I've written book for Baen for 15 years, but during that time I also wrote two novels for Privateer Press and one book for Regnery. Now I've got stuff with Aethon and Ark."
Others have weighed in on all this including Jon del Arroz and Vox Day, with both of them appearing to fully support the reports from Fandom Pulse. However, perhaps the most insightful comment I found on all this came from Reddit user elishafe, who wrote:
"I was recently at a writing conference with staff from Baen that has moved over to Ark Press, and Ark Press had a booth there. The vibe that I got is that Baen is quickly on its way out, and that Ark is a poor replacement, run by men who are far too out of touch (part of that is age) and clearly aren't keeping up with trends. I was with another friend (a woman) who wanted to pitch to Ark, and they shut her down basically saying that they're catering to a male audience, and they can't have any 'sassy female characters' solving everything on their own with their 'sassiness.' This all came directly from one of their senior editors, and this was before she had even pitched her story to them. They were quite condescending after the fact, trying to explain how writing a book works to the two of us :P It was interesting, to say the least."
Again, not sure if that's true or not, but if it's correct that post provides some interesting perspective, especially if Baen staff have left the publisher to work at Ark Press.
Awards
Nominations for the Hugo Awards close March 14 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time. As happens each year, the genre community is sharing a spreadsheet of works eligible for this year's Hugos.
Eugen Bacon and Mars Lauderbaugh have received the 2024 Otherwise Fellowship.
Other News and Info
The Seattle 2025 Worldcon's website on-site accessibility page is still essentially blank, containing only placeholder copy as several readers of this column pointed out to me over the last few weeks. With people making determinations right now on whether or not to attend this year’s Worldcon, I hope the convention’s accessibility information will be updated very soon.
Under Trump, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced major changes to its grant funding, specifically altering its "2026 grant guidelines to prioritise projects that honour the upcoming 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The NEA has also eliminated the Challenge America grant, which awarded projects that 'extend the reach of the arts to underserved groups/communities' by giving $10,000 to small organisations that could allocate matching fund."
As previously reported, last year the board of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) released a statement in support of "writers in crisis." Despite this, an open letter organized by E.D.E. Bell and signed by more than 100 current and former SFWA members criticized SFWA for not specifically releasing a "statement and plan to support Palestinian writers," which the letter said the writers in crisis statement did not address. Since then, a petition was circulated to add an amendment to the nonprofit's bylaws stating that "Excepting activities which participate or intervene in specific political campaigns, promote specific political parties, or engage in propaganda, nothing in this limitation shall prevent SFWA from engaging in activities that provide or state support for creators from historically underserved backgrounds (e.g. releasing a statement in support of Palestinian SFF creators; supporting transgender SFF creators with additional grant funding; promoting Jewish voices in speculative fiction). Neither the Organization, its employees, nor its officers and board members, may suppress or refuse to engage in such activities on the basis that these activities are political when requested by the membership and voted on by the Board in accordance with the OPPM." The petition attracted 189 signatures of full SFWA members. Under the SFWA's bylaws, it appears the organization must now hold a membership-wide vote on whether or not to approve this amendment.
Codex, an online writing workshop community for pro-level speculative fiction writers in the early stages of their careers, has changed their membership requirements to state that qualifying works must not have been AI-generated.
In mid-January, Jemima Q Thorpe posted on Threads with that while reading a novel by KC Crowne, a prompt from an AI writing program was discovered within the book's text. Thorpe shared a screenshot of the prompt, which read "Certainly. Here's an enhanced version of your passage, making Elana more relatable and injecting additional humor while providing a brief, sexy description of Grigori. Changes are highlighted in bold for clarity." Crowne reportedly later responded, taking responsibility and saying "I can assure everyone that all my books are written by me. I've been writing my books before Al came about. I've recently started the practice of using Al to make very minor edits. To be honest, I'm still learning about how to best use Al to make my reader's experience better but I can assure you that keeping my original voice strong is of utmost importance." Vania Margene Rheault wrote a good post digging into all this, including how such a prompt could have been missed during editing.
At this month's Writers Guild Awards, Vince Gilligan – the creator and screenwriter behind one of the "all-time great bad guys" in Walter White of Breaking Bad – warned his fellow writers that they needed to create better good guys, not merely great villains. "I think I'd rather be celebrated for creating someone a bit more inspiring," he said. "In 2025, it's time to say that out loud, because we are living in an era where bad guys, the real-life kind, are running amok." He then added, "I say we write more good guys. For decades, we've made the villains too sexy. I really think that when we create characters as indelible as Michael Corleone, Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader or Tony Soprano, viewers everywhere, all over the world, they pay attention and say, 'Those dudes are bad ass, I want to be that cool'. When that happens, that's when bad guys stop being the cautionary tales that they were intended to be. They [instead] become aspirational. So maybe what the world needs now are some good old fashioned, greatest generation types who give more than they take." Naturally, writers responded with their own words on all this. Alise Chaffins explored why people love villains, and how to harness the power of these characters for good. Arula Ratnakar expressed "Major respect for Vince Gilligan but I disagree with his opinion that we should cut back on writing villains/morally gray characters. The point of writing is not to prescribe moral ideologies, it's to explore characters that are honest to human nature. That means writing the bad, corrupt, messy, too." And Alan Cerny noted that "Complicated but genuinely good heroes are tough to write. I dig that Vince Gilligan is advocating for these kinds of characters. Villains are fun but it's easier to burn things down than to build them up in fiction. And heroes aren't necessarily upholding the status quo. Get to it, writers."
Off Limits Press will close on June 1, 2025. In an announcement on Bluesky, the publisher said the closing was due to "personal issues emotionally and mentally as well as the changing financial side of things."
After Trump unilaterally declared the Gulf of Mexico must be renamed the Gulf of America, Meg Pokrass ran a hint fiction contest on Prompts of Resilience seeking 18 word stories "set in an imaginary gulf named by you." John Sheirer won the contest with a story titled "The Gulf of the Clitoris," which read "And just like that, it became invisible to Trump supporters forever."
Opportunities
The Horror Writers Association is accepting applications from writers for their annual Scholarship From Hell that provides recipients with an "intensive, hands-on workshop environment" during StokerCon. Deadline to apply is March 10. Details>>
Spotify, The Black List, and The Jed Foundation have jointly launched the Spotify x JED Impact Award, which offers "$50,000 in grants to writers of unpublished stories with the aim of "ending the stigma surrounding mental health." The deadline for applications is July 8, with complete submission info here.
Mascara, and NewSouth Publishing are seeking submissions of "creative nonfiction writing, poetry, short stories, and new experimental work to an anthology of creative writing by disabled and neurodivergent writers to be edited by focussing on the perspectives and voices of First Nations and CaLD, disabled writers." Deadline is March 31. Details>>