Amazing Stories Seeks Bloggers « File 770:
Steve Davidson, preparing to resume publication of Amazing Stories, is looking for experienced bloggers with interests in science fiction, fantasy and horror, their sub-genres and their impact on or relationship to film, television, gaming, anime, comics, audio works, visual arts, fandom, publishing and science.
Every so often you run into a bit of your past and go wow. Amazing Stories still exists, or at least people are still creating new versions of it and keeping it going.
Back in the day — 1991 and 1992 (god! that’s 20 years ago) I was one of the book reviewers for Amazing Stories, during the time it was owned by TSR, back when TSR was the company that owned Dungeons and Dragons. It always seemed to be the N+1 magazine in the market, never really thriving, never having the audiences of Analog or Fantasy and Science Fiction; it changed owners a few times over the years here and there.
And that it’s still around (or more correctly, returning for another round) is awesome. For some reason this just tickles me.
For what it’s worth, when I was doing this, a common question at cons was how people could get paid to read books. I always responded that I didn’t get paid to read books, I got paid to write about books I read and help people make buying decisions — the book reading was the homework part. And it may sound like fun, but every month, I needed to review 4-5 books and turn in 2000 words of readable copy (for which I got paid about $200). If you break down how long it takes to read 7-8 books (because not every book you read turned into something you could or would review. Or finish — and I never review books I don’t finish), and add in a couple of evenings to write the column and edit it into something lucid, you can commit 50-60 hours to that $200.
You also can’t stockpile books now to be reviewed later when you’re in a busy period. It’s basically an unending grind. Definitely not a nasty one, but I can tell you I had a couple of months when I was four days from deadline, two books short of a column, and a pile of books on the desk that I knew were all going to be crap. I discovered some really great authors — and I read a lot of stuff I’ve happily forgotten.
But hell, it was fun. When the column ended, I didn’t really mind. But it’s one of those things I got an opportunity to do that I’m glad I grabbed.
Hmm. I wonder if I have those columns squirreled away somewhere. And if whatever they’re on is remotely readable on a modern computer? (somewhere, in the garage, is a box with hard copies of everything I published. I should perhaps scan it all in. Some day…)
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