chuq@sun.uucp (Chuq Von Rospach) (03/03/86)
In the latest issue of Locus, TSR has announced that George Scithers and
his staff in Philadelphia have been released from their duties on Amazing
magazine. He has been replaced by Patrick Price, who was most recently
Fiction editor for Dragon Magazine, the TSR D&D magazine. Anthologist Martin
R. Greenberd has been hirer as a consulting editor.
Pico Analysis: Feh
TSR is in financial troubles. The reason they give is that they couldn't
afford to pay for Scithers (and the overhead of having editorial offices
away from their main offices) and promote the magazine. My feeling is that
Scithers was the only promotable thing about Amazing. He turned Isaac
Asimov's SF magazine into a decent publication almost single handed, and
then went to Amazing (after the IASFM people kicked him out in favor of
Shawna McCarthy) and kept IT alive through an amazing amount of neglect from
the TSR people. with no budget, he was still able to print decent fiction.
Now that TSR has decided to think about getting serious (I'll believe it
when I see it....) the first thing they do is ditch the competence behind
the magazine and install their own people in there. Greenberg is nothing
more than an attempt at respectibility for the magazine now that their new
editor's main claim to fame is buying sappy drivel in a D&D magazine and
being a schoolmate of John Ford.
On the plus side, if they DO decide to spend money to promote the magazine,
maybe they'll be able to get some people to subscribe to it. Whether there
is anything worth subscribing in a year we'll just have to watch. I'm not
enthusiastic, and I hope George finds a new home before long.
chuq
--
:From catacombs of Castle Tarot: Chuq Von Rospach
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