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Ideomancer

Entry updated 19 February 2024. Tagged: Publication.

US Online Magazine that paid Semiprozine rates. Its run falls into two series. The first, December 2000 to December 2001 was as a cumulative Webzine, publishing sf, fantasy, horror and Slipstream, founded by John Oz and taken over from June 2001 by Chris Clarke together with a team that included Amber van Dyk, Cathy Freeze and Mikal Trimm. In this original form three or four stories were uploaded each month, starting in January 2001 with "Body World" by S C Virtes, "Simple Touch" by Justin Stanchfield and five pieces of Flash Fiction, and each author had the prospect that if the magazine made a profit they would receive a 30% share of any site revenue relating to that story. Some forty stories were presented this way, plus flash fiction, reviews, Interviews and author profiles in its first year, plus a classic-story feature which reprinted material in the public domain, most of this initially being supernatural fiction.

The site was then revamped completely by Chris Clarke and Mikal Trimm with a more traditional downloadable monthly issue format paying a standard wordage rate. The magazine ran monthly from January 2002 to June 2004 and thereafter quarterly. Clarke remained as publisher until June 2004 when he was succeeded by Marsha Sisolak until December 2008 and thereafter by Leah Bobet. Amber van Dyk was managing editor throughout until 2010 when she was succeeded by David Rees-Thomas. Each of these second-series issues generally ran to about twenty pages, included a fantasy and an sf story, an item of flash fiction, a classic horror or sf story, book reviews and a nonfiction feature. Ideomancer was neatly presented in an easily readable format and helped set a standard for the appearance of online magazines. The changes encouraged contributions by both more established writers and emerging names. The April 2002 issue, for example, included fiction by Hannah Wolf Bowen, Jay Lake and Joseph Green and Green also contributed the first of the Ideologies commentary features, "Science Fiction: Entering the Great Divide", exploring the growing recognition amongst writers generally about the impact of Technology on everyday lives. For a while Green was a regular contributor, rejuvenating a career that had slumbered for some years. Ideomancer developed a policy of featuring an up-and-coming author for three concurrent issues, starting with James Allison (October to December 2002) followed by Robert Hood (January-March 2003), Jay Lake (April-June 2003) and Tim Pratt (July-September 2003). This continued in three-monthly stints until the magazine changed to quarterly publication, the remaining authors promoted this way (in sequence) being Bruce Holland Rogers, Jay Lake again, and Mary Rickert. Ideomancer has continued to champion new writers, notably Trent Jamieson, Steve Mohan Jr, Ruth Nestvold and Yoon Ha Lee. Ideomancer finally ceased in March 2015 after 86 issues. It had a long life for an online magazine, throughout which it was consistently readable and presentable, responding to the growing market demands.

The original publishers of the magazine assembled an anthology of new material not selected from the magazine but designed to promote it, Ideomancer Unbound (anth 2002 ebook) edited by Chris Clarke and Mikal Trimm. [MA]

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