Backstories: “Tina Brown To Take Over Editorship of Asimov’s”

When New York Style Hits Science Fiction

(Backstory: Originally published in the long-dead online magazine Zealot in 2001, this one was inspired by regular whinings about how science fiction magazines would somehow become massmarket attractions if they somehow got big names to edit them, as well as subscription cards for The New Yorker with “Edited By Tina Brown!” making a thick leafy mulch on the floors of magazine sections at most chain bookstores at the time. My response then and now: “You sure about that?”)

New York – When one mentions magazine editors, the name of Tina Brown appears time and time again as one of the most recognizable. After her stints as editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker in the Nineties, Brown moved to her own publication, Talk, and beat all estimates of the magazine’s success and lifespan. Widely criticized for her attitude and her extravagant spending habits, Brown still became one of the most popular editors in the last half-century.

For the last few years, though, Brown had expressed the urge to carve new frontiers in publishing. This helped explain the announcement this week that Brown was replacing current editor Gardner Dozois as editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

“The catchline we’re looking for is ‘sexy’,” said Anne Uhmelmehe, spokesperson for Dell, the owners of Asimov’s and its sister publication Analog. “Gardner Dozois may be a lot of things, but ‘sexy’ isn’t a word you use around him unless you’re aroused by yeti. We figure that by getting Tina, we’ll get a lot of readers who just love that sultry British accent of hers. Besides, it’s not like Gardner’s being left in the cold. He’ll probably be able to get an editing job at Mimosa or Star Wars Insider or something.”

Dell’s immediate plan is to convert Asimov’s into a twenty-first century magazine, complete with standard magazine format, glossy pages, and advertising by Saks 5th Avenue and Nordstrom’s. However, the editor’s job is to determine the ongoing course and feel of a magazine, and Tina had very definite plans for this transition.

“First things first, we’re going to work on makeovers on our writers,” Brown said. “Science fiction writers are usually such oiks, so we’re looking for glamorous people in the field. Snappy dressers and the like. We can’t do anything about the readers just yet, but they’re next.

“The next plan is to bring on guest editors who aren’t generally associated with science fiction but like reading it in secret, so we can draw in new readers. Our first guest editor will be Roseanne, and then we’re going to bring in Christian Slater and David Arquette. They’ll do a little editorial or two about how much they like the job, and then we’ll publish the stories received in a given month that they like the most.”

Brown also expressed interest in bringing new artists in to paint or draw covers for Asimov’s. “Charles Addams is a perfect fit for the new Asimov’s, but someone told me he was dead, so we’re looking at a nice cross-section of experimental political cartoonists and expressionist painters. Everyone except that Tom Tomorrow; he’s just dreadful.”

Another aspect with the change lay with promotion: already, bulk mail subscription cards have the “Edited by Gardner Dozois!” note covered over with a sticker reading “Now Edited by Tina Brown!”, but Brown has further plans. As of April, Asimov’s will become the first science fiction magazine since OMNI to run television advertising during prime time, and Brown and Dell will sponsor a premiere party simulcast on the E! and SCI FI cable channels. Brown has already answered critics’ concerns about the excessive costs of this promotion by saying “When you’re as fabulous as I am, you don’t need to worry about profits. That’s what I taught them at Vanity Fair.”

When asked about possible reader backlash, Brown was nonplussed. “When I edited The New Yorker, we took all sorts of harassment from those trolls at Spy magazine, and I crushed them like bugs. I dare Locus or Science Fiction Chronicle to say anything about this, because I’ll make them disappear. I guarantee it.”

News of the editorial transition caused immediate changes at most of the main magazines in the science fiction industry. Gordon Van Gelder, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, hired famed screenwriter Joe Esterhaz (Showgirls, Perfect) to replace current film critic Kathy Maio for an undisclosed but rumored seven-figure fee, and Analog editor Stanley Schmidt commissioned a new convention report column by Lake Wobegon author Garrison Keillor. Other editors were more proactive: calls to confirm rumors that Scott Edelman, editor of the late Science Fiction Age and current editor of Science Fiction Weekly, and Ellen Datlow, fiction editor for OMNI and current editor of SCIFIction, had challenged Brown to a Bowie knife duel in the Avenue of the Americas plaza were not returned at press time.

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Asimov's Backstories and Fragments editor Tina Brown