So, the word just went out that the humanities department at Brigham Young University has cut funding to The Leading Edge magazine yet again. I am not surprised. The Leading Edge is a good magazine that publishes genre stories, science fiction and fantasy. The humanities department at BYU is littered with literary types who desperately want to be respected by their peers in the rest of academia but are stymied at every turn by the moral standards BYU holds them to. (I know this because I got a degree in English from that august institution)

Imagine their horror when they gaze upon The Leading Edge, churning out genre drivel (otherwise known as thoughtful and well written science fiction and fantasy stories as well as articles relevant to the field) and using up valuable budget dollars. Horror of horrors, The Leading Edge also gets submissions from all over the world and subscribers (sadly few in number) who aren’t other literary academic professionals. How dare they? Let us cut their funding, ignorant proles.

I myself had a limited experience at The Leading Edge, mostly reading slush and doing the occasional illustration. But that was because I ended up working with “Life the Universe and Everything” the scifi and fantasy symposium that gets put on in spite of itself every year at BYU. However, the basic desktop publishing and photoshop skills I started with and which landed me the last job I held, for seven years, I learned through The Leading Edge and the symposium together.

Dan Wells had a much more interesting and intensive experience there and he explains why it was valuable.  I can only concur.

Help out The Leading Edge by subscribing. I did.