Locus Online
MAGAZINES


PROFILES
 

last month

next month


*

1998
MAGAZINES ARCHIVE

 

Profiles of June 1998 Issues

Interzone 132 June 1998
Colin Greenland is interviewed about his heroine Tabitha Jute (illustrated on the cover), his influences as a writer, and his inclination toward female characters. The cover story by Greenland is a brief episode in the career of Tabitha Jute, colorful and fast-paced. Nick Lowe eviscerates Sphere and isn't much impressed by Gattaca or Fallen either. Keith Brooke surveys SF on the internet: publisher and magazine sites, where to find original fiction, authors' websites, and news sources such as Locus Online. Brooke also contributes an enigmatic fantasy about Westerners living in Kashmir and the way stories like 'urban legends' take on lives of their own. Tanith Lee contributes a cozy horror story, Dominic Green tells a lost world tale set in 2001, Ian Watson stages a confrontation between good and evil at a fantasy convention in Docklands, and Alexander Glass shows more promise.
(Wed 22 Jul 98)
F&SF June 1998
Editor Gordon Van Gelder ponders the future of books, and looks forward to print-on-demand publishing. • Charles de Lint reviews books about cats, while Robert K. J. Killheffer considers Moorcock, Zelazny, Jacobs, and Ellison. • Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty's Science column explores tricks of the mind: false memories, fabricated memories, the unreliability of eyewitness identification, and the way we tell 'stories' to ourselves to make sense of the world around us. (References on Pat Murphy's website.) • A new last-page Department called ''Curiosities'' debuts with Jack Womack's recollection of Richard Shaver. • Fiction includes Jack McDevitt and Stanley Schmidt's science-fictional mystery weekend (based on the actual Asimov Seminar); a consideration of academic and personal history by Robert C. Taylor; a charming fantasy about a veterinarian and a dragon by Mary A. Turzillo; a new lingster tale by Sheila Finch; and a moving tale of adolescent heartbreak in a remote Nevada mining town by Nancy Etchemendy. (posted Thu 11 Jun)

Both Asimov's and Analog expand in size with the June issues, growing from standard 'digest' format by an inch in height and a quarter inch in width. Page counts drop, but actual contents grows by 10% due to the larger pages. Will the change help circulation and sales? Probably can't hurt, but we found our copies in the same spot of the magazine racks at Barnes and Noble.
Asimov's June 1998
The magazine debuts James Patrick Kelly's column about the internet, ''You Can Get Everywhere from Here''; this first intallment has been available for some time on the magazine's website. • Kelly's fifteenth consecutive story in a June issue of Asimov's is a doozy, a superb alien viewpoint tale called ''Lovestory''. • Robert Silverberg's column echoes a familiar theme of late: ''The Science-Fictionization of Everything'', how the daily news echoes SF stories decades old yet still seems wonderful and amazing. • Other excellent fiction by Paul J. McAuley and Ian McDonald, plus good work by M. Shayne Bell, Sarah Clemens, and Stephen Dedman. • Norman Spinrad's review essay, while wondering if there's any center left to literary SF, examines some writers at the edges: Joyce, Di Filippo, Jacobs, Powers, Knight.
(posted Tue 19 May)
Analog June 1998
Paul Levinson sequelizes his Hugo- and Nebula-nominated novella ''Loose Ends'' with ''Little Differences'', more real-time experimentation in trying to change the past. • Charles L. Harness turns the discovery of a biological colony inside a meteorite from Mars into an entertaining courtroom battle over the encryption algorithm of RNA in ''The GUAC Bug''. • Wolf Read's cover story ''Spindown'' marries big ideas -- a whirling pair of neutron stars; a new galaxy built in orbit around Andromeda -- with rather clunky writing. • Ron Goulart entertains with a tale about the revival of a TV series about a robot dog. • Levinson also contributes an article about the digital future of the book, a consideration of the principles of media evolution that are detailed in his recent book The Soft Edge. • John G. Cramer's ''The Alternate View'' column describes a 'quantum eraser', a variation in the classic two-slit experiment that demonstrates the mysteries of quantum mechanics. In this variation yet again, it's as if Nature has an FTL telegraph but forbids us access to the key. • John C. Sparhawk, Jr., responding to Jeff Kooistra's column about ''Big Rocks'', suggests that the ancients were merely engaged in what we now call 'Guy Things', like cow tossing and truck bowling. He may have something there...
(posted Tue 19 May)
TOP  
© 1998 by Locus Publications. All rights reserved.