Best laid plans

Yesterday, I published a report about the change in ownership of three of the speculative fiction genre's legacy publications: Analog Science Fact and Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF). I had reached out to Michael Khandelwal and Steven Salpeter, two of the folks behind 1 Paragraph, but didn't get answers back before I published.

Shortly after publishing that piece, they sent me their answers–that sometimes happens in journalism. I'm glad they did: they provided some additional details about their background and intentions for these publications in the months and years ahead.

Changing of the guard

What does a change in ownership for the genre’s legacy short fiction magazines mean for the SF/F community?

Transfer OrbitAndrew Liptak

"When I was 12 [in 1982], I went to see Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan at a local theater, and ran into a local Star Trek club, Starfleet Atlantic," Michael Khandelwal explained in an email. " I joined the club, and after my parents realized they were all nice people (they were all adults, much older than I was), I was allowed to go with them to my first convention, Sci-Con, that same year."

Khandelwal is one of the groups of investors who owns 1 Paragraph, the company that acquired Analog, Asimovs, and F&SF (as well as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine) from Dell Magazines earlier this year. He has a long tenure within fan circles, noting that after that first convention, he went on to run a computer room at a convention the following year, and frustrated with the organizers, decided to run his own, starting with a one-day event and following up in 1984 and 1986 with Galacon I and II, and continued with a string of additional conventions through the mid-1990s.

Along the way, befriended noted genre painter Kelly Freas and his wife Polly, who became a close friend and who helped him network with the genre's many authors. When Khandelwal moved to Los Angeles in 1987 to attend the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, Kelly also relocated to be closer to his daughter and "[acted] as my stand-in parents."

In the years that followed, Khandelwal graduated from the USC's professional writing program, where he studied fiction, poetry, and screenwriting, and worked as a TA in the school's neuroscience program. When he relocated to Virginia in 2000, he explained that while he had kept up with writing articles for local a local magazine, he missed teaching, and began teaching poetry classes for a local art school, and when that institution closed, he set up The Muse Writers Center.

Along the way, he kept up with his roots in fandom, assisting with MarsCon in Virginia, where he's served in a variety of roles, including Toastmaster. He's also become an art collector, acquiring a number of Freas's paintings. "some of them SF/F book covers, but many are his fine art, which are particularly meaningful to me because they were often the paintings on the walls in [his] house."

Salpeter took a slightly different journey. "I have been reading genre fiction as long as I can remember," he explained, and noted that he took a different route than Khandelwal: he became involved in the professional side of publishing, first as a literary agent where he "represented literary estates, then living authors, then managed literary rights for companies including a Film/TV company." He also worked on helping a British romantasy publisher set up their distribution to the US through one of the big five publishers, and developed material to adapt into film and television projects, serving as an executive producer on some of them.

He explained that he and his partners had long been fans of the genre's magazines, noting that he had been trying to find ways to help some of these publications from the roles that he worked in. But, he said, "the more I spoke to people involved, the more I was advised to get involved more directly," and "as soon as we saw a path for the new company to thrive we dove right in." He and Khandelwal had been working on a project together, and had "for a long time been talking about working on the right project together," describing Khandelwal as "[embodying] the pure fan on our board." Khandelwal notes that he was drawn to the project because of his connection to Freas, who illustrated many of the covers that the magazines used.

In an email, F&SF owner Gordan Van Gelder (owner of F&SF) explained that it had become clear during the COVID-19 pandemic that "I needed to do something to provide for the magazine's future," and began looking around for options, eventually "got to talking about the future of F&SF with the head of 1 Paragraph and that eventually led to the magazine's acquisition."

Salpeter noted that while there are plenty of online short fiction publications out there, "It would take half a century to build a new version of [them]," and rather than building competitors, "we love them and want[ed] them to continue." He emphasized that one of the majors strengths of each of the magazines are their editors and staff: "the editorial staff are some of the best in the world and have the awards to prove it."

The writers they publish are another strength, he explained. "Our magazines are driven by the great writers in them. I’ve heard from a few young award-winning writers in these genres that some of them see the magazines as lofty goals for later in their careers. Reaching new writers for some of the magazines will help us reach new readers."

Khandelwal noted that he thinks of the magazines as "pillars of fandom. Most everything we love can be traced back to the influence they, and their authors and artists had. They made SF/F accessible and cool to the rest of society," and that he thinks "that these magazines can have a powerful and positive affect in larger fandom. We need to show how they are relevant to readers of all ages and passions, and Steven and the editors have that clearly in mind."

The pair note that with the acquisition, they have a number of plans to update and modernize each of the publications. Salpeter explained that the magazines have fallen behind their digital counterparts, and that they "have significantly lower digital readers than any of the other genre fiction magazines out there and on average sell a far fewer percentage in digital than readers who buy ebooks in the same genre. There’s an audience we’re missing." 

To that end, Salpeter says that "we'll launch a new web vertical at the end of this summer to house each magazine," and that while they aren't planning on moving away from the print editions, they want make sure that readers can access their stories online.

He pointed to F&SF as the publication that needed the most support. The magazine last published an issue in the summer of 2024, prompting concerns about its health and direction. It "has short fiction in inventory and we're grateful for the writers and readers who stuck with it during the turbulent times," he explained, and said that they're moving the magazine to the same systems as the other four publications, and have updated some guidelines to get "back on a regular publishing cadence" and will have updates about the next issue for subscribers shortly.

"Ultimately, we want the websites to be a place for more readers to discover the writers who contribute to the magazines and in our genre spaces in general," and noted that "we suffer a little during some award seasons because other venues make their stories more available." He also noted that they're working to "change the way we share the news content in the magazines online, and may expand a bit of what our online audience responds to most."

He also noted that they're trying to be sensitive to the concerns of their readers. "There are probably many startups that could change their design on a dime, but for us we owe it to our existing readers and writers to make updates carefully."

Since word of the sale broke earlier this year, Asimovs and Analog have each released their May/June issues (as did Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine). Salpeter says that they're currently working on the July/August issues, and will roll out the updated websites for each of the sites by the end of the summer, which they hope will help to bring the stories from each of their publications to the wider audience they're seeking. Hopefully, it'll work, continuing their legacies of storytelling in the decades to come.