Experimenter Publishing has released the latest issue of the World’s First Science Fiction magazine – Amazing Stories – with a Special All Canadian Fiction and Artwork issue.
Behind the scenes, Canadian authors, artists and fans (as well as a few expats living in Canada) have been an integral part of this publication effort. Not to mention that Canada has long rivaled the United States1 in its contributions to both the genre and its Fandom2, and we felt that it was high time that those contributions received some recognition from one of its beneficiaries.
Here then is our Special All Canadian Issue, with a fanatastic and inspiring cover by Eric Lofgren, (Canadian) with stories by Douglas Smith, Matt Hughes, Julie E. Czerneda, Tanya Huff, Robert Sawyer, Karl Schroeder, Spider Robinson, Robert Charles Wilson, Judy McCrosky, Su Sokol, Robert Dawson, Sally Fogel, Susan Forest and Melissa Yuan-Innes, (all Canadians), with interior Art Direction (and art) by Canadian Michael Dean Jackson and interior art by Jeff Doten, James Beveridge, Laurine Spehner, Sagana Bouffard, Eric Chu, Richard Bartrop, G. W. Thomas and Eric Lofgren, all Canadians.
I don’t think it inappropriate to ask if you happened to notice that this issue of Amazing Stories is comprised of All Canadian Content.
This issue is available through Amazon, Barnes & Nobel and the Amazing Stories store in electronic formats (EPUB & PDF) and in several Print On Demand formats including Paperback and Hardback formats.
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HOW WE GOT HERE
Amazing Stories has had a rough past year, mostly owing to the fact that our former Licensee – NBC/Unversal Television – has failed to meet their contractual obligations.
After waiting 6 months for those obligations to be met, we issued a formal notice of Breach and Termination to the legal offices of NBC. For the second time.
Like our first go’round with them, they completely and totally failed to acknowledge receipt of our notification (which has no legal impact as service was sent to the contractually mandated address of notice).
Having been down that road with them once before, we see no logical point in renegotiating yet again and therefore will not.
We expect NBC/Universal Television (which aired the first season’s episodes of the show) to honor, if now acknowledge, the current status of the license agreement (as in, there is none) and to not interfere as we move forward in acquiring a new production partner. This article serves as a second, informal notice to them of the termination of their contract.
Given that most writer’s orgnizations are fighting with Hollywood production companies on a number of fronts – all of which involve one type of non-payment or another and all involving the abuse of intellectual property rights by those companies, we’re not surprised that things have taken this turn. We are not, however, in the same boat as copyright holders who have not received royalty payments and are working with various Writer’s Unions (SFWA, WGA, etc) as our issue(s) related to Trademark, not Copyright. Although we can not align directly with the “Disney Must Pay” action(s), though we do strongly support them and expect that our situation will receive the same support in return.
HOW DOES THIS AFFECT SUBSCRIBERS?
Beyond denyin you a regular issue of the magazine up till now, in order to continue publishing the magazine we have had to take the following steps as well:
Owing to the previously stated, Amazing Stories must change the way it produces issues, while at the same time attempting to do what is right by our subscribers. These are necessary, budget-related changes that represent our only option for keeping the magazine in publication. Those changes are as follows:
First, Amazing Stories will be changing to an annual format, producing one (over-sized) issue per year rather than quarterly (four) issues per year.
Second, we are eliminating the print edition as a regularly available option. Print copies of each issue will remain available as a separately purchased Print On Demand (POD) product.
All current print subscriptions will be converted to Electronic Editions moving forward. In addition, former print subscribers may select one of the Amazing Select titles, electronic edition, for each year of subscription that is being converted.
Please know that we are not happy with having to make these changes, but following long discussion, we believe that these changes offer us our best chance of moving forward. Those with questions, please feel free to get in touch with the publisher, Steve Davidson, via Steve (at) amazingstories (dot) com.
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We hope that you will understand the necessity of making these changes given our current circumstance and hope that you will continue to support us.
1 After the US, there have been more Worldcons hosted in Canada than anywhere else, not to mention all of the great product by Canadians you probably don’t know is by Canadians
2 We maintain, and will continue to maintain, that “Fandom” in proper usage is singular. We do not recognize the use of “Fandoms” or “Someone’s Fandoms” as proper usge and believe that it is inherently divisive in nature. “Fandom”, which we use to refer to the culture that originated in the late 1920s around magazine science fiction and went on to create fanzines, conventions, cosplay and inspired super heroes, film and television of all kinds is one entity under which there are many houses. I am not a “Firefly Fan”, I am a Fan who has a particular interest in the show Firefly. We must not follow the mainstream culture’s hell bent quest for division, nor should we allow the commercialism and divisness of marketing strategies negatively affect Fandom.
