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Galaxy, December 1965: A Retro-Review

Galaxy, December 1965: A Retro-Review

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galaxy-dec-1965I picked up a few magazines at an antique store near Columbia, MO, last week, including three consecutive issues — of different magazines — from the end of 1965/beginning of 1966: the December 1965 Galaxy, the January 1966 F&SF (reviewed here), and the February 1966 Analog. The first one I got to was the Galaxy.

This is from more or less the center of Frederik Pohl’s editorial tenure. Galaxy in this period was bimonthly, with two sister magazines — Worlds of Tomorrow, also bimonthly, and Worlds of If, which was monthly. (I admit I had not known that — I thought it was also bimonthly, and I’m surprised that Galaxy, the “senior” magazine, was not the monthly one.) Galaxy was generously sized, at 196 pages (including covers), with about as much fiction as Analog and Asimov’s feature these days. By contrast Worlds of Tomorrow had 164 pages per issue, and If only 132. The latter two were 50 cents, but Galaxy was 60 cents. (I find this mixture of format, frequency, and pricing in three magazines from the same stable rather intriguing.)

The cover of the December 1965 Galaxy is by Pederson, illustrating “The Mercurymen”, by C. C. MacApp. (Galaxy typically only credited last names for artists — apparently this particular artist was named John Pederson, Jr. — I’m not very familiar with his work, and not too impressed with this particular example!) Interiors were by Gray Morrow, Giunta, Jack Gaughan, and Wood. (The artists whose first names I know are, not surprisingly perhaps, the better ones, though I am told that John Giunta and Wally Wood were well known for work in comics.) There are a fair number of ads — more than often in SF magazines — though somewhat low rent ones: Rosicruans, hypnotism, the Puzzle Lovers Club, the Book Find Club, book plates (from Galaxy), and the Duraclean Company.

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Shipping April 30: Black Gate 15!

Shipping April 30: Black Gate 15!

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bg15_320aBlack Gate 15 arrives from the printer this week, and subscriber copies will begin shipping out April 30th.

BG 15 is another massive issue: 384 pages of fiction, reviews, and articles. It contains 22 stories, totaling nearly 152,000 words of adventure fantasy. Jonathan L. Howard returns with “The Shuttered Temple,” the sequel to “The Beautiful Corridor” from Black Gate 13, in which the resourceful thief Kyth must penetrate the secrets of a mysterious and very lethal temple. Howard Andrew Jones bring us a lengthy excerpt from his blockbuster novel The Desert of Souls, featuring Dabir & Asim. And Harry Connolly returns after too long an absence with “Eating Venom,” in which a desperate soldier faces a basilisk’s poison — and the treachery it brings.

What else is in BG 15? John C. Hocking kicks off a terrific new sword & sorcery series with “A River Through Darkness & Light,” featuring a dedicated Archivist who leads a small band into a deadly desert tomb; John Fultz shares the twisted fate of a thief who dares fantastic dangers to steal rare spirits indeed in “The Vintages of Dream,” and Vaughn Heppner offers the first chapter of an exciting new sword & sorcery serial as a young warrior flees the spawn of a terrible god through the streets of an ancient city in “The Oracle of Gog.”

Plus fiction from Darrell Schweitzer, Jamie McEwan, Michael Livingston, Frederic S. Durbin, Chris Willrich, Fraser Ronald, Maria V. Snyder, Brian Dolton, Sarah Avery, and many others!

In our generous non-fiction section, Mike Resnick educates us on the best in black & white fantasy cinema, Bud Webster turns his attention to the brilliant Tom Reamy in his Who? column on 20th Century fantasy authors, Scott Taylor challenges ten famous fantasy artists to share their vision of a single character in Art Evolution, and Rich Horton looks at the finest fantasy anthologies of the last 25 years. Plus over 30 pages of book, game, and DVD reviews, edited by Bill Ward, Howard Andrew Jones, and Andrew Zimmerman Jones — and a brand new Knights of the Dinner Table strip.

Black Gate 15 is $18.95 for the print edition, $8.95 in PDF, or shipped right to your door as part of a 2-issue subscription for just $32.95! We’ll have a detailed sneak peek, with tantalizing story excerpts and artwork, right here in a few days. Stay tuned. And don’t forget our back issue sale — any two back issues for just $25, including our double-sized BG 14!

Cover art by Donato Giancola.

Subterranean magazine Summer 2011 Now Available

Subterranean magazine Summer 2011 Now Available

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summer-20112The 19th online issue — and 26th issue overall – of one of the genre’s leading publications, Subterranean Magazine, is now available (at least in part).

Subterranean is published quarterly. It appeared in print for seven issues (some of which are still in print and are available here) before switching to the current online format in Winter 2007. It is presented free online by Subterranean Press, and is edited by William Schafer.

The Summer 2011 issue is guest edited by Gwenda Bond and focuses on young adult fiction. From her introduction:

Enter the fabulous writers whose stories you’ll find here. Each offering showcases a different facet of the many-faceted jewel that is YA. You’ll find Malinda Lo’s first short story publication, “The Fox,” a seductive tale featuring characters from her new YA high fantasy novel Huntress, alongside the best high fantasy zombie story I’ve ever read in Sarah Rees Brennan’s “Queen of Atlantis.” Both these authors–as well as Tiffany Trent (author of the Hallowmere series, and the upcoming The Unnaturalists), and Kelly Link (acclaimed short fiction author, whose YA stories were collected in Pretty Monsters)–will already be familiar to many YA readers, and to plenty of genre readers as well. If Genevieve Valentine’s story about an unusual teen pregnancy, “Demons, Your Body, and You,” is your introduction to her, I envy you; her first novel Mechanique will be out soon. Well-known SFF author Tobias Buckell provides the lone science fiction piece with “Mirror, Mirror,” while newer writer Richard Larson’s “The Ghost Party” tests the friendship of two girls against a backdrop of threats shady and eldritch. Finally, vampires: what YA issue would be complete without them? I promise you that Alaya Dawn Johnson’s hilarious, shockingly irreverent “Their Changing Bodies” is unlike any vampire story you’ve read, and that New York Times’ bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler’s “Younger Women” also opens a different, ahem, vein.

Content is released in weekly installments until the full issue is published.  As of today, Bond’s introduction and “The Fox” are available.

Andromeda Spaceways 50th and CSZ’s 1st

Andromeda Spaceways 50th and CSZ’s 1st

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asim50_cover_229_317-220x304In addition to having the coolest title for a genre fiction magazine,  Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine has reached its 50th issue milestone.  To celebrate, the cover is a reprint of the illustration by Les Petersen for the magazine’s first issue. Stories by Debbie Cowens, Damien Walters Grintalis, Shona Husk, Barry Kirwan, Ian McHugh, Nicole R. Murphy, Dennis J. Pale, Anthony Panegyres, Mark Lee Pearson, Simon Petrie, Natasha Simonova, Robert P. Switzer and Mark D. West.  Print and PDF subscriptions and single issue purchases are available here.

Meanwhile, The Cascadia Subduction Zone (named after the earthquake corridor in the Pacific Northwest that is home base for the publication) has launched its inaugural issue. While its editorial mission is to bring more attention to women writers, and is not a genre publication per se, the women on the masthead may be familiar to genre readers.  Reviews editor Nisi Shawl is a James Triptree Jr. award winner, and features editor L. Timmel Duchamp has published short sf and is, along with arts editor Kath Wilham, a founder of Aqueduct Press.  And the first issue features a poem by Ursula K. LeGuin, as well as reviews of Karen J. Fowler, M. Rickert, and Kathe Koja.  There’s also a review of Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMer.

Print and electronic editions and subscriptions are available at earth-shaking rates here.cascadia1_110x1531

Welcome to Bordertown: What Would Eilonwy Do?

Welcome to Bordertown: What Would Eilonwy Do?

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gnomesThis morning on my walk to work, I spotted a man crossing a lawn. His arms were very full. Of garden gnomes.

You know, gnomes? With the blue coats and the red hats? The Rien Poortvliet kind?

“Morning!” I said.

“Morning,” he said. “I got a delivery. Gnome delivery.”

After we’d passed each other, and I’d spent a good while grinning, I thought to myself, “I know why that just happened. That happened because I started reading Welcome to Bordertown on the train today.”

(Hey! Heads up! If  you follow the above link to the Bordertown website, then click through the fancy links there to Amazon to purchase any of the new books on that page, then Terri Windling’s Endicott Studio gets a small kick-back from Amazon.com. And all of that money is donated to a shelter for homeless kids. More info here.)

Now, I’m only half a story in — the first one. But half a story in means I’ve already read the two introductions, by Terri Windling and Holly Black respectively, and also the “Bordertown Basics” which is sort of like a mix of the Not for Tourists Guide to Chicago, and Wolfe and Gaiman’s wicked little chapbook, A Walking Tour of the Shambles. It includes a weekly advisory about gang movement, monster sightings, pickpockets and missing gargoyles.

This bit made me chortle:

“The Mock Avenue street association would like to apologize to everyone for fixing the church tower clock last week, which caused widespread confusion. It has now been restored to its usual wrong time.”

But let me back up a little. Reading the introductions, I started to get a strange feeling. Gene Wolfe described a poem once as giving him “that fairy tale feeling.” He may have been quoting someone famous, like Dunsany or something. He does that. This was like that feeling, but it was also another feeling mixed in. …

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Nat’l Poetry Month… In GOBLINLAND!!!

Nat’l Poetry Month… In GOBLINLAND!!!

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goblin-fruitWhat? Another issue of Goblin Fruit is LIVE??? Aw, heck! Why didn’t you say so in the first place?

Okay, okay. All kidding aside. Yes – the Spring 2011 Issue is out!

And you know what? It’s special.

And you know why? Because I’m in this one it’s Goblin Fruit’s FIFTH ANNIVERSARY!!!

Hurray! Yippee! Three cheers!

They’re doing all sorts of cool things here. Wick and El-Mohtar have their usual, hilarious Note from the Editors, they have a PRIZE DRAWING, and their featured poet, Catherynne M. Valente has put up Act I of a four-act colossus, A Silver Splendour, a Flame, which she says will be, if she does it right, her “Cantos.”

Cat blogged about it yesterday:

This is a Persephone poem. It is a very long Persephone poem. It, in fact, will not complete for one year. The “acts” will come out on the solstices and equinoxes for the next year, as is appropriate for Our Girl. It is a sprawling thing, with much experimentation and madness. It is Persephone as a Vaudeville show. It is difficult and it is thorny and it is, I hope, beautiful. I hope you like it. I hope you’ll all read it, whatever you think about poetry, and Persephone, and girls scribbling verse. Give it a chance.

I started reading it yesterday, thinking just to peek — it is, after all, quite long — and then I fell in. Into a pool of my own slobber. I mean, I can’t even, AAAUUGGGHH!

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Clarkesworld #55 Arrives — Featuring E. Lily Yu and Erin M. Hartshorn

Clarkesworld #55 Arrives — Featuring E. Lily Yu and Erin M. Hartshorn

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clarkesworld-55The 55th issue of the Hugo Award-winning online magazine Clarkesworld has now been posted.

Clarkesworld is the brainchild of publisher/editor Neil Clarke, who conceived of the magazine while running his excellent (and sadly now defunct) online bookshop, Clarkesworld Books. The first issue was published in October 2006; since then it has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine in 2009 and 2010, the World Fantasy Award (in 2010), and was a finalist for the 2010 Locus Award for Best Magazine. In 2010 it won the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.

Every issue contains two complete short stories. This issue features “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu (also available as a podcast, read by Kate Baker), and “Matchmaker” by Erin M. Hartshorn.

Non-Fiction this issue is Linguistics for the World-Builder by Brit Mandelo, and an interview with science fiction author John Scalzi by Jeremy L. C. Jones.

Clarkesworld is edited by Neil Clarke. The non-fiction editor is Cheryl Morgan. Cover art this issue, “Post-apocalyptic Fisherman,” is by Georgi Markov.

Ebook editions of Clarkesworld are available for $1.99 from Wyrm Publishing, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble (scroll to the bottom of the page). This month only the Clarkesworld #54 ebook is only 99 cents at Amazon and B&N.com. Try it out and support one of the finest magazines in the genre!

We last covered Clarkesworld with issue #9.

Fantasy Magazine April 2011 Arrives — Including Peter S. Beagle, Jonathan L. Howard, and Carrie Vaughn

Fantasy Magazine April 2011 Arrives — Including Peter S. Beagle, Jonathan L. Howard, and Carrie Vaughn

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fantasy-april2011The April issue of Fantasy magazine, issue 49, has been posted online.

New content is posted weekly at the magazine’s website. There’s plenty to interest Black Gate readers this month, including Kat Howard’s tribute to Choose Your Own Adventure books, the short story “Choose Your Own Adventure” (also available as a podcast) — in which the stakes are literally life and death. In an accompanying non-fiction piece Molly Tanzer talks to Ellen Kushner about her experiences creating the Choose Your Own Adventure books, and Matt Staggs, Jeremiah Tolbert, Esther Inglis-Arkell and others about their experiences reading them.

This issue also includes a reprint by Peter S. Beagle, “The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon;” “House of Gears” by Jonathan L. Howard, author of the Kyth the Taker stories in Black Gate, “The Beautiful Corridor” (BG 13) and “The Shuttered Temple” (BG 15); short story “A Hunter’s Ode to His Bait” by Carrie Vaughn; an interview with N. K. Jemisin; Author Profiles; and articles by Genevieve Valentine and Helen Pilinovsky.

These features will all appear online as the month unfolds; you can also purchase the entire issue immediately as an eBook for just $2.99.

Fantasy is edited by John Joseph Adams and published by Sean Wallace. Their webmaster is Jeremiah Tolbert, whose story “Groob’s Stupid Grubs” appears in Black Gate 15. The cover artist is Max Bertolini.

We last profiled Fantasy in March with issue 48.

Apex Magazine 23 Released

Apex Magazine 23 Released

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apexmag04pubitThe April edition of Apex Magazine boasts what publisher Jason Sizemore terms “the first of our new expanded editions.”

Editor Catherynne M. Valente’s fiction selections include Eugie Foster’s “Biba Jibun” and Michael J. Deluca marks his first Apex debut with “The Eater.” The reprints are Mike Allen’s Nebula Award-nominated “The Button Bin”  and Jennifer Pelland’s Nebula Award-nominated story “Ghosts of New York” from Dark Faith, about which I said:

The opening story, “Ghosts of New York” by Jennifer Pelland, considers the afterlife of those who made the horrific choice to jump from the Twin Towers rather than remain in a burning buidling about to collapse. The whole subgenre of 9/11 fiction is tricky, given  our collective memory of something so frighteningly incomprehensible that’s been trivialized over time with the endlessly surreal replaying loop of the imploding skyscrapers, but Pelland’s take here is vividly disturbing in suggesting that memorializing the dead can make matters worse.

Also included are Rose Lemberg’s poem “Thirteen Principles of Faith”and the history of the Nebula Awards by Michael A. Burstein.

Apex Magazine 23 is sold online for $2.99; it’s also available in Kindle, Nook, and a downloadable format through Smashwords. Previous issues are available through their back issue page. We last profiled Apex with Issue 22.

You can subscribe and get 12 issues for just $19.99.

Black Gate Back Issue Sale!

Black Gate Back Issue Sale!

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bg_1_coverWe’re going to press this week with the long-awaited Black Gate 15 — and you know what that means.  It means I won’t be able to get my car in the garage unless I clear out some of the back issue stock first.

My unnatural love for my 2006 Audi is your gain. Starting today, and continuing until I can fit my beloved automobile in the garage, we’re having a sale on back issues of Black Gate magazine. Any two are $25 (plus shipping and handling). Any three are just $35, and any four just $45.

This offer even includes our rare first issue (price just reduced to $18.95), and our double-sized issue 14 (also $18.95). You can buy a complete set of the first four issues  — totaling 896 pages of the best in modern fantasy, a $65.80 value — for just $45.

But hurry. Quantities are limited. Yes, we know. Everyone says that. (Try it yourself, and you’ll understand. “Quantities are Limited!” It just trips off the tongue somehow.) But really. There’s not many copies left, and once I can squeeze a compact car into the garage and shut the door, the sale is over.

Just use the form on our subscription page to select any two issues for $25, any three for $35, or any four for $45, and we’ll apply the discount. It’s that easy.

Want a PDF copy instead? They’re just $8.95, even for big double issues.  Why not try a 4-issue PDF subscription for just $29.95, or a 2-issue print sub for $32.95? You can order print versions of both of our 384-page double issues, BG 14 and 15 (combined cover price $37.90, plus $4.50 shipping) for $32.95, shipping included.  We’ll ship BG 14 this week, and send the massive BG 15 right to your door hot-off-the-press later this month.