“When the weather outside is frightful, the perfect thing to do is curl up inside with some science fiction and let it transport you to warm alien lands.” — Analog: Science Fiction and Fact
Analog: Science Fiction and Fact (ASF) is “considered the magazine where science fiction grew up.” When editor John W. Campbell took over in 1938, he brought to Astounding [original name] an unprecedented insistence on placing equal emphasis on both words of ‘science fiction.’ No longer satisfied with gadgetry and action per se, Campbell demanded that his writers try to think out how science and technology might really develop in the future, and, most importantly, how those changes would affect the lives of human beings.”
Campbell chose the name “Analog” in part because he thought of each story as an “analog simulation” of a possible future, and in part because of the close analogy he saw between the imagined science in the stories he was publishing and the real science being done in laboratories around the world.”
Submit: “Analog will consider material submitted by any writer, and consider it solely on the basis of merit. We are definitely eager to find and develop new, capable writers.
We have no hard-and-fast editorial guidelines, because science fiction is such a broad field that I don’t want to inhibit a new writer’s thinking by imposing Thou Shalt Nots. Besides, a really good story can make an editor swallow his preconceived taboos.
Basically, we publish science fiction stories. That is, stories in which some aspect of future science or technology is so integral to the plot that, if that aspect were removed, the story would collapse. Try to picture Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein without the science and you’ll see what I mean. No story!
The science can be physical, sociological, psychological. The technology can be anything from electronic engineering to biogenetic engineering. But the stories must be strong and realistic, with believable people (who needn’t be human) doing believable things–no matter how fantastic the background might be.”
Fact articles: Should be about 4,000 words and deal with subjects of not only current but future interest, i.e., with topics at the present frontiers of research whose likely future developments have implications of wide interest. Illustrations should be provided by the author in camera-ready form.
e^(pi i) = -1 *
*This equation was used in an episode of The Simpsons, when Homer gets sucked into the third dimension.
