Archives for January 2009

With the sad demise of Realms of Fantasy, I keep thinking about an experience I had several years ago. I was invited to lead a book discussion on The Hobbit down at the local library for one of the those national get-kids-to-read campaigns. (The event was called “Make Reading a Hobbit.” Hey, don’t blame me. I didn’t come up with it.) I figured I’d be pretty well prepared for this event, seeing as I’m a fantasy writer, I’ve read The Hobbit maybe ten times, read The Lord of the Rings, watched all 7,000 hours of special features on the Peter Jackson extended edition Lord of the Rings DVDs, read Tolkien: Author of the Century and The Inklings, etc. Well, there were these two middle school girls in the audience, and I quickly got the sinking feeling that I was in over my head. These girls had read The Silmarillion. They’d read all ten (?) volumes of The History of Middle-Earth. They were writing their own Tolkien fan poetry … in Elvish. I managed to hold my own, and we had a really stellar discussion about free will / good and evil / race and class in Tolkien. Afterward, people wanted to know who I was, so I showed off some copies of Realms of Fantasy in which I appeared (and which I just happened to have brought with me). One of the parents asked, “What kind of magazine is this?” and I said, “It’s a fantasy magazine. You know, they publish fantasy short stories, and they have reviews of fantasy books and movies, and fantasy art, and articles about folklore, and stuff like that.” These two girls perused the pages, their eyes wide, and one of them exclaimed, “Wow! I never knew there were magazines like this! Mom, can we get this? Please?” That was really cool to see, and now I wish that somehow over the past fifteen years more readers like that could have come across copies of Realms of Fantasy, but unfortunately various factors have conspired to make it very difficult for young readers to discover that short fiction magazines even exist, which is really a shame.

There’s now a save Realms of Fantasy Facebook group.

Now that the Realms of Fantasy website is being shut down, the community that formed around the message boards there is reconstituting itself over at Friends of Fantasy. If you were involved with the old boards (or even if you weren’t), think about dropping by and saying hi.

(Edited to add: As of March 10, 2009, the magazine has a new publisher. Check out the new Realms of Fantasy magazine website.)

Realms of Fantasy magazine will cease publication after the April 2009 issue. I’ve been reading the magazine since the first issue, which came out when I was in high school. After a decade of trying, I finally managed to sell them a story in 2002. This was a huge thrill and a major milestone for me. I remember holding my contributor’s copy and thinking, “Ten years ago I was reading a Roger Zelazny Amber story in this magazine, and now there’s my name on the cover.” It was also a huge thrill to have my story illustrated in full color by a professional artist. I had the two-page spread printed up as a giant poster and framed. I was lucky enough to have a total of five stories published in the magazine, including a recent streak of three acceptances in a row. If you look at my bibliography, you can see just how big a role Realms of Fantasy played in getting me into print these past few years, including making possible my appearance in Rich Horton’s Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2008. Realms of Fantasy was particularly open to newer writers, and published early work by some of the most exciting up-and-coming writers today, such as Tim Pratt, Carrie Vaughn, Christopher Barzak, and Greg Van Eekhout. There was a definite camaraderie among the newer writers who appeared together in its pages. I feel like I’m good friends with folks like Richard Parks, Josh Rountree, Trent Hergenrader, and Eugie Foster even though we’ve never met. The Realms of Fantasy message board has also been a lively place. I’m extremely grateful to everyone who helped make Realms of Fantasy possible over the years. I think assistant editor Doug Cohen is due a huge amount of credit for the tremendous level of effort he’s devoted to the magazine, both in seeking out and developing upcoming writers, and in reading through and analyzing every story the magazine has ever published. Realms of Fantasy’s passing is a tremendous loss to the field, particularly for upcoming writers, and I feel really bad for people like Aliette de Bodard and T. L. Morganfield who had placed stories with the magazine and may not see those stories in print. Be extra nice to those folks. I’m grateful to have been involved with Realms of Fantasy, and will miss it terribly.

I just did a double-take when I read this:

“If convicted of the charges against him, Madoff, 70, could spend up to 20 years in prison and face a $5 million fine.”

Twenty years? For stealing fifty billion dollars? Is that a typo?

By a cruel coincidence, here’s someone else who’s facing twenty years in prison:

“The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has signed on as a special consultant to the defense of Christopher Handley, an Iowa collector who faces up to 20 years in prison for possession of manga.”

So stealing fifty billion dollars is about as bad as reading a comic book about teenagers having sex? WTF?