A year of Asimov's: Two back issues (1987, 1995) and today

Originally, I was going to read Asimov's for a year, review as many
issues as time allowed, and try to draw some conclusions.

But brief googling shows that there are a couple of people out there
already reviewing issues:

http://thefix-online.com/reviews/asimovs-aug-2008/
http://scififantasyfiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/asimovs_sf_august_2008

-- The Fix seems to do one every month.

So I decided to do something else.

A while back, a friend sent me a couple of boxes of old SF magazines
-- Asimovs, Analog, F&SF. I've been reading through them slowly, then
donating them to book sales and such. As it turns out, I have just
two Asimovs left in the box: October 1987 and May 1995.

If I had my druthers, I'd have picked somewhat more recent issues. 21
years is a long time in any business! On the other hand, these picks
have the benefit of being random -- they were just the ones at the
bottom of a well-shaken bag.

On the other side of the desk, I have the most recent (August 2008)
issue. Let's compare!

Cover: I'd call all of these covers okay, none of them outstanding.
The 1995 is the one that would catch my eye -- it shows a man flying
what's obviously a Da Vinci flying machine, with a Renaissance
townscape in the background -- but I wouldn't call any of them either
bad or great. The 2008 cover is the most obviously science-fiction-y,
with riders on vaguely saurian beats crossing a desert, a sky with a
ringed planet, and pointy, shiny towers -- a landed spaceship? --
ahead.

The 1987 and 1995 covers are drawn from stories inside the magazine.
The 2008 cover isn't -- it's a generic SF cover. And the illo has
something of a classic, archaic feel... it could have been on a cover
of Galaxy or If from 1968, or a tribute to Star Wars or Dune from
1988. Whether this is bad or good is an exercise for the student.

The 1987 cover uses the old logo, the other two the more recent one
with the sans serif font.

Page count and cover price: Well, here's a difference.

1987 -- 192 pages for $2.00
1995 -- 176 pages for $2.95
2008 -- 144 pages for $4.99

So, it went from 1.04 cents per page in 1987, to 1.67 in 1995, to 3.47
cents per page today. Inflation has roughly halved the value of a
dollar in the last 21 years, give or take, but that's still a pretty
hefty price increase.

But wait! The 2008 issue is a different size than the earlier ones.
It's about an inch taller and 1/4 of an inch wider. So, the pages are
bigger.

Are they enough bigger to offset the lower page count? This involved
me in some squinting at fonts and counting words per line and such.
My conclusion: there's about 10% more text per page. So, 144 pages
today is like ~160 pages back when. That works out to just over 3
cents per page, adjusted... which still leaves the modern magazine
about 50% more expensive per word than it used to be.

Authors: 1987 headlines Kim Stanley Robinson ("Mother Goddess of the
World") followed by Jack Dann, Bruce Sterling, Bruce McAllister and
Ian Watson.

1995, Jack Dann (Da Vinci Rising), Pat Murphy, and Jack McDevitt

2008, Neal Barrett, Jr. ("Radio Station St. Jack"), Carol Emshwiller,
Ted Kosmatka, Robert Reed, and Rudy Rucker.

I'd call this one a wash. Today, a KSR novella and a Sterling short
story would make me sit up and take notice. But in back 1987 both
these guys were still on a rising arc, with most of their best work
still ahead. None of these covers have names that would be recognized
outside the field (Harlan Ellison, say) nor major forces within it
(Connie Willis, Michael Swanwick).

Okay, let's open the cover and look at the first page.

1987 -- Inside cover, an ad for two books by Questar. (Does anyone
remember them?) Page 1, a full-page ad for the Star Trader game by
Steve Jackson Games. (Which IMS was supposed to be pretty good.)

1995 -- Two page spread! A huge ad for the Long Ridge Writers Group
("Learn to Write for Publication!"). Brief googling shows that Long
Ridge, a correspondence course for writers, has been around since
forever; it may or may not be any good, but it's not a scam.

2008 -- Inside cover, house ad for Asimov's and Analog. Page 1, full
page ad, very low quality, for Charles Metcalf's book _Black Sabbath
of the Vodoun Detective_. No information except a lulu.com url, which
makes me think someone is paying a lot of money to advertise his own
stuff.

Let's turn the page again.

1987 -- Table of contents, and full page ad for an L. Ron Hubbard
book.
1995 -- Table of contents, and full page ad for Avon Books. (Four new
books, including Rudy Rucker's _The Hacker and the Ants_ and the
beginning of a fantasy series by Joel Rosenberg.)
2008 -- Table of contents, and a house ad for getting back issues of
Analog. (5 back issues, apparently random, for $6.95 plus $2 shipping
and handling. Nothing about how old the issues are. Umm... has
anyone tried this?)

Squinting at the tables of contents, I see some differences. 1987 and
1995 were published thirteen times per year; 2008 is ten times per
year, but two are double issues, so maybe not that much difference.

1987 has thumbnails of the internal art by each story, which is a nice
idea in principle but not IMO really all that useful. 1995 has this
too, but the thumbnails are smaller, to the point almost of squinty
uselessnes.

2008, no thumbnails. This is not necessarily a bad thing; the table
of contents has a much cleaner look. But, wait a second...

....the reason there are no thumbnails of the internal art...

....is because there isn't any.

In the 1987 and 1995 books, almost every story starts with an illo.
Even little short-shorts get something. In 2008, there are no
original internal illustrations. There are a few small illustrations
-- a poem about a cat has a picture of a cat on the page, for instance
-- but nothing that couldn't be public domain.

The credits list Victoria Green as Senior Art Director. I'm assuming
this is a part-time position?

Anyway. Presumably the loss of internal artwork is a budget issue, so
it can't be considered a good sign. That said, I'm not sure it
detracts all that much. Thinking back over the years, I can remember
plenty of striking covers, but not that many powerful and memorable
internal illos. I didn't even notice the missing artwork until I
started comparing, which suggests that I wasn't getting that much from
it. Still...

Okay, this is getting long, so I'll stop for now.

Does anyone find this interesting? Thoughts, comments?


Doug M.
.

Relevant Pages
Loading