John Joseph Adams, editor of the sister professional electronic magazines Lightspeed (debut 2010 as an e-zine) and Fantasy (debut 2005 as a print magazine, then e-zine in 2007), will take the reins as publisher of the magazines with their January 2012 issues. In his December 2011 Lightspeed editorial, Adams relates the circumstances of his purchase of the magazines from current publisher Sean Wallace, also publisher of Prime Books.

The bigger news, however, is Adams’ announcement that in January 2012 both monthly magazines will merge under the Lightspeed title. Fiction content will be equally divided between SF and Fantasy, with an equal number of reprints (as has been the current policy) from both genres. Further details concerning the merger and other format changes are outlined in Adams’ editorial. Adams expands on his editorial for Tangent Online explaining that “The schedule will be somewhat flexible; there will always be one SF and one Fantasy story, but it won’t always be original/original or reprint/reprint any given week. It might be original/reprint one week, original/original the next week, reprint/reprint another week, etc.” He further clarified by saying that there will “always be 4 originals and 4 reprints in each issue. The only flexibility will be in when the reprints publish during the month.”