At a time when the science fiction print magazine threatens to become obsolete, Warren Lapine has a growing publishing empire based on space adventure and hard SF.

Lapine began publishing in 1993 with Harsh Mistress . Today, DNA Publications has five different magazines, and Harsh Mistress -- retitled Absolute Magnitude after its second issue -- is the flagship.

DNA Publications is still a small publisher, but "as far as I know," Lapine said at the recent Arisia SF convention in Boston, "[it] publishes more fiction magazines than anyone else in America."

"Absolute magnitude" is an astronomical term for the brightness of a star, which highlights the focus of Lapine's magazine. He doesn't publish fantasy or horror, but he encourages space opera and loves rigorously constructed SF.

"Remember the word 'science'?" he said. "We're putting the science and adventure back in science fiction."

It's not that Lapine dislikes other kinds of SF. The other four magazines in DNA Publications's stable -- Pirate Writings , Aboriginal SF , Dreams of Decadence and Weird Tales -- represent a wide variety of SF, fantasy and horror..

But Absolute Magnitude is his creation. It's the only one of the five he edits, and he takes a unusually personal approach to it.

"I edit entirely for myself," he said. Rather than try to appeal to a mass audience, he wants to find the fans of his kind of SF.

He concedes that this approach means Absolute Magnitude will probably have a smaller audience than it might as a general SF magazine. That doesn't worry him -- he wants to "make an impact" on SF, but on a critical level rather than one of mass popularity.

Besides, he has four other magazines to reach the different segments of the SF market. The divide and conquer strategy seems to be paying off.

"Individual subscribers are up 10-15 percent in the last year," Lapine said, "and most of our subscribers sign up for at least three different magazines."

Lapine aggressively cross-markets between the magazines, making sure every renewal notice and subscription ad points out all of DNA Publications' offerings. It's one reason his magazines are among the few increasing in circulation while the overall SF magazine market contracts.

Compared to managing the magazine line, Lapine says "editing is the easiest part of the job." Keeping the science in his SF up-to-date takes some extra effort, though.

"I buy lots of science books," he said, "and read magazines like Discover and Scientific American . I need to be able to recognize what's happening in science when I see it in a story."

Sometimes what's happening is obvious by what shows up in the submissions. A couple of months after a development appears in a science magazine, "I'll get a raft of submissions about it," Lapine said.

Lapine also follows space news carefully, and thinks we could be doing much more in space.

"I wish they'd stop losing spaceships," he said when asked about his opinion of NASA.

He thinks progress is happening, but "not nearly fast enough," and believes that a moonbase or Mars exploration program could be in development today.

"We have the money," Lapine said. "It's just that nobody's willing to put it there."

Despite Lapine's interest in the cutting edge of science, DNA Publications is only beginning to explore cyberspace.

Lapine is skeptical about the viability of an SF magazine on the web. He sees a fair amount of fiction online, but "nobody seems to be selling web-based fiction" successfully.

He doesn't think he'll be the first. Instead, he said, "I'm thinking of using reprints to encourage subscriptions. We'll do our promotion on the web, and our distribution in the real world."

Lapine says he can use this strategy as preparation to jump to the web "if necessary." He's more interested, though, in "building an online community [around the magazines] that will encourage people to buy the real thing."

In the meantime, he has plenty in development for the coming year, though he won't comment on rumors about a possible sixth magazine.

"There's a lot of stuff that I'm not at liberty to talk about yet," Lapine said. "We have plans to continue surprising everybody."