Below is my list for 2025. (For previous lists, see here.)
Method and Caveats:
(1.) Only magazines are included (online or in print), not anthologies, standalones, or series.
(2.) I give each magazine one point for each story nominated for a Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, or World Fantasy Award in the past ten years; one point for each story appearance in the past ten years in the "best of" anthologies by Dozois, Horton, Strahan, Clarke, Adams, and Tidhar; and half a point for each story appearing in the short story or novelette category of the annual Locus Recommended list.
(3.) I am not attempting to include the horror / dark fantasy genre, except as it appears incidentally on the list.
(4.) Prose only, not poetry.
(5.) I'm not attempting to correct for frequency of publication or length of table of contents.
(6.) I'm also not correcting for a magazine's only having published during part of the ten-year period. Reputations of defunct magazines slowly fade, and sometimes they are restarted. Reputations of new magazines take time to build.
(7.) I take the list down to 1.5 points.
(8.) I welcome corrections.
(9.) I confess some ambivalence about rankings of this sort. They reinforce the prestige hierarchy, and they compress complex differences into a single scale. However, the prestige of a magazine is a socially real phenomenon worth tracking, especially for the sake of outsiders and newcomers who might not otherwise know what magazines are well regarded by insiders when considering, for example, where to submit.
Results:
1. Clarkesworld (187 points)
2. Tor.com / Reactor (182.5)
3. Uncanny (160)
4. Lightspeed (133.5)
5. Asimov's (124.5)
6. Fantasy & Science Fiction (100.5)
7. Beneath Ceaseless Skies (57.5)
8. Strange Horizons (incl Samovar) (47)
9. Analog (42)
10. Nightmare (38.5)
11. Apex (36.5)
12. FIYAH (24.5) (started 2017)
13. Slate / Future Tense (23; ceased 2024?)
14. Fireside (18.5) (ceased 2022)
15. Fantasy Magazine (17.5) (off and on during the period)
16. Interzone (16.5)
17. The Dark (16)
18. Sunday Morning Transport (12.5) (started 2022)
19. The Deadlands (10) (started 2021)
20. The New Yorker (9)
21. Future Science Fiction Digest (7) (ran 2018-2023)
22t. Diabolical Plots (6.5)
22t. Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet (6.5)
24t. Conjunctions (6)
24t. khōréō (6) (started 2021)
26t. GigaNotoSaurus (5.5)
26t. Omni (5.5) (classic magazine relaunched 2017-2020)
28t. Shimmer (5) (ceased 2018)
28t. Sirenia Digest (5)
30t. Boston Review (4)
30t. Omenana (4)
30t. Terraform (Vice) (4) (ceased 2023)
30t. Wired (4)
34t. B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog (3.5) (ceased 2019)
34t. McSweeney's (3.5)
34t. Paris Review (3.5)
37t. Anathema (3) (ran 2017-2022)
37t. Galaxy's Edge (3) (ceased 2023)
37t. Kaleidotrope (3)
*37t. Psychopomp (3) (started 2023; not to be confused with Psychopomp Magazine)
41t. Augur (2.5) (started 2018)
41t. Beloit Fiction Journal (2.5)
41t. Black Static (2.5) (ceased fiction 2023)
*41t. Bourbon Penn (2.5)
41t. Buzzfeed (2.5)
41t. Matter (2.5)
47t. Baffling (2) (started 2020)
47t. Flash Fiction Online (2)
47t. Fusion Fragment (2) (started 2020)
47t. Mothership Zeta (2) (ran 2015-2017)
47t. Podcastle (2)
47t. Science Fiction World (2)
47t. Shortwave (2) (started 2022)
47t. Tin House (2) (ceased short fiction 2019)
55t. e-flux journal (1.5)
55t. Escape Pod (1.5)
55t. MIT Technology Review (1.5)
55t. New York Times (1.5)
55t. Reckoning (1.5) (started 2017)
55t. Translunar Travelers Lounge (1.5) (started 2019)
[* indicates new to the list this year]
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Comments:
(1.) Beloit Fiction Journal, Boston Review, Conjunctions, e-flux Journal, Matter, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Reckoning, and Tin House are literary magazines that sometimes publish science fiction or fantasy. Buzzfeed, Slate and Vice are popular magazines, and MIT Technology Review, Omni, and Wired are popular science magazines that publish a bit of science fiction on the side. The New York Times ran a series of "Op-Eds from the Future" from 2019-2020. The remaining magazines focus on the science fiction and fantasy (SF) genre or related categories such as horror or "weird". All publish in English, except Science Fiction World, which is the leading science fiction magazine in China.
(2.) It's also interesting to consider a three-year window. Here are those results, down to six points:
1. Clarkesworld (54.5)
2. Uncanny (47)
3. Tor / Reactor (35)
4. Lightspeed (33)
5. Asimov's (22)
6. Strange Horizons (18)
7. F&SF (16)
8. Apex (13)
9. Sunday Morning Transport (12.5)
10. Beneath Ceaseless Skies (11.5)
11. FIYAH (10.5)
12t. Fantasy (9.5)
12t. The Deadlands (9.5)
14. Nightmare (8)
15. Analog (7.5)
(3.) Other lists: The SFWA qualifying markets list is a list of "pro" science fiction and fantasy venues based on pay rates and track records of strong circulation. Submission Grinder is a terrific resource for authors, with detailed information on magazine pay rates, submission windows, and turnaround times.
(4.) Over the past decade, the classic "big three" print magazines -- Asimov's, F&SF, and Analog -- have been displaced in influence by the leading free online magazines, Clarkesworld, Tor / Reactor, Uncanny, and Lightspeed (all founded 2006-2014). In 2014, Asimov's and F&SF led the rankings by a wide margin (Analog had already slipped a bit, as reflected in its #5 ranking then). This year, Asimov's, F&SF, and Analog were all purchased by Must Read Publishing, which changed the author contracts objectionably enough to generate a major backlash, with SFWA considering delisting at least Analog from the qualifying markets list. F&SF has not published any new issues since summer 2024. It remains to be seen if the big three classic magazines can remain viable in print format.
(5.) Academic philosophy readers might also be interested in the following magazines that specialize specifically in philosophical fiction and/or fiction by academic writers: AcademFic, After Dinner Conversation, and Sci Phi Journal.