Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Order [book in series=yearoffirstbook.book# (eg 2014.01), stand-alone or one-author collection=3333.pubyear, multi-author anthology=5555.pubyear, SFM/MM=5000, interview=1111]: 5000

Magazine Monday: The Empress of Mars

The Empress of Mars is a new quarterly production of Dreadnought Press. The inaugural issue of January 2012 is a lovely glossy magazine with good art, starting with the cover image of a trio of idealized spaceships by Martin Rotherham. Alas, the fiction within rarely matches the promise of the cover. And the magazine desperately needs a copy editor, one who can fix the run-on sentences, sentence fragments, and the many instances where “it’s” was used when “its” was meant. Perhaps, as with many magazines, these are merely labor pains, and future issues will be better;

Magazine Monday: Unstuck, Volume I

I love fantastic literature with a literary bent. Give me a good Italo Calvino novel, a Jorge Luis Borges short story, or any of Steven Millhauser’s work, and I’m a happy camper. So the new periodical, Unstuck, should be perfect for me. It states its mission this way:

“We emphasize literary fiction with elements of the fantastic, the futuristic, the surreal, or the strange — a broad category that would include the work of writers as diverse as Borges, Ballard,

December 12th, 2011. Terry Weyna | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

Magazine Monday: Interzone 236 (September-October 2011)

Interzone is a periodical I find delightful as much for its excellent nonfiction as its terrific fiction. David Langford’s “Ansible Link,” for instance, reports what’s going on in the speculative fiction community. It also provides information on how that community is viewed from outside in a section entitled, “As Others See Us,” usually pointing to something stupid said in the mainstream media about science fiction, fantasy or horror. My favorite bit has always been the section entitled “Thog’s Masterclass,” pointing out silly sentences in published fiction.

“The Book Zone”

Magazine Monday: Black Static, Issue 24

We thought that Halloween was the perfect occasion on which to combine Magazine Monday with Horrible Monday and bring you a review of a horror magazine. Black Static is a British horror magazine notable not only for the high quality of its fiction, but also for its great commentary and extensive reviews of horror films and books. This was my first experience reading the magazine, but my plan is now to subscribe, because this is great stuff.

Simon Bestwick’s story,

Magazine Monday: Fantastique Unfettered #3

Even as many mourn the apparent passing of the age of print, it seems that more and more speculative fiction periodicals are coming into being. When I first heard of Fantastique Unfettered, I was certain that it must be an internet-only publication. Yet as far as I can tell, it isn’t even available in electronic format. Instead, it’s a traditional magazine, full-size (as opposed to the digest-size of Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF), and chock-full of black and white illustrations. The stories are fantastical in the best sense of the word: strange and marvelous,

October 10th, 2011. Terry Weyna | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |

Magazine Monday: Fantasy & Science Fiction, September/October 2011

The September/October issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction is always a feast: 258 pages packed with stories by some of the top talent in the field. It isn’t unusual for this issue each year to contain at least one story that will show up on the award ballots the following year, and that’s true this year as well. My nomination goes to Geoff Ryman’s “What We Found.” Ryman has been writing lately of third-world cultures, in such a way that the reader becomes immersed in the culture, surrounded by sights, scents,

Magazine Monday: LCRW, 3 Cubed

The arrival of a new issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is always an event. There is no set publishing schedule, so a subscriber is never quite sure when an issue will arrive. No. 27 landed in my mailbox just last week, full of amazing fiction. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find a couple of these stories on awards ballots next year.

Three stories in particular struck me as special. The first is “Music Box” by David Rowinski. Rowinski’s protagonist, Patrick Sutton,

Magazine Monday: Asimov’s, September 2011

The September 2011 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction is a mixed bag, with a couple of amazing stories and a few not so amazing. One of the former is “The Observation Post,” by Allen M. Steele. A recurring motif in science fiction is visitors from the future watching hot points in history, and for this story that hot point is the Cuban Missile Crisis. The story begins with a voyage in a blimp that seems fictional, like something out of a steampunk story, until one realizes that the Navy really did use a few blimps until November 1962,

Magazine Monday: Bull Spec #5

Bull Spec is a print and electronic science fiction and fantasy glossy magazine named for its home of Durham, North Carolina. The word “Bull” seems to have become associated with Durham because of a tobacco factory in the city, which itself took the name from the picture of a bull that appeared on the label of a mustard that the tobacco factory owner believed was manufactured in Durham, England; it’s all very complicated, but at least we know that the magazine’s name is based on where it is published. The publisher, Samuel Montgomery-Blinn,

Magazine Monday: Weird Tales, Summer 2011

The nonfiction in the Summer 2011 issue of Weird Tales is interesting and informative, telling readers a good deal about a number of diverse topics. Genevieve Valentine offers “A Sweet Disorder in the Dress,” the title taken from a Robert Herrick poem, about the fashion of Alexander McQueen, and especially his Spring 2010 collection, Plato’s Atlantis. This collection was famous, or perhaps infamous, for the huge shoes — a foot high! — that looked like lobster claws, and much of the fashion on display fell into the “who would wear that?!” category (the answer: Lady Gaga,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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