Asimov really is dead

I've been a subscriber to Asimov's Science Fiction magazine since I was a teenager. I have always loved scifi, from the juvenile wonders of Heinlein to the half-bug orgies of China Miéville. Short stories are the core of scifi, where the new ideas get kicked around, and sometimes they're good reading. Usually I could get at least one good story out of each issue.

Lately my enjoyment of this magazine has ebbed. The quality of the stories seems to be going downhill, and the circulation seems to be pacing that trend. Having subscribed for many years, there are many older stories I've read that I'd like to revisit, but I don't keep stacks of rotting acid pulp around the house anymore. You'd think that these stories would be available on the website, but you'd be wrong – the magazine remains steadfastly rooted in the past century: although they do sell a crappy DRM version through another publisher, the back catalog isn't available to current subscribers.

I really want to encourage people to write this stuff, but this medium's flaws are no longer tolerable. It's not that I'm cheap: I don't even mind the (stupid) surcharge for living outside the USA, and I'll pay for quality. But better stuff is now being published online, both in text and audio, which I really enjoy and which doesn't have embarrassing cover art. It is sad that a vehicle for a genre about the future stays so firmly wedded to the past, but there's a lot of that going around.