Tag: James Patrick Kelly

Tony Smith’s latest Sofanauts podcast features a discussion about Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine with it’s editor Sheila Williams (and a bunch of other folks). This follows another recent Sofanauts show in which F&SF, Analog and Asimov’s all got bashed for not being more web-savvy, not having modern websites (blogs), and in general not being very 21st century about the internet (let alone futuristic). This is all despite having some relatively good news to spread (the Kindle versions are selling)!

Having heard the explanations provided by Williams, for the various Asimovian deficiencies, I quite understand and sympathize with her situation. Being a small division in a big corporation is bound to produce the kind of corporate blindness that prevents reasonable responses and sensible efforts towards modernization. In the Popper–Kuhn philosophy of science they have an explanation for this sort of thing. It goes something like this:

‘for the new science to flourish the old scientists must die’

Dell, Asimov’s publisher, has been in the magazine business since 1921 so it ain’t that surprising they are so backward. It sounds like Williams has done her politely-half-damnedest to modernize the magazine: bringing in a website in the late 1990s, getting credit card subscriptions, adding blogs to the site – even being on the Sofanauts is pretty 21st century. What I hope is she can leverage some of the coverage (BoingBoing) to convince Dell to modernize a bit.

But on the other hand Sheila Williams’ has some more fire headed her way. See she got me all excited saying, in the discussion, that her website had podcasts!

So now, since I discovered her mis-statement I’ve got to get up on my hobby horse and call her “podcast” most definitely not a podcast. What Asimovs.com has is an MP3 file |MP3| (a sshort story by the podcasting pioneer James Patrick Kelly). Perhaps there had been more MP3 files on the website in the past? If so that certainly would be another step towards a podcast (a podcast of one file isn’t much of a podcast), but it still wouldn’t be enough. See, there’s no podcast feed on the Asimov’s website at all. There are two blogs, neither of which is discoverable through my SAGE reader even though they exist. I’m betting this is because of the ancient web technology being employed by the Asimov’s website (circa 1998). So, soldiering on, I added the two blog feeds in manually (as they were virtually unreadable on the website itself) only to discover that the two blogs were nothing I’d want anyway. One is a serialization of a novel (requiring a click-through of each post to read – which is absolutely and utterly pointless kind of blog) and the other seemed to be mostly about twitter and movies – neither seemed to speak “Asimov’s” to me.

Looking ahead, even if Asimov’s future isn’t all doom and gloom (Dell probably has a decade or two left to publish their mainstay puzzle books) I’m still not so optimistic. Maybe Asimov’s can continue on without Dell. All I can tell you is that while I’m always interested in getting a copy, it’s pretty damned hard from month to month. They rarely show up at the local magazine racks and they’ve pretty much had to continue on without me, subscription wise, since the 20th century. I don’t have a credit card so I don’t have a subscription and their website has no way to notify me of any changes that would make that change (like adding a PayPal option). And the thing is I do read the mag when I can get a copy! So I think there’s still something wrong there.

Have a listen to the show |MP3| or subscribe to the Sofanauts podcast feed:

http://sofanauts.com/category/podcast/feed

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis