Theodore Beale is the author of five science fiction and fantasy novels, including Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy. An active member of the SFWA, he has participated on three Nebula Award juries. He is a professional game designer and he lives in Italy. Judith Berman’s last Black Gate offering, “Awakening,” was a finalist for the 2007 Nebula Award. Residing in another wing of the genre, her most recent story, “Pelago,” is a far-future sf novella forthcoming…
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We at Tin House endeavor to widen the circle of lit. mag. readers, and to make extinct the preciousness and staid nature of journals past. That is our mission. Please lift your glasses in toast, and read on… Thus proclaims the website for Tin House magazine, one of the more arch-literary venues to dip into the realms of the weird and fantastic in recent memory. Their thirty-third issue was devoted to “Fantastic Women” — a title guaranteed to attract the…
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By David Soyka Copyright © 2008 by New Epoch Press. All rights Reserved. Tin House Issue #33: Fantastic Women ($17.00 postpaid) The “Fantastic Women” themed issue of Tin House (Volume 9, number 1) was rightly named by Amazon as a “10 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2007.” However, this quarterly being a “literary” magazine, there actually isn’t any science fiction (the one possible exception is Lydia Millet’s wonderful “Thomas Edison and Vasil Golakov,” in which the famed inventor attains…
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by David Soyka Since you’re reading this, you’re presumably interested in reading fantasy (either that or somehow or another this page got linked to somebody’s “Free Tour” button). My guess is that most people take that to mean that you like stories about disenfranchised princesses and questing knight errants in made-up worlds populated by dwarves and sorcerers. Also, no doubt, there must be some universe-shattering struggle between Good and Evil. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like a big fat…
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A Look at Current Sci-fi and Fantasy Magazines By David Soyka Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. This installment of reviews is arriving a little late, so neither of our subjects this time around — September’s Fantasy and Science Fiction and the twentieth anniversary edition of Interzone — is likely still available at your local newsstand. Both venerable publications, however, sell back issues, so if anything here piques your interest, you should be able to get your…
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A Look at Current Sci-fi and Fantasy Magazines By David Soyka Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. Paradox describes itself as “The Magazine of Historical and Speculative Fiction”; the most current issue of Winter 2006-2007 (due to a change in bi-annual publishing schedule, the next issue won’t appear until October 2007), favors primarily alternative history. Sarah Monette’s “Amanta Dorée” posits a prostitute/spy with a secret in a nineteenth-century New Orleans where France maintains ownership of the Louisiana…
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by David Soyka So, you’ve finished your latest issue of Black Gate, and now you are wondering what other magazines feature fantasy in the short form that you might enjoy. Here are a few — hardly complete — suggestions. Interzone Editor/publisher Andy Cox’s resurrection of Interzone has made this self-proclaimed “Britain’s longest-running science-fiction magazine” a leading choice for edgy stories showcased in a striking visual design that pays tribute to the pulp tradition in a high glossy style. Given that…
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by David Soyka Fantasy Magazine, Issue 2 [Prime Books, edited by Sean Wallace, $5.95] Realms of Fantasy, August 2006 [Sovereign Media, edited by Shawna McCarthy, $3.99] Heliotrope, August 2006 [Fantasy Book Spot, www.heliotropemag.com] In an August 4, 2006 blog post, Charles Stross remarks that, Fantasy is, almost by definition, consolatory and escapist literature. Pure fantasy doesn’t really tell us anything about the world we live in… Of course, that depends on how you define “fantasy,” pure or otherwise, which, as…
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A Look at Current Fantasy Magazines By David Soyka Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. Apple has just announced its highly anticipated iPhone and, whether you really need one of these things or not, you have to admit it’s pretty cool-looking. Of course, it doesn’t matter much if it doesn’t work as well as it looks. Apple wouldn’t be the success it is without its ability to match good design with content people want, like portable music…
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A Look at Current Fantasy Magazines By David Soyka Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. Philip Roth can write an alternate history, Cormac McCarthy an end-of-the-world tale, Margaret Atwood a Frankenstein parable even as she claims she doesn’t write science fiction junk. No one calls Thomas Pynchon a fantasy writer, though whatever the hell he writes surely is fantastical. But they don’t become tarnished as genre writers when they write genre. But, times are changing. In the…
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