Magazine Review: Concept SciFi #2

The particularly striking thing about Concept SciFi is the artwork, both on the cover of the ezine and on the website. It looks cool and SFnal and the kind of art that some venues seem to shy away from in an effort to look more sophisticated or something. I love this kind of art though. It tells you you’ve found a venue for some honest down-to-earth (if that’s not too contradictory) science fiction.


Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.

Weekly Report

Well, I call it weekly, but actually it’s no such thing. Just a random selection of what I’ve been up to recently.

I’ve finished Chris Beckett’s collection ‘The Turing Test’ in the past week. This was launched at the same time as the ‘other’ Gareth’s collection from Elastic Press last month. I couldn’t make the launch as I was at a wedding, but now I would have liked to have talked to Chris too. Though of course, had I been there I would still have yet to have read his book and therefore wouldn’t have had much to say about it.

You see why time travel would be so useful?

So now I’m on to Paul McCauley’s ‘The Quiet War’, having sandwiched Concept Sci Fi #2 in between.

I started work on the penultimate section of the Roadmaker novel this weekend, after a fortnight off for editing and catching up with reviews. The previous section has gone off to my Orbiter writing group to be mauled.

I even wrote a 300 word story that will appear this Friday after inspiration struck unaccountably.

Who knows what else may occur?

Say what?

In the new issue of Concept SciFi, Gary Reynolds offers some useful tips on how to write realistic dialogue.

This is something I always struggle with. I used to write stories entirely devoid of dialogue to get around the problem. When I'm writing a story I spend far longer working on the dialogue than on other sections of prose. Yet I've had several people comment, both in forums about published stories, in rejection letters from editors and in reviews, on how they enjoyed my dialogue. So it's worth spending time getting to grips with it.

Two New Issues

Two new webzines available to download this week:

Concept SciFi #2





Pantechnicon #8

Magazine Review: Concept SciFi #1

Concept SciFi is the first new UK SF magazine to be launched this year, creating an aura of excitement and anticipation. It’s in PDF format, with a simple text-based layout and other than the fabulous cover art has minimal illustrations – just a couple of author photos. This makes it quick to download and easy to print out in a readable format. It contains a couple of articles and interviews, but as usual I shall concentrate on the fiction.

Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.

Latest 'Zines

Two new zines out this week, both with great cover art:




-Issue #1 of Concept Sci Fi, which I shall be reviewing in due course.




-Jupiter XXI, which contains Roadruler, the penultimate Roadmaker story.

New UK-Based Sf Webzine

Concept SciFi is a new UK based webzine due to launch in July. The slick-looking site is already in place and has a few articles and discussions ready to read. Editor Gary Reynolds has hinted that he may bring the launch of issue #1 forward from its proposed date of July 31st.

After the disappearance of Darker Matter last year, it’s encouraging to see some new blood entering the market.