Incensepunk State of the Mag 2025
Looking back at last year and ahead to next!
First of all, thanks to everyone who has subscribed to the magazine, and especially to our paid subscribers! 2024 was a huge year, and we have big plans for next year, but we can only do that as long as we keep growing our readership, so please like, share, repost, and talk about anything here you find interesting!
2024
2024 was a huge year for Incensepunk. I realize I’ve never told the story of how this thing came to be, so let’s start there.
Back in 2022, on the site formally known as Twitter, someone shared some art by Max Bedulenko, calling it “Byzantine Steampunk”, and I coined the term “incensepunk” to describe it. For one, it was more cyberpunk than steampunk, and for another, I wanted to see more than just Byzantine (despite my absolute love for the style). I wanted to see cyberpunk takes on gothic spires, on Muslim minarets, on Hindu domes and Shinto pagodas.
And more than that, I wanted to see it across media. Not just visual art, but in music, in fashion, and most of all, in my own chosen art style - in science fiction.
So I mocked up a cover using the art that started the conversation, and it took off. I had a few authors reach out to me then saying they’d love to be a part of it if this became a thing, and a few others mentioning that they had some stories in the works that would be a perfect fit.
Unfortunately, I had neither the experience, the time, nor the capital to launch an anthology ex nihilo, so for a few years, it sat on the back burner, where it fermented into an obsession. I needed this to happen. So I bought the incensepunk domain, ordered custom Christ Pantocrator ear gauges, learned a bit about sampling music to start L I Q V E S C E N T, and hashtagged the bejesus out of it any time I found something I could justify it.
I also started delving into literature to find anything that was already out there that was doing what I wanted to see. That’s when a friend sent me to Andrew Gillsmith, fearlessly defending his faith in a Reddit “ask me anything” (AMA) thread about his book, Our Lady of the Artilects.
The book sounded perfect, like everything I was looking for: straight cyberpunk, genuinely Catholic, addressing questions that can only be found among such strange bedfellows. I read it, and it delivered.
So I reached out to Andrew and told him about my vision, and boy was he on board! (You may have noticed his name on a byline or two here on the magazine…) He soon introduced me to some other authors playing in similar spaces, and for the next year or so the idea continued like that - some social media hashtags, a website with a manifesto and not much else, and a bunch of DMs of big dreams and bigger struggles.
Finally we get to 2024. This is the year we finally said “it’s time”. We had enough authors on board. Substack allowed us to launch and start building an audience without the need for a big up-front fund. And frankly, I was getting impatient. So we finally did it.
Incensepunk Magazine launched in September with the release of my incensepunk short story The See of Tranquility, and over the next few months we posted stories by myself, Andrew Gillsmith, and Jake Theriault—all honed to perfection by Yuval Kordov’s amazing editorial touch. And we have more great authors coming soon, but that gets us into our favorite place to explore here at Incensepunk Magazine: the future…
2025
Looking into next year brings a lot of exciting advancements. Last year, there wasn’t yet a vision for the future. Just a bunch of hopes and vague, long-term goals. Now that we’re launched, we have a lot more concrete steps to look forward to.
First up we have the first chapter of the inimitable Yuval Kordov’s Orders of Magnitude coming next week, a forthcoming standalone novella that began as a sequel to See of Tranquility. Read our review of that here.
We have more excellent authors lined up for the coming months, but we aren’t ready to share who just yet!
Submissions
The first big update is an announcement that we are opening to submissions! See our Submissions page for guidelines. Guidelines for submitting both fiction stories and nonfiction articles are outlined there.
Unfortunately, we aren’t able to pay yet, but once we are, the page will be updated to reflect that (and we will be sure to post an announcement as well!)
Manifesto Updates
We’ve also taken a look at the manifesto and updated it to reflect some of our ongoing thoughts about what we are looking for.
In particular, we have reduced the emphasis on aesthetics and increased the emphasis on faith. As we’ve developed, we’ve realized that we are a lot more interested in stories that talk about faith and technology than we are seeing things with a gothic veneer (like Warhammer 40,000) but no spiritual depth behind it.
Accordingly, we’ve also removed any references that discouraged adherents of any particular faith/denomination due to a lack of established aesthetics. If you have a story to tell that tackles science fiction from the perspective of religious background, we are interested in seeing it!
Goals
2024 was our year of birth, so we want 2025 to be our year of growth. Now that all the groundwork is laid, we need to expand our readership! We believe that there is a huge audience out there who want to see genuine stories about the future of faith that are neither nihilistic dismissals of an entire facet of life, nor poorly-masked apologetics.
That’s where we need your help! Social media favors engagement, so whenever you see a post, if you have something to say, say it! Post links, comment on threads, share notes, retweet, cross-post, and even tell your flesh-and-blood friends about anything you see here that piques your interest. Read an article you disagree with? Pitch us a counterpoint. Have an idea for a story of your own? Write it and submit!
There’s only so much growth we can do on our own, and the more we grow, the sooner we can start paying authors, joining open call sites, increasing publishing frequency, and start looking at print options like anthologies.
Paid Subscribers
We also want to encourage people to become paid subscribers without paywalling our stories or articles, because this is a movement before it’s a business. We want as many people as possible to read the excellent fiction and posts our authors are putting together!
Currently, paid subscribers get exclusive access to our chat, as well as the ability to comment on posts and stories.
If you are a paid subscriber with other thoughts for perks, or an unpaid subscriber with ideas of what would tip you over to opening your wallet, we would love to hear them! Send them through chat or to Editor@incensepunk.com.