| Glad to see some interest in INTERZONE. I'll dig out the subscription
details when I get home tonight and put them in tomorrow morning.
There is an american agent.
INTERZONE is Britain's only professional sf magazine at the moment.
I've subscribed to it for five years now, and it's well worth it.
(Get your subscription in time for the Birthday celebration issue
due any time now.)
Unfortunately it's only available on a subscription basis or through
specialist shops. There are sound reasons for this. Britain hasn't
been abale to support a commercial SF magazine since New Worlds
folded 17 years ago. The reason for this has more to do with the
distribution network in this country, an effective monopoly, than
the lack of an audience (you can get ANALOG on newsagents shelves,
but not IZ). At the same time that IZ was launched another British
SF mag was started, EXTRO, which chose the full commercial route,
massive colour covers, action-based fiction and mass distribution.
It folded within 18 months. IZ's editors chose the cautious route
and it's still expanding. The editors have always been unpaid,
enthusiastic volunteers, which allows them to offer competitive
rates and get the best fiction, but also means their schedule can
be a bit erratic. (You'll get four issues every year, but you might
have to wait up to six months between issues and then get two within
a month.)
But about the fiction it runs. IZ is strongly championing the
'cyberpunk' line. It's run fiction and interviews by Gibson, Shirley,
Sterling and promises new work from Swanwick coming up. But it actually
covers a wide range, from hard sf (stories in Greg Benford in the
each of the alst two issues, and regular stuff from Ian Watson),
action-adventure, fantasy and borderline experimental fiction. It's
really a magazine for people who want to read well-written, imaginative
and original stories, not any particular type. It's
run a lot of stuff by Ballard, Aldiss, Moorcock, M.John Harrison,
Barrington Bayley, Disch and Sladek, and is always on the look-out
for good new writers.
As I said, I'll put the subscription details in for you tomorrow.
Steve Higgins
|