Support Our Zines Day

October 1st = Support Our Zines Day, an initiative…um, initiated…by Damien G Walter, and one of which I wholeheartedly approve. I love fiction zines. I fell in love with Interzone in the mid-late 80s and used to read tons of the UK small press mags that flourished during the 90s, but I while still keep up a few subscriptions here and there I must confess that I allowed a lot of them to lapse. What was the point when I wasn’t getting to read them?

Well, today that trend stops because today is the day to celebrate all the people out there who are still busting their collective guts and labouring for the love of their magazines. If you want to support some zine too, here’s what Damien suggests you do:

1. List the ‘zines you have enjoyed this year, then subscribe / donate to as many as feel you can afford. You can be modest and keep your donations a secret, or you can show off and list your donations on your blog or elsewhere top help encourage others to show their support.

2. Send a message to the editor(s) of the ‘zines you like thanking them for their work. Editors make ‘zines happen.

3. Publicise your favourite ‘zines on your website, blog and elsewhere.

Today I’ve taken out new subscriptions to magazines that every one should be reading : Weird Tales and Electric Velocipede. And I’ve also taken an interest in Clarkesworld, which is free to read (and they do audio versions of some stories too!), but requires donations and general love. Go check them out and do the same. And while you’re at it: Black Static, Crimewave, Postscripts, StarshipSofa, EscapePod, Albedo One, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Interzone

Silver lining following on from the day’s more depressing news is that Interzone 220 is now out and available.

Stories by Jason Stoddard, Eugie Foster, Rudy Rucker, Leah Bobet, Gareth L Powell and me. Book reviews wrangled by Jim Steel and featuring Michael Cobley and Paul F Cockburn as well as an interview with Jeffrey Ford by Rick Kleffel and a retrospective of Christopher Priest by Andy Hedgecock.  And the annual reader’s poll, too.

It’s the bumper fun, family sized, slice of cracking new SF that your January has been waiting for. Just looking at that gorgeous cover makes you feel sunny inside.

Interzone and me

So, yes, officially, my story Spy Vs Spy will be appearing in the next issue of Interzone.

I talk about Interzone quite a lot on this blog: a/ because it’s personally important to me and fundamentally linked to my development as a writer and b/ because it remains a damned good read.

And it has REALLY pretty covers.

Get someone to get you a subscription for Christmas. You won’t regret it.

In fact, while we’re recommending gift ideas, you might like to consider NewCon Press’s Subterfuge. It’s selling well, and the early reviews are excellent.

</plugs>

The Short Stuff

Must be the time of year, but for some reason I’ve been innundated with new short fiction to read, and I don’t know where to start to enjoy it all.

TTA Press’s usual bi-monthly swaparama of Interzone and Black Static have been supplemented by the latest Crimewave, which is always cause for celebration. From PS, there was the recent Postscripts. The latest Dark Horizons form the BFS, and, since FCon’s just been, I got this year’s BFS special publication – an anthology called Houses On The Borderlands (after Hodgson, one presumes) which also looks interesting.

All of that would be enough, but I’ve also been collecting …er… collections by some of my favourite writers which contain some of my all time favourite stories.

- Past Magic by Ian R McLeod (PS) – which contains the story that started me off, Well Loved.

- Contientious Inconsistences by Nancy Jane Moore (PS showcase) – which contains the fabulous Three O’Clock in the Morning, which was my early introduction to Lady Churchill’s

- Psychological Methods To Sell Should Be Destroyed by Robert Freeman Wexler (Electric Velocipede) – which contains the marvellous Tales Of The Golden Legend

- The Last Reef by Gareth L Powell (Elastic) – whose Ack-Ack Macaque – which surely had the best title in ages

- The Turing Test by Chris Beckett (Elastic) – which gives another chance to see La Macchina, another early Interzone fave of mine

- Islington Crocodiles by Paul Meloy (TTA) – which contains Raiders, the story that opened up the tatty box in my memory marked Monster Fun!

So, what a dilemma, eh?

The Taste Of Mundanity

So, the Mundane SF issue of Interzone has come and gone. In case you’ve not been aware, there was a whole bunch of foohfarah about the Mundane manifesto, because I don’t know, the rhetoric rubbed people up the wrong way or something. And that was rekindled when IZ announced they were handing over the reins to Geoff Ryman and co for one issue. I’ve not seen any bloggings of seething vindication on either side since the issue came out, but that doesn’t mean the war ain’t raging somewhere.

Anyway. *Yawn*. Doesn’t matter.

My overall reaction to the seven stories that Ryman and friends have selected to exemplify their point is 1/ they are uniformly good, and 2/ this is the sort of stuff Interzone used to publish more regularly than it does now. I felt nostalgic. Nostalgic for the time when a copy of Interzone would throw you a flight of fancy and then on the next page tie you right back down to earth with a gritty, near-future piece that really made you think. Take a galaxy spanning Stephen Baxter or a baroque Richard Calder and follow it up with Greg Egan’s “Learning To Be Me” or Iain McLeod’s “Well Loved” or Chris Beckett’s “Welfare Man” stories. Really stretch your mind. I’m not saying that IZ doesn’t still strive to do this – David Mace’s “This Happens” still lives fresh in my memory – but it’s not as frequent as I remember it being.

So, if the Mundanistas are complaining that people generally aren’t writing enough of this kind of carefully considered, predictive SF; if it’s a spice, a flavour we’ve lost, then maybe they’re right. Especially if they’re as well written as Lavie Tidhar’s “How To Make Paper Aeroplanes”, or Elizabeth Vonarburg’s “The Invisibles”, or Geoff Ryman’s wholly thought-provoking “Talk Is Cheap”, which rounds off the fiction offering of the issue perfectly.

So, Mundane SF. Do I like it? Yes, when it’s done as well as this.

Will I write it? Probably, sometimes, but like most genre writers, not all the time.

Put it this way, if I were a chef I wouldn’t cook with it exclusively, but it’d be a flavour I’d be wanting to use more often in my restaurant.

Thanks to IZ for reminding us what it tastes like.

As chance would have it…

Delighted to see that my story Amber Rain, first published in The Third Alternative yonks ago, has been reprinted in the very excellent new zine, Serendipity.

Cool, huh?

The slow, creeping approach of Black Static

It’s finally, almost, here. TTA Press’s Black Static, the magazine that takes over where The Third Alternative left off for lovers of darkly fantastic short fiction is at the printers. We’ll see it in September.

Can’t wait.

Interzone is 25

With the publication of its latest issue (in the shops now!), Interzone magazine is officially 25 years old. I’ve been reading it for at least 80% of that time and over the years it has introduced me to an uncountable list of fantastic writers that have enriched my life. I’ve eulogised about the mag before, and there’s no need to do so again in detail, but:

1/ Interzone started me writing (and has yet to find a way of stopping me).
2/ Interzone has for a long time now been the keystone of British genre fiction; its editors have an unerring eye for new talent that quickly become household names.
3/ Interzone 209 (out now! buy it!) features an interview between myself and Mr Duncan, plus a new Book Of All Hours story by Mr Duncan, PLUS new stories by M John Harrison, Gwyneth Jones, Alastair Reynolds, Jamie Barras and Daniel Kaysen.

How is it possible you’ve finished reading this and not gone out and bought the thing, or better still ordered a subscription!

Rarities

There’s something that happens so occasionally in my world that you almost forget about it entirely. Almost. Not quite. Because, like a cosmological event, when it does come round it leaves a long blazing mark in the memory, and a hook of hope that you’ll see it, one day, again.

What am I talking about?

The new issue of Crimewave just landed.

If you don’t know about Crimewave. Here are seven statements:

• I have never read an issue of Crimewave that did not make me seethe with jealousy
• It’s produced by TTAPress – the people who bring you Interzone and TTA/BlackStatic – and it surpasses both magazines by miles
• It’s the best Crime fiction magazine there is
• It’s not a Crime magazine. The stories are about “crime” only in the way that life is largely about crime; the transgressions people commit against each other in the course of living their lives. The stories are about life
• The new issue is one of the most beautiful examples of book production I’ve ever seen. But then I always say that
• Crimewave is the only magazine I buy *knowing* that I’m not going to be disappointed.

Aye, a rarity, right enough.

This Is Music

In a musical frame this week. Not only did the band play last night (for the first time in months!), but the new issue of is this music? is out this week too. For those of you who don’t know it, itm? is a magazine that focuses on Scotland’s multifarious local music output. And to be honest it’s pretty much essential reading. I hadn’t realised how much I look forward to it coming out until today when I picked up in Avalanche (along with newish CDs by Guillemots, Salon Boris and Y’All Is Fantasy Island – Avalanche is always dangerous for me!).

It’s £3 quid, you get a shitload of reviews and interviews with great acts AND a sampler CD of what’s new on the Scottish scene. Worth a subscription *wherever* you are reading this. [Note - I really should get a subscription myself, but I do enjoying picking it up at lunchtime and taking the afternoon to listen to the CD at work, sorry.]

Talking of Scottish scene type stuff, there’s some excellent music coming out at the moment. I’ve been meaning to post for a while about Scunner’s dangerously addictive String Theory album and Quinn’s fabulous and beautiful Luss, and will, soon, so stay tuned, and I also want to give a mention a new discovery – one of the bands we played with last night – Playtone, who sound very together indeed.

So there’s good stuff here. There’s always good stuff here. Keep watching itm? for details.