Reflections on Orion’s Belt
Not long after graduating high school, I began to systematically commit myself to submitting speculative fiction pieces for publication. At first, I achieved little success, only gaining the interest of a few minor publications, but this initial experience left me with a great appreciation for the vibrant ecosystem of speculative-fiction magazines. Submitting books for publication is an arduous, tumultuous process involving editors, literary agents, and marketing experts. To say these people do not care about the books with which they work would be disingenuous; I’ve worked, albeit briefly, in professional publishing, and among employees, there is genuine passion and appreciation for literature. That conceded, the purpose of publishing, like any other business, is profit. Market trends matter as much as, if not more than, the quality of the writing. What the best speculative-fiction magazines represented to me was an escape from that.
These magazines provide a home for transgressive, bold, and experimental writing. I was drawn to this ethos of free-wheeling innovation, and I wanted to be a part of it. After spending years studying how these magazines operated, I decided to start my own with the support of a few close friends and associates. The result was Orion’s Belt, named after three stars in the constellation of Orion. I intended for the name to convey both cosmic, mythological elegance and functional, practical commitment to craft. A belt is a simple but important piece of clothing, and the best writing is likewise steadfast and sturdy even as it’s also lyrical and haunting. Despite the research I’d done beforehand, launching the magazine in late February 2021 was terrifying. A literary magazine depends on writers submitting great work. If that didn’t happen, sleek web design and a flashy logo would not stop the magazine from quickly becoming irrelevant. Instead, writers from six continents submitted work to Orion’s Belt, and these pieces shone with an iridescent, crystalline glow. Turning down great pieces quickly became the hardest part of my job.
I don’t mean to imply that Orion’s Belt is somehow unique. While I am proud of what we’ve created, and I aspire to make Orion’s Belt a respected and august publication, there are dozens of great publications currently publishing stories that are feasts for the senses or tender stories of loss and contemplation. These publications reveal the lie behind the cynical axiom that there is little great speculative writing in the mainstream today because modern writers are unimaginative, dogmatic hacks. Like all cynicism, this lie masquerades as wisdom. It pretends to critique while instead functioning as reductionist quietism. Yes, much mainstream speculative fiction is unimaginative, trite, or just poorly written, and this is cause for discomfort, but for a different reason than the cynics suppose.
If these unimaginative works represented the best speculative fiction could offer, that would merely be unfortunate. That innovative and poignant speculative fiction thrives outside the mainstream means the state of popular speculative fiction does not have to be so dire. For every mediocre, intellectually vacuous sci-fi movie shipped to streaming services, there are ten brilliant, lucid stories being published in online speculative-fiction magazines. The easy response is to target wealthy corporations spending money on big, established names to regurgitate what worked for them in the past, and this tendency is even worse in film and television than it is in book publishing, though the latter is far from perfect. Instead of pursuing short-term gain, these corporations could spend money trying to cultivate new talent and franchises. I do not wish to exonerate these corporations. Yet the disquieting truth remains that corporations do not make these decisions from a place of conniving immorality. Rather, they’re amoral, pursuing short-term profit at all costs, and they know that given a choice between the familiar and the new, between the pretty and the sublime, between the reassuring and the disquietingly poignant, the average person will typically prefer pleasant comfort.
There are no easy solutions to this dilemma, but we as individuals can freely choose how to position ourselves in relation to the dilemma. I want to provide a space for literary-minded speculative fiction, stories that care about people and their longings and relationships, not simply stories concerned with abstract ideas.
Though Orion’s Belt is small compared to other ambitious magazines like Strange Horizons and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, a little light shining in the darkness should never be undervalued. In the past year, I have tried my hardest to provide as much light as possible.
Joshua Fagan is a writer and critic currently residing in Colorado Springs. His work has previously been published in venues including Daily Science Fiction, 365 Tomorrows, and Plum Tree Tavern. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the literary speculative-fiction publication Orion’s Belt. His YouTube channel has received over 1.3 million views.