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Pete and Nick confess their mutual short fiction addiction
Posted by Darren on August 10th, 2007 at 14:14
Douglas Cohen – assistant editor at long-running US fiction ‘zine Realms of Fantasy – has called for a genre fiction magazine subscription drive to help boost flagging subscriber numbers for print publications in this era of free online content.
This sounded like something that we here at PS should definitely get behind; speaking as the publishers of an award-winning short fiction ‘zine ourselves, we’re quite obviously all in favour of anything that boosts the circulation and popularity of fiction ‘zines in general. The more, the merrier, quite frankly.
So I chivvied Pete Crowther and Nick Gevers – our two in-house editors, who between them are responsible for selecting and polishing the literary gems that feature in our very own Postscripts – out of their Friday afternoon lunchtime reveries and asked them to jot down a few thoughts on the subject of their own life-long love of short fiction in all its forms. And here’s what they had to say for themselves:
Pete
“I’m a short story nut, always have been. F’rinstance, this note is being penned just one week after my buying a full run of my favorite mag (F&SF) in order to upgrade some issues and fill a few gaps (anyone want to the buy 612 issues I now have spare?).
“But that’s just one title; in addition to that, I love the old pulps (Weird Tales, Fantastic, Amazing, Planet and so on) and, of course, digests such as Astounding and Asimov’s, EQMM and Alfred Hitchcock’s, Andy Cox’s incarnation of Interzone and his absolutely superb (but criminally irregular) Crime Wave.
“The thing is that ‘small’ is beautiful. And all of the big novelists of today cut their teeth between the pages of the mags… so it follows that tomorrow’s ‘household names’ will be already making their presences known.
“Make sure you’re not losing out: go get in on the vanguard of genre fiction. Take a copy of Asimov’s or F&SF or Crime Wave or even Postscripts to bed and I’m betting you’ll have a ball.
“Better still, subscribe! Magazines like these rely on commitment, not on a once-in-a-while purchase because you happened to see a copy in the racks when you went in to buy a chocolate bar or you needed change for the bus! You’ve been warned. I won’t tell you twice.”
Nick
“My love of fiction zines began twenty-five years ago, when I bought a lot of Campbell-era Analogs second-hand and read them like a Great White binging on seals.
“Later, it was Asimov’s (edited by Gardner Dozois) and Interzone (edited by David Pringle) that were my subscriptions of choice and my inspiration – what extraordinary publications they were, full of innovation and excitement; those led me to where I am today, gorging on SF/F magazines and anthologies ostensibly in order to have material for my Locus short fiction columns…
“There are superb magazines currently running that deserve our, your, everybody’s support, as paying subscribers. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, brilliantly edited by Gordon Van Gelder; Asimov’s, the domain of Sheila Williams; Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, and (humbly, humbly) our own Postscripts.
“And the quirky, magnificent small press zines, like Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Flytrap, and Say… These are the places where speculative fiction is made; the novels only catch up later. Often a lot later…”
Thanks, chaps. You can go back to the pub work now…
August 11th, 2007 at 7:02 am
Great stuff!