Magazines

[Optic]

Every now and then I will grab PC Powerplay (an Australian PC gaming magazine) from thenewsagent. There is something about a physical magazine that still has that charm, that print quality will always surpass a tablet or smartphone screen.

 

The obvious disadvantage though is they are up against many online sites that offer articles for free reading and physically it is not as convenient to store.

 

What are your thoughts on magazines?

 

 

[Fab]

It's anoccasionalgood read to kill time. I normally pick up a magazine whenever I'm bored.

 

Especially in the army, there are times when the magazines helps to kill time. I normally read whatever I can find, but being in the army, the norm magazine that people brings in are Men's Health or FHM. Occasionally there are some magazines on animes, gundams which I forgotten what it was called, which I always try to tear out some pages of my favourite gundam or nice picture. The most boring magazines that is readily found in the army is the army's own magazine, Pioneer, which I only pick up when I'm dead dead dead bored.

[valerauko]

To be honest, I prefer writing magazines to reading them.

 

I was subscribed to a few gaming and architecture magazines during my high school years, and my parents had National Geographic, but after a while issues would just pile up and up and I'd hardly open them after the first quick skim through.

 

Writing is a lot more fun. Given there is someone to read it, that is.

[efaardvark]

Guess not many people read magazines in this day and age.  In fact, I'm probably showing my age even by posting this but I saw this topic so I thought I'd mention that I've been a subscriber to "Analog" magazine since I was about 12 years old.  I've got issues going all the way back to the 70s when Ben Bova was editor!  (Er.. that came out wrong.  ) 

Anyway, they do have all sorts of "science" fiction - even some outright fantasy - but I'm a big fan of "hard" science fiction and Analog has always been my go-to for that.  Analog even has regular interesting science-fact articles where they talk about actual science and recent science discoveries and experiments with an eye towards what it could mean in terms of new directions for science fiction plot devices.  I'm not an author myself but I once took a creative writing class and I admit I took several of my own story ideas for that class's writing assignments from those articles.

Most articles are short-story format but they also regularly have novellas - shorter-than-novel stories that span several issues - that dig into the subject matter more deeply than short story versions might manage.  Some of these even go on to be republished in their own right.  I first read stories like Ender's Game and Blood Music in Analog versions before they were published as stand-alone novels.  Larry Niven has also been a big contributor over the years with awesome stuff like The Integral Trees and a couple Ringworld spin-off shorts.  (I'm a big fan of Niven and his meticulously-researched, science-based stories.)  Anne McCaffrey's "Dragonriders" series began as a novella called 'Weyr Search' published in the October 1967 issue of Analog.  Analog was also where Frank Herbert published his initial stories Dune World and The Prophet of Dune, which were later combined as the first book in the famous series. 

In fact over the years there's been a huge number of SF authors who got their start in Analog, many of whom went on to become big names on their own.  The magazine itself has won the Hugo Award numerous times in its history as well.  Even a lot of the story illustrations and cover art have won their own awards.  It is a quality magazine that I have absolutely no hesitation recommending to anyone who is interested in science fiction, ESPECIALLY anyone interested in hard, science-based fiction.

 

Edited February 21, 2022 by efaardvark
Those typoos you see after pressing submit

[Animedragon]

Some people do still buy and read magazines, I have a couple of friends who do so regularly, for myself the only magazines I read are the ones from the various clubs and societies I belong to.

Years ago I used to regularly buy photographic and computer magazines, but the cover prices kept going up and they had a lot of adverts.

I often wondered who the photo mags were aimed at because on the one hand the equipment they reviewed and tested was so expensive that only a top professional photographer would have the money to even think about buying it, while on the other hand the instructional or "how to" articles were so basic that anyone who had been taking photos for more than a few months would gain no new knowledge.

The computer magazines fell into a different trap, they tended to assume that all their readers were game players so all the reviews of computers were slanted to how well they performed as games platforms. Add to this the fact that almost all the software they reviewed was games so, as a non-games player, I rather lost interest in the mags.

So for these reasons I no longer buy or read magazines.

[efaardvark]

1 hour ago, Animedragon said:

The computer magazines fell into a different trap

I kind of felt the same way.  I mean, games have/had always helped drive computer technology so some game-related coverage is unavoidable (and even desirable) but game-related strategy and such isn't what I personally was after.  I do play games but I'm a gearhead with a development bent so I miss pubs like Dr Dobbs Journal and Byte too.  Byte especially because it had a lot of hardware but it was still (mostly) aimed at the hobbyist crowd.  These days there's still mags like Make but the projects tend to be too simple, like they're aimed at a high-school audience or something.  Byte was a bit more meaty.

[Animedragon]

9 hours ago, efaardvark said:

I kind of felt the same way.  I mean, games have/had always helped drive computer technology so some game-related coverage is unavoidable (and even desirable) but game-related strategy and such isn't what I personally was after.  I do play games but I'm a gearhead with a development bent so I miss pubs like Dr Dobbs Journal and Byte too.  Byte especially because it had a lot of hardware but it was still (mostly) aimed at the hobbyist crowd.  These days there's still mags like Make but the projects tend to be too simple, like they're aimed at a high-school audience or something.  Byte was a bit more meaty.

Computer mags in the 80's were great fun, if "fun" is the correct word, as they included pages of type-in program listings. So we all spent hours typing these listings into our machines only to find that they didn't run! So we then spent even more hours comparing what we'd typed in with the mag's listing before just giving up, and anyway by then the next month's mag was out with another type-in to waste our time on!

Then the 16 bit computer arrived and the type-in listings were replaced with cover disks, which were usually full of "useful" programs that often weren't useful at all. The floppy disks could at least be re-used, the later CDs were only good as drinks coasters or frizzbes.