Book Review: The Rise of the Cyberzines: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1991 to 2020 by Mike Ashley. Liverpool University Press, 2022

Ashley's example for the former is underground and slipstream writing that challenges the form and content of science fiction; for the latter he spends useful time showing how magazines such as On Spec (Canada), Albedo One (Ireland) and Eidolon (Australia) became vessels for national sf communi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFoundation Vol. 52; no. 144; pp. 77 - 81
Main Author Harrison, Niall
Format Book Review
LanguageEnglish
Published Dagenham Science Fiction Foundation 01.01.2023
Subjects
Demographics
Distribution costs
Electronic periodicals
Internet
Internet access
Science fiction & fantasy
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Summary:Ashley's example for the former is underground and slipstream writing that challenges the form and content of science fiction; for the latter he spends useful time showing how magazines such as On Spec (Canada), Albedo One (Ireland) and Eidolon (Australia) became vessels for national sf communities. [...]one of the strengths of the history is its attentiveness to the financial precariousness of sf magazines in any period: the balance of subscriptions and sales against production and distribution costs always fragile, the search for new models a constant. The bold launch and subsequent death-by-degrees of the glossy print mass-market-oriented Science Fiction Age in the early nineties is an instructive tale, and a contrast to the success of Strange Horizons and Clarkesworld a decade-plus later. More than that, my science fiction reading life coincides quite tidily with the period covered by The Rise of the Cyberzines: I went to university, and gained routine internet access, in 1998, at precisely the point when the sf world online was going through its exponential phase.
ISSN:0306-4964