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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1719826" data-attributes="member: 5171">See, in some ways, I can see that.  It seems to have been the improvement of special effects and the financial coolness of the FX/SF field that has pulled a lot of talented writers and a ton of talented readers away from magazines and into theaters or cable networks.  If using movie stuff to lure them back to reading works, then I'm all in favor of it.I also agree with you, though, that diluting the message can be bad.  When Dragon ran fiction, people were really unhappy, arguing that it was taking up good game-material space.  There are already a ton of entertainment magazines out there (although I'm really hoping that what they talked about in terms of focusing on the storytelling of each medium turns out to be true), and I don't think there are nearly enough fiction magazines dedicated to end-user fiction*.* by which I mean fiction that readers who aren't writers or lifelong SF-reader fans are going to enjoy.  You look at the average issue of F&SF these days, and you've got one golden-age, fairly dull story by someone too famous for Gordon Van Gelder to pass up, one short weird thing Gordon found amusing, a mid-length story that could be SF or F depending on how you look at it and that probably uses quantum physics (and its little cousin, alternate universe theory) as some kind of massively strained metaphor, and a social fiction piece that's more than likely depressing as heck because the writer felt that after a long day at work, you really needed to read a story about how the Internet is going to make coming generations cold and distant and inhuman.   Most short fiction isn't entertaining anymore for anyone except writers and elite fans who are deeply versed in the literature.  That's not globally true by any stretch -- I still enjoy many of the stories in F&SF, Realms, and other places -- but I think that ivory tower syndrome is real in the short fiction market, if only because the pressure to publish fun stuff with fight scenes or explosions has been taken off the short fiction market and put into the TV, Video Game, and Movie markets.(And I speak only as somebody submitting fiction these days -- I have no hard data whatsoever.  IMO only.)So even if Amazing Stories only gives us 3-5 stories an issue, if they're 3-5 fun stories, they've got my blessing.  Well, if they're fun, or if they're mine.  Either way, that gets my blessing**.** Er, I mean, of course my stories are always fun.  Don't be silly.  I don't ever write melodramatic moody garbage.You and me both. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> It's called "Injure the Corners".  It's, well, a fantasy story involving a talking sword.  That was one of the big things that raised my hopes for Amazing Stories as a magazine that wasn't afraid to publish fun stuff -- because, well, if you're gonna publish fiction involving magical talking swords and assorted other goofy stuff, you're probably not all that worried about impressing the ivory-tower crowd.  You're more worried about giving the average reader a good time -- and I consider that a very good thing for a magazine to do.And "Release the Knot", the sequel, will be in some upcoming issue as well, most likely early next year.</blockquote>

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