Closures: Jim Baen’s Universe

Jim Baen’s Universe, the online subscription magazine edited by Mike Resnick and Eric Flint, is closing. The magazine is finishing its fourth year of publication, which means the publication schedule that started in June 2009 will run through April 2010.

People who buy a new membership will have access to the entirety of the magazine's run. It’s too bad that the magazine is closing. The list of contributors is impressive, including names like Cory Doctorow, Pat Cadigan, David Brin, Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Benford, Catherine Asaro, Ben Bova, Esther Friesner, and many, many more.

I was literally getting ready to finally get a subscription; something I felt I had set aside doing for too long. I will likely still do that, and take a gander at what I've been missing for four years now.

This has been a particularly hard 12 months for short fiction venues. Jim Baen’s Universe is one more in a long line of closings. I wonder if there were a lot of people like me, thinking about subscribing, and then not doing it. I wish there had been a way, or I had known of the way, to sample the magazine before subscribing.

Let’s hope the rest of Worldcon weekend goes by with better news and fun convention reports.

John Klima is the editor of the Hugo and World Fantasy nominated magazine Electric Velocipede. He works full time as a librarian at a small college in the Midwest.