Sad news from overseas: The groundbreaking Czech SF magazine Ikarie has shut down after over 20 years of publishing and 247 issues.
Former Ikarie editor Martin Šust shared the news with me yesterday. Their last issue was published in November 2010 (see image at right). According to Martin, the unexpected closing was not due to poor sales but instead the publisher's desire to focus on lifestyle magazines.
Named after the classic Czech SF film Ikarie XB-1 and founded in 1990, Ikarie was one of the most important science fiction magazines in Europe. Published as a 8.25 x 11.5 inch, 66 page monthly with full-color covers and black and white interiors, Ikarie contained between five or six stories in each issue in addition to reviews and nonfiction articles. Over the years Ikarie published countless Czech authors along with translated stories from the biggest names in world SF.
New Czech Magazine XB-1
The good news, though, is that Martin and other members of the Ikarie staff have already started a new Czech SF magazine. Named XB-1 in honor of the second part of the Ikarie XB-1 film title, Martin says the new magazine contains the same editorial board.
The first issue of XB-1 was published in December and they already have a nicely designed website. It appears the magazine will continue to translate foreign-language stories.
I'm particularlly sorry to see Ikarie go—over the last two years the magazine translated and published four of my stories, including my Nebula-nominated novella "Sublimation Angels." But while Ikarie will be missed, I also know Martin and the rest of the staff will do a great job with the new XB-1.
Update: I should have specified that Martin Šust was foreign rights editor for Ikarie while the editor in chief was Vlado Ríša. They are reprising their old roles with XB-1.
I think you are mistaken (or made a typo: as you know, Bob, it's hard to publish magazines with number of pages not divisible by 4, and preferably a higher binary power). Ikarie went through some changes in page count, but the traditional (and minimum) was 64; the last year had 80 (you can see the yellow band "+16 pages of stories" on the cover; it was added as editors' last-ditch response to the management's doubling the price for non-subscribers).
The title's origin is a bit more complex: Ikarie was a descendant of fanzine/semi-samizdat "science fiction almanacs" published in late 1980es and titled Ikarie XB-1 to Ikarie XB-4, mainly to circumvent the regime's restrictions of periodical press. Thus "XB-1" is in a way return to the beginning.
And yes, it not only appears but is a confirmed and obvious fact that XB-1 will not change composition substantially, certainly not in having a third of foreign stories: In fact, the magazine could never have been out so fast if it were not the prepared December issue of Ikarie that the editors were able to carry over under the new masthead, even though the publisher wasn't willing to let go of the brand.
Posted by: Jan Vaněk jr. | January 19, 2011 at 07:03 AM
Jan: Thanks for the update. Since I live in the U.S. I had always received a year's worth of Ikarie at one time; as such, I hadn't seen the new 80 pagers.
Posted by: Jason Sanford | January 19, 2011 at 08:38 PM
Official version is that the magazine Ikarie was named after the film, so you are absolutely right. It is not necessary to mention the fanzine. And no, the magazine XB-1 isn't the same magazine with a new name. Maybe it looks similar, but we are a new magazine (the publisher of Ikarie disagreed with any mention about XB-1 as the successor of Ikarie).
Posted by: Martin Šust | January 20, 2011 at 09:37 AM