INTERZONE

   UK magazine, current, \#1 Spring 1982, small- BEDSHEET (A4) format, saddle-stapled, continuously numbered, on slick paper from \#41, Nov 1990, quarterly to \#24, Summer 1988; bimonthly to \#34, Mar/Apr 1990; monthly thereafter. IZ was first published and edited by a collective made up of John CLUTE, Alan Dorey, Malcolm EDWARDS, Colin GREENLAND, Graham James,Roz KAVENEY, Simon Ounsley and David PRINGLE. This group shrank: James left after \#2, Edwards after \#4, Kaveney after \#7, Clute and Dorey after \#10, and Greenland after \#12. From \#13, Autumn 1985, the only editors wereOunsley and Pringle, although some previous editors continued to act as advisory editors. Since \#25, Sep/Oct 1988, when the magazine went bimonthly, the sole editor (and publisher) has been David Pringle, who had been from the outset, along with Edwards, one of the two major figures behind its publication. IZ had reached \#95 by May 1995. Begun as an idealistic exercise by a group of fans and writers at a time when the UK had almost no market for sf short stories, it has grown into by far the most distinguished UK sf magazine since NEW WORLDS and SCIENCE FANTASY. In appearance and content it is a fully professional magazine,although its comparatively low circulation (by US standards) of around 4,500 requires it to be classed as a SEMIPROZINE in HUGO voting.IZ published perhaps too many downbeat stories in its early issues, hoping rather too obviously to revive something of the feeling of Michael MOORCOCK's NW and its NEW-WAVE glories. However, it slowly developed - certainly by 1985-6 - a real personality of its own. From \#13 (Autumn 1985) Nick Lowe has contributed a sophisticated film-review column; from \#16 (Summer 1986) John Clute has been the featured and inimitable senior book reviewer. Since then the nonfiction component has continually improved: a second book-review column by Paul J. MCAULEY was added from \#23 (Spring 1988), and Mary GENTLE has reviewed with increasing frequency, as have, more recently, Chris Gilmore and Gwyneth JONES. Good interviews have appeared regularly, as well as literary and market analysis in the interesting Big Sellers series; Wendy Bradley began (and later ceased) to review, amusingly, both tv shows andfantasy fiction; David LANGFORD began to publish monthly a condensed version of ANSIBLE, his well-known news-oriented FANZINEand Charles PLATT and Bruce STERLING (separately) contributed occasional columns of (deliberately) controversial polemics.All of this gave the magazine a goodbone structure on which the skin and musculature of the fiction could be adequately supported. It has slowly become clear that this one magazine, despite its slender resources and comparatively small readership, has been largely (if not solely) responsible for catalysing a second new wave of UK sf. Its younger UK authors have included Paul J. McAuley, Steve BAXTER, Keith BROOKE, Eric BROWN, Richard Calder (1955-), Neil FERGUSON, NicolaGriffith, Simon D. Ings (1965-), Ian Lee (1951-), Ian MCDONALD, Ian R. MacLeod, Kim NEWMAN and Charles Stross, among many others, coming in to join already established writers like Brian W. ALDISS, J.G. BALLARD, Barrington J. BAYLEY, M. John HARRISON, Gwyneth JONES, Garry KILWORTH,Keith ROBERTS, Brian M. STABLEFORD and Ian WATSON. Australian Greg EGAN has been an especially notable contributor, as has, though more seldom, the Canadian Geoff RYMAN. Good US contributors have included Greg BEAR, Michael BLUMLEIN, Scott BRADFIELD, Paul Di Filippo, Thomas M. DISCH, KarenJoy FOWLER, Richard KADREY, Geoffrey A. Landis, Pat MURPHY, Rachel POLLACK and Michael SWANWICK.This represents, so far as UK sf writing is concerned, a spectacular upturn in both the quality and the quantity of sf by new writers, after long years of near-stagnation in the 1970s and early 1980s. It is not so much the UK writers' uniform brilliance - they are byno means always brilliant - as the sense of vigour and community they arouse by their regular appearance together in this magazine; this is what has revitalized UK sf, and incidentally encouraged the starting up of many other small UK semiprozines in IZ's wake. Pringle as editor has occasionally, and somewhat unfairly, been accused of playing it too safe and commercial in recent years, after publishing much experimental fiction early on. More commonly he is regarded as having got the balance between SOFT SF and HARD SF, the experimental and the old-style fast-pacednarrative, about right. In the late 1980s and the 1990s, IZ has been intelligently eclectic.Both cover art and interior art have been of uneven quality. The most notable artist consistently associated with Interzone - he was Art Editor for a time - is Ian MILLER. In Oct 1994 IZ merged with the small-press magazine SF Nexus, with the result that Paul Brazier, editor of the latter, became graphic designer for IZ. The result, according not just to the elderly and conservative, has been a design of striking ugliness in the name of modernism.

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