It is published twice yearly and has an open submission policy. One of its goals is to aid new writers by providing substantially more detailed feedback than is common in the SF publishing industry.
The roots of Leading Edge and other science fiction efforts at Brigham Young University (BYU) began with a one-day symposium on science fiction held on January 20, 1976.[10] Four years later, Orson Scott Card gave a speech at the university about morality in writing, which showed some of the students and faculty that a serious, academic forum for discussion of science fiction writing was a possibility at BYU, but there weren't enough students interested in trying to make things work at that time.[10]
This changed in February 1982 when Ben Bova was invited to speak at a university forum event. The department in charge assigned Marion Smith, the professor whose name is now part of the title of the Life, the Universe, & Everything symposium, to take care of Bova while he wasn't speaking. He and a handful of his writing students (including M. Shayne Bell) got together and held a discussion with Bova. This inspired those students to try to create something like that the following year, when they invited Card back to be the first guest of honor.[10] The magazine was started by those same students, all members of a 1980 creative writing class at BYU.
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new crop of young writers and editors had taken the helm at The Leading Edge, many of whom would go on to professional success. These included several Writers of the Future winners such as Russell Asplund, Grant Avery Morgan, and Lee Allred, future editor at Ace Books, Anne Sowards, writer and literary agent Michael Carr, and fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson.
Since its beginnings, Leading Edge has published approximately twice a year (sometimes more, sometimes less), with one issue coming out in fall and one coming out in spring.
In 2000, Leading Edge published a story that turned out to have been plagiarized by a prison inmate submitting it as his own work.[11]Geoffrey A. Landis' 1994 novella "The Singular Habits of Wasps", originally published in the April 1994 issue of Analog, was submitted by Phillip S. Barcia, purchased by Leading Edge, and published in issue 39.[12][13][14] A correction notice was published in issue 40 indicating the actual author of the story.[15]
As of November 2022[update], Leading Edge has published 80 issues.
^Geoffrey A. Landis (but authorship claimed by Phillip S. Barcia) (March 2000). Stay, Douglas Alan Summers (ed.). "The Singular Habits of Wasps". The Leading Edge Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. No. 39. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University. pp. 5–28. ISSN1049-5983.
^Stay, Douglas Alan Summers, ed. (September 2000). "Correction Notice". The Leading Edge Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. No. 40. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University. p. 3. ISSN1049-5983.
