Locus (magazine)

Locus, subtitled The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field, is an American magazine published monthly in Oakland, California. It is considered the news organ and trade journal for the English language science fiction and fantasy field.^[1] It also publishes comprehensive listings of all new books published in the genre.^[2] The magazine also presents the annual Locus Awards. Locus Online was launched in April 1997, as a semi-autonomous web version of Locus Magazine.^[3]

History

Charles N. Brown, Ed Meskys, and Dave Vanderwerf founded Locus in 1968 as a news fanzine to promote the (ultimately successful) bid to host the 1971 World Science Fiction Convention in Boston, Massachusetts. Originally intended to run only until the site-selection vote was taken at St. Louiscon, the 1969 Worldcon in St. Louis, Missouri, Brown decided to continue publishing Locus as a mimeographed general science fiction and fantasy newszine. Locus became the immediate successor to the decades-old monthly newszine Science Fiction Times (formerly Fantasy Times, founded 1941), when SFT ceased publication in 1970. Brown directed Locus as publisher and editor-in-chief for more than 40 years, from 1968 until his death at age 72 in July 2009.

Locus announced that the magazine would continue operations, with executive editor Liza Groen Trombi succeeding Brown as editor-in-chief.^[4] The magazine and the Charles N. Brown Collection are now owned by the Locus Science Fiction Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, nonprofit corporation.^[5]

Locus publishes:

• News about the science fiction, fantasy, and horror publishing field—stories about publishers, awards, and conferences—including "The Data File", "People & Publishing" (rights sold, books sold, books resold, books delivered, publishing news, promotions; people news and photos about vacations, weddings, and births), and obituaries
• Interviews with well-known and up-and-coming writers (and sometimes editors and artists), usually two per issue
• Reviews of new and forthcoming books, usually 20–25 per issue, by notable SF critics including Gary K. Wolfe, Faren Miller, Nick Gevers, Jonathan Strahan, Adrienne Martini, Russell Letson, Gwenda Bond, Stefan Dziemanowicz, Carolyn Cushman, Karen Burnham, and Richard Lupoff plus short fiction reviews by Gardner Dozois and Rich Horton
• A bimonthly commentary column by Cory Doctorow
• Reports from around the world about the SF scenes in various countries
• Listings of US and UK books and magazines published (monthly), bestsellers (monthly), and forthcoming books (every three months)
• Convention reports, with many photos
• Annual year-in-review coverage, with extensive recommended reading lists and the annual Locus Poll and Survey
• Letters and classified ads

Locus has won many Hugo Awards, first the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine, and then in 1984 when the new category "Best Semiprozine" was established. As of 2012, Locus won the award for "Best Fanzine" eight times and for "Best Semiprozine" 22 times during the category's first 29 years. In 2012 "Best Semiprozine" was redefined to exclude all small, independent genre magazines as "professional publications" if they had either "(1) provided at least a quarter the income of any one person or, (2) was owned or published by any entity which provided at least a quarter the income of any of its staff and/or owner."; this included Locus.^[6] There is no longer a "Professional Magazine" Hugo Award; that original category was replaced in 1973 by the current "Best Editor."

Authors Arthur C. Clarke, Connie Willis, Robert A. Heinlein, and Terry Pratchett, and The New York Times, have all cited the value of Locus to the field.

Locus Press has published several books, including Fantasy: The Very Best of 2005 and Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005.

See also

• List of literary magazines

References

External links

• Official website