The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction Is The Latest Victim Of D.E.I. Destroying Culture

F&SF has been one of the highest regarded fiction magazines until black activist Sheree Renee Thomas took over editing duties.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, commonly referred to as F&SF, has long been revered as one of the last century's most important genre fiction magazines. It's the one cultural staple that held out the longest against wokeism, actually focusing on great storytelling for much of the 2010s, but it appears as if the magazine may be in trouble or even ceasing publication entirely.

Founded in 1949, Mystery House wanted to get in on the budding fantasy market by putting out a new bi-monthly magazine on the stands. They originally titled it The Magazine of Fantasy, but as science fiction became an increasingly popular market, the magazine's purveyors added both to the title.

The magazine boasted credits from some of genre fiction's most renowned authors, including Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Lieber, and L. Spraque de Camp. It won its first Hugo Award in 1958, when the award promoted some of the best science fiction, decades before controversies would destroy its credibility.

Into the 1960s, the magazine hosted science articles from Isaac Asimov, featured book reviews from greats like Alfred Bester, and had what many consider to be Anne McCaffrey's best work in the short story "The Ship Who Sang."

Later, F&SF would publish Stephen King's Dark Tower as a serial and continued to publish unique fantasy and science fiction bi-monthly for decades.

In 2020, as Black Lives Matter protests raged in America as leftist extremists tried to force America into a race war, the publishing industry drifted further into woke territory on every level. A push for black and LGBTQ representation became so incensed one author told Fandom Pulse, "You can't get published unless you have some of that content in your book."

At this point, editor Charles Coleman Finlay (CC Finlay) stepped down because he wanted to work on his own writing. He was known for his fair analysis of storytelling in submissions and was very well respected among the writing community.

The magazine then moved for its diversity hire like most of the industry, installing Sheree Renee Thomas as editor, a black activist known for her work on Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. Like a large portion of the modern publishing industry, many of her credits in fiction and nonfiction involve race-baiting.

Quality began to drop off, and so did the publication efforts. In 2022, Redditors noticed that they had trouble simply subscribing to the magazine. They were using an outdated system to try to obtain the magazine, which was charged, but they failed to get a subscription.

Others on Reddit noted during this time that the publisher failed to pay authors in a timely manner for their stories and that there were internal fights between Sheree Renee Thomas and the magazine's publisher over stories purchased. According to an inside source, stories would be thrown in by one or the other, leading to an erratic tone for the new issues.

At the end of 2023, the magazine, published bi-monthly like clockwork since 1949, saw its Sept/Oct issue two weeks late because of the turmoil. The Nov/Dec issue was further delayed and simply relabeled "Winter Issue" by the time it finally came out, as the D.E.I. fueled team seemed to have trouble sticking to schedules.

Since the Winter Issue, Fantasy & Science Fiction has not published any new content, its website has not been updated, and no commentary has been made on the magazine's status.

Editor Sheree Renee Thomas has been very active on X during this time, posting about her race-baiting projects and including a new book called "Africa Risen."

In April, she retweeted a woke activist named Phoenix Alexander, who was bragging, saying, "@fandsf will publish my new short story, 'Slickerthin,' that sees an androcratic human society pitted against a flock of patriarchial harpies on a mythical Greek island." As much as Phoenix wanted to fight the patriarchy, the story has yet to be released as of August 2024.

The F&SF X account has not made a new post since March 2024, leading many in the industry to speculate as to whether this magazine has died as so much of mainstream publishing has in the last decade since its obsession with diversity, equity, and inclusion trumped any interest in science fiction storytelling it once claimed was its purpose.

What do you think of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF) going kaput under diversity hire Sheree Renee Thomas? Leave a comment and let us know.