40 years ago I got a job working the counter at a coffee shop and for the first time made enough money to buy what I wanted. What I wanted was reading material. I spent hundreds of dollars at second hand shops acquiring over 2000 paperback books – almost all science fiction. I also bought Analog, If, and a magazine called Fantasy and Science Fiction. Of the magazines that I read at that time, the only one that I still buy occasionally is F&SF. I say occasionally because I subscribed to F&SF from around 1963 well into the 1970s. Enough water has passed under the bridge so that I can pick these old issues up and read at random and probably not remember how a story ends. Also, I find less time to read, now that I into my second half century and no nearer to retirement than I was back in 65.

If F&SF came out in podcast, I would be the first to subscribe. I still believe that iPods have changed the way we interact with literature as well as music. I commute about an hour each way (the Tappan Zee bridge is the enemy) and I always have a book on tape playing. (By the way, download and listen to a couple of my stories at AudioCD.com.) iTunes had it’s Billionth download a few months ago. A good chunk of those were audio stories. GVG should get into the 21st century before it’s over.

I wanted to write SF, which is much harder than it should be. I received a Rejection Letter that Ed Ferman sent me in 1970 to prove it. Now, when I write SF, I think about sending it into F&SF. I don’t often do this because snail mail is a hastle, but JJA gets first shot at all of the ones that I like.

Fantasy and Science Fiction: “The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, founded in 1949, is the award-winning SF magazine which is the original publisher of SF classics like Stephen King’s Dark Tower, Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon, and Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz.”

For full and honest disclosure, I am posting this partly to see if Gordon will send me what I still crave – reading material. Read about GVG’s offer here.

Update: No Cigar. I was too late. I hope that F&SF get’s a page rank boost from all the incoming links as well a few subscriptions. It was a good idea. Internet marketing is an iffy thing (as you might know from reading this blog). It helps if you have a good product to start with. Unfortunately, there ain’t much happening at the F&SF website. It needs much more real content. I would propose a web zine with a different editor and for-the-love-of publishing of stories. I bet they would get a bunch of nice stories without having to pay for them, just on the hope that GVG would read them.
I think a for-the-love zine would do well under the F&SF banner. In spite of Sanchez’s negativity, I thought even AstoundingTales sometimes hit the mark, despite not paying for stories. Most of the stories were weak and got weaker as time went on, but there were some high points, like the Pole 69 contest. (sigh).