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Total Pulp Victory: Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention 2023, Part I

Total Pulp Victory: Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention 2023, Part I

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Some of the eye-popping pulps from the Bob Weinberg collection auctioned at Windy City

This weekend was the Windy City Pulp & Paper show, an annual gathering of about 600-800 pulp and vintage paperback enthusiasts in Lombard, Illinois. Founded by Doug Ellis and run by a dedicated and talented team, Windy City has gradually become my favorite convention. Back when Black Gate was a print magazine I used to get a table and sell back issues, but these days I spend my time more productively. Namely buying stuff, but also hanging out with friends and attending the auction.

And gawking at amazing sights. If you’re interested in rare and unusual items — such as mint-condition pulps, rare first editions, signed volumes, original art, and letters and esoterica from pulp writers such as Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, A. Merritt, and countless others — Windy City is the place to be. It’s a chance to hang out with like-minded individuals, gossip, and (especially!) find incredible treasures.

Reader, I found some treasures.

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The New Weird Tales

The New Weird Tales

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Weird Tales #366, the Sword & Sorcery issue (January 2023), and #367, the
Cosmic Horror issue (May 2023). Covers by Bob Eggleton and Mike Mignola

I ordered a copy of the new Sword & Sorcery issue of Weird Tales last year, and it finally arrived a few weeks ago — so late that I almost forgot I ordered it.

But it did arrive — and turned out to be damn impressive. A huge oversize (8×10) issue in full color, with terrific front and back covers by Bob Eggleton and Archer H. Anglow (see below), and weighing in at 128 pages. The stellar TOC includes a new Elric tale by Michael Moorcock, plus Kevin J. Anderson, Marguerite Reed, and Black Gate‘s own Howard Andrew Jones (an exclusive excerpt from his upcoming book Lord of the Shattered Land), along with an appreciation of Moorcock by Neil Gaiman, and a delightful full-color article on Sword & Sorcery by Charles R. Rutledge.

Issue 367, shipping next month, looks even more impressive. The Cosmic Horror issue offers an eye-catching Hellboy cover by Mike Mignola, a Hellboy story by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, plus new work from Ramsey Campbell, Paul Cornell, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Nancy Kilpatrick, Tim Lebbon, F. Paul Wilson, and lots more.

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Weird Horror #6 Now on Sale

Weird Horror #6 Now on Sale

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Weird Horror #6 (Undertow Publications,
March 14, 2023). Cover art by Asya Yordanova

The sixth issue of Michael Kelly’s excellent magazine Weird Horror has arrived, and it’s packed with deliciously creepy fiction and non-fiction from some of the most exciting writers in the business, including Simon Strantzas, Barbara A. Barnett, Neil Williamson, and many others — plus Steve Rasnic Tem’s 500th story sale (!!!).

Michael has made many of the stories — and the fabulous accompanying artwork — available for free on the Weird Horror website, so there’s no excuse not to check it out. Have a look below.

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Alien Scarecrows, Strange Restaurants, and Mystery in a Spaceport Morgue: March-April 2023 Print SF Magazines

Alien Scarecrows, Strange Restaurants, and Mystery in a Spaceport Morgue: March-April 2023 Print SF Magazines

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March/April 2023 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction & Fact,
and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Dominic Harman
(for “Gravesend”), Shutterstock, and Mondolithic Studios/Jill Bauman (for “Mr. Catt)

It’s a bonanza of great fiction in the new print mags this month, with stories by some of the biggest names in the biz — including Peter S. Beagle, Greg Egan, Paul McAuley, Bruce Sterling and Paul Di Filippo, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Lavie Tidhar, Allen M. Steele, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Adam-Troy Castro, Howard V. Hendrix, Eleanor Arnason, Tade Thompson, Kathleen Jennings, Sheila Finch, Sam J. Miller, Rajnar Vajra, Buzz Dixon, E. Catherine Tobler, Gregory Feeley, Octavia Cade, Ray Nayler, Stanley Schmidt, and many more.

The fiction here covers the gamut modern SF, with tales set on Mars, a far-future Earth where mankind has been exterminated, an 8th grade math class taught by a witch, a restaurant run by an alien who sells off parts of his own body, an asteroid inhabited by giant ants, a mysterious house that sells ideas to science fiction writers, a department store that offers new bodies, a morgue on a spaceport, a climate-ravaged Europe, and more more. See all the details below.

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Infinity, June 1956: A Retro Review

Infinity, June 1956: A Retro Review

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Infinity Science Fiction, June 1956. Cover by Ed Emsh

In my previous Retro Review I covered If, which I called a “classic digest magazine of what might be called the “second tier” of SF magazines.” Infinity was another, though it lasted for a much shorter time — 19 issues from 1955 through 1958. (I note for the record that the magazines of the so-called “first tier” – that is, the Big Three of Astounding/Analog, Galaxy, and F&SF – all went through ups and downs in quality and sometimes other magazines surpassed them – notably Venture in the late ‘50s, If in the mid-60s, Thrilling Wonder and Startling in the early ‘50s, and others, including, as John O’Neill reminds me, Amazing and Fantastic in the early ’60s under Cele Goldsmith Lalli. I’ll also note that there was surely a third tier, magazines of lesser quality than the likes of If and Infinity.)

The editor of Infinity was the greatly respected Larry T. Shaw. The original anthology series Infinity, from the early 1970s, edited by Robert Hoskins, was published by Lancer Books, which was the successor company to Royal Publications, the firm responsible for the magazine. Indeed Robert Hoskins was the immediate successor to Larry Shaw as editor of the Lancer SF line. Hoskins did reprint the most famous story the magazine published, Arthur C. Clarke’s Hugo winner “The Star,” in the first volume of the original anthology, and therein he called the anthology the “lineal descendant” of the magazine.

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Quatro-Decadal Review: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1989, edited by Edward Ferman

Quatro-Decadal Review: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1989, edited by Edward Ferman

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The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,
November 1989. Cover by Bryn Barnard

I thought that Asimov’s was going to rule the 1988 roost, but MoF&SF gives it a run for its money.

The issue jumps straight into the fiction!

Fiction — “Icicle Music” by Michael Bishop

A story told in time jumps, starting on Christmas Eve 1957. Danny Pitts, living with his mother in a small boxy house near the waste dump — is up early, and finds his wished-for shotgun that his single mom must have saved for over the year. His father is a bum, out of the picture for a couple of years. Then Danny hears a strange sound, like icicles breaking and the pawing of something on the roof. Then a man comes down the chimney,

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Interzone 204 now on Sale

Interzone 204 now on Sale

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Interzone 294 (MYY Press, January 2023)

Last summer I reported that Interzone, the leading British science fiction magazine, had been sold. After 19 years and exactly 100 issues. Andy Cox at TTA Press brought his storied reign as editor to a triumphant close — though he does continue to produce his excellent magazine of modern horror, Black Static.

Interzone was acquired by MMY Press in Poland, and the new editor is Gareth Jelley. I ordered a copy of issue #294, the first with Jelley at the helm, for €15 (about $16.70 US, including shipping to the US), and was astonished when the massive 256-page issue arrived in my mailbox about a week later.

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Flood of AI-Written Fiction Shuts Down Clarkesworld Submissions

Flood of AI-Written Fiction Shuts Down Clarkesworld Submissions

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Recent issues of Clarkesworld magazine, edited by Neil Clarke

If you’re active on social media, or if you follow the major science fiction magazines, you’ve probably seen the headlines. It’s not every day that Neil Clarke, Sheila Williams, and Sheree Renée Thomas (editors of Clarkesworld, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, respectively) are quoted extensively in The New York Times. But that’s exactly what happened on Thursday.

It started with Neil, who reported on Twitter earlier this week that a sudden flood of AI-generated submissions, likely triggered by get-rich-quick schemes “making claims of easy money with ChatGPT,” had caused him to temporarily close submissions to Clarkesworld. (ChatGPT is the most popular of the new crop of chatbots capable of rapidly creating long-form text based on short prompts from users.)

As you can imagine, the news that a leading science fiction magazine had to close submissions because it was overwhelmed with AI-generated subs captured enormous attention, and that tweet garnered over 8 million views and, within a matter of days, national attention from press outlets like The Guardian and NYT.

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If, December 1957, A Retro-Review

If, December 1957, A Retro-Review

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IF, December 1957. Cover by Mel Hunter

If was a classic digest magazine of what might be called the “second tier” of SF magazines. (The term second tier might be a bit dismissive — there were a number of quality magazines that for a time surpassed one or more of the so-called “Big Three” (Astounding/Analog, Galaxy, and F&SF.) That said, those three magazines, via comparative longevity, consistent quality, and simply tradition were considered “the big three” by the SF community for most of the ’50s through ’70s.) It was founded by James Quinn (Quinn Publishing Company) in 1952, with Paul Fairman the initial editor. Quinn took over from Fairman fairly soon (though Larry Shaw was listed as Associate Editor but was apparently the actual editor from May 1953 to March 1954), and he edited it until 1958, after which Damon Knight briefly took over. Quinn sold the magazines to the publishers of Galaxy, and it was a companion to Galaxy for the rest of its existence; under the editorship, sequentially, of H. L. Gold, Frederik Pohl, Ejler Jakobsson, and Jim Baen, before folding after the November-December 1974 issue.

There was a single-issue revival in 1986, edited by Clifford Hong, officially called Worlds of If. Though that revival quickly failed, it should be said that the list of contributors is fairly impressive (Niven, Van Vogt, Salmonson, Schenck, Card, Zelazny, etc.) As far as I know the official title of the magazine (except for the last issue) was always If, sometimes subtitled “Worlds of Science Fiction,” but the cover, especially late in the run, often appeared to give the title Worlds of If. During Pohl’s editorship, when it was positioned as the somewhat lighter, more adventure-oriented, magazine in the Galaxy stable, it won three consecutive Hugos as best magazine, supposedly to Pohl’s slight dismay, as he considered Galaxy the better product.

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400 pages of the Best of the Modern Weird: Weird Fiction Review #12 from Centipede Press

400 pages of the Best of the Modern Weird: Weird Fiction Review #12 from Centipede Press

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Weird Fiction Review #12 (Centipede Press, October 2022). Front and back covers by Stephen Fabian

Weird Fiction Review, edited by John Pelan and published annually by Centipede Press, has gradually established itself as the premier magazine of modern dark fantasy. It’s published a dozen issues so far and has included fiction by Simon Strantzas, Steve Rasnic Tem, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, Victor LaValle, Stephen Graham Jones, Marc Laidlaw, Joseph S. Pulver, Brian Stableford, Darrell Schweitzer, John Shirley, and many, many more.

But I think the reason I love this mag — aside from its incredible production values and huge size (issues typically run around 400 pages) — is the excellent non-fiction. It brings genuine scholarship to fascinating topics, with lengthy and entertaining articles on things like a history of the legendary Gnome Press by Stefan Dziemianowicz, a brief history of Mexican Horror Comic Books by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a survey of The Horror Pulps 1933-1940 by Robert Weinberg, an essay on EC Comics by E. B. Boatner, Collecting Karl Edward Wagner’s Carcosa by Ron Clinton, 90 Years of Amazing Stories by Joseph Wrzos, and a regular column on Forgotten Masters of the Weird Tale by editor John Pelan that has covered Nictzin Dyalhis, Paul Ernst, Arthur Leo Zagat, Sax Rohmer, C. Hall Thompson, Walter Owen, Edmund Snell, and Wyatt Blassingame.

The latest issue features fiction by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, Victor LaValle, Stephen Graham Jones, Scott Bradfield and others, plus a full-color Stephen Fabian Art Gallery, an appreciation of the film Let’s Scare Jessica to Death by John Llewellyn Probert, an interview with Weirdbook publisher W. Paul Ganley by Darrell Schweitzer, an article on William F. Nolan by Jason V. Brock, an interview with Graham Masterton by Dave Roberts — and a celebration of the life and work of Weird Fiction Review’s editor John Pelan, who tragically past away on April 11, 2021.

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