In checking the links for the Best Fanwriter Panel post I discovered that issue #4 of Journey Planet has been published. This issue has a theme of… (wait for it) …science fiction!
I must admit that I found it desperately sad to find Claire Brialey feeling that she had to justify writing about science fiction, because in the fannish circles in which she moves it is apparently not the done thing for fans to actually have any interest in SF. I was kind of hoping that nonsense was dead by now, but I guess it takes dinosaurs a very long time to die.
Fortunately James Bacon and Chris Garcia have no such antiquated scruples, and the SF-special of Journey Planet has a fair amount of interesting material in it. I have to say that, of course, because one of the articles is by me. But it also has John Hertz, and a short but very welcome extract from Paul McAuley’s forthcoming Gardens of the Sun, his sequel to The Quiet War.
You can find all four issues of Journey Planet online at efanzines.com. Now they have four issues under their belts, don’t be surprised to see them on the Best Fanzine Hugo ballot next year.
Hi, Cheryl. That strikes me as a slightly odd reading of my article, since I was rather more in ‘musing’ than ‘justification’ mode there; the main thing that I felt I might have to justify was why a science fiction fanzine was making science fiction a special theme for one issue! (I wouldn’t want anyone to think that we’re not going to be writing about SF in future, after all.) But thanks very much for pointing people towards the fanzine.
Claire:
Justification or musing, it still seemed sad to me. It was bit like apologizing for the fact that people in the UK once believed in the divine right of kings: true, but not very relevant any more.