Interzone sounds, to me, like warehouses. I know that may not make sense to you, but it's the best I can do. There's a sort of utilitarian, grungy feel to the style and much of the content. Europeans, at least those in the UK, aren't much for shiny optimistic futures or alternative realities. Perhaps it's all those wars they've suffered through, and living next to the Balkan nations and the USSR. Which is now Russian and Ukraine and so on, some of the grungiest supposedly modern nations in the world.
A couple of free stories from the magazine are online
here. From there you can find their story submission guidelines.
Analog is the oldest of the three US magazines and has the largest circulation, about 25,000 last year and the several previous years. The submission guidelines are
here. They want "stories in which some aspect of future science or technology is so integral to the plot that, if that aspect were removed, the story would collapse."
To my ears Analog stories sound utilitarian. They remind me of engineering papers, which I have both written and edited. (At Boeing and NASA I was several times drafted to manage or edit in-house news and article publications relevant to the company.)
You can read a couple of stories and articles from recent issues
here. There are also many short articles by writers about the science behind the story they wrote. The two stories are strong arguments against my Analog-style thesis.
Again, there are variations, and I'm sure you can find more counter-examples. But this is my personal, subjective impression, wrong-headed and maybe flat-out wrong as it may be.
Asimov's (circ. circa 17,000) guidelines are
here. They want "'character oriented' stories, those in which the characters, rather than the science, provide the main focus for the reader’s interest."
The "sound" of Asimov's (to me) is a bit livelier but still somewhat utilitarian. The magazine boasts of "winning 44 Hugos and 24 Nebula Awards, and our editors have received 18 Hugo Awards for Best Editor." So I may be in the minority, but I stand by my personal impression.
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (circ. 15,500) has been around a long time. Their writers guidelines are
here. I won't quote from the page because it confuses me, so I don't know what to select. They say they want more SF, but for the past year the vast majority of stories have been fantasy.
The sound of the stories to me seem much like that of literary magazines, such as
this story published in
The New Yorker. Or
this one from the
Paris Review.
They are talky, personal, subjective, focus often on trivial issues of daily life. They seem time-bound and ordinary, mundane, even when the strange of the supernatural or superscientific intrudes.
I use both.
