The MagazineTomorrowlandThe chronicle of popular science fiction/fact.Mar 15, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 25
• By ELI LEHRER
 Analog Magazine: Science Fiction, Science Fact (that’s the actual full title) turns 80 this year, and seems at first glance like an anachronism.  Consider the facts: It’s one of the few mainstream magazines that still serializes novels, prints in the digest form that even Readers’ Digest abandoned, never posts any of its content on the Internet, and won’t accept initial submissions via email. Although Analog’s content stays on the cutting edge—stories extrapolating on new discoveries can appear only months after papers hit the scientific journals—the magazine even looks old-fashioned. Its black-and-white interior contains only a few nods to electronic layout, and the bright, multicolored covers could pass for 1950s B-movie posters. The circulation of 33,000 is small but, in its 80 years, Analog has had a broad influence on the shape of American culture by defining and sustaining an entire branch of imaginary literature: hard science fiction. “Hard” sci-fi—what Analog prints—consists of creative writing that relies heavily on real-world science. Plenty of speculative fiction—Star Wars, Doris Lessing’s Canopus series—pays almost no attention to actual science. Such speculative fiction can be good or bad literature, but it’s not even remotely new. If published today, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Thomas More’s Utopia, and the Book of Job would all likely find a place in booksellers’ “science fiction” sections, even though none of them even pretends to be grounded in science. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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