SCIENCE FICTION CHRONICLE

   US SEMIPROZINE published and ed from New York by Andrew PORTER, monthly, current, 180 issues to Feb 1995. SFC was founded in 1978 as a department of Porter's more elaborate but now defunct magazine ALGOL, and became a separate publication in Oct 1979. It is a general news magazine about sf, whose coverage is not as broad as that of its competitor, the West Coast magazine LOCUS, though it contains fan material, a film column by Ed NAHA (until Sep 1990) and the "London Report" by Stephen Jones and Jo Fletcher,all of which cover ground rather different from Locus's. The film column is disappointingly fragmentary and the book reviews, by Don D'Ammassa, are very short. Something of an East Coast institution, SFC does offer an alternate voice for the sf community. In its one-man-band editorial performance it shows astonishing stamina in its producer, Porter, who received a Special Award at the World CONVENTION in 1991 for his "years of continuing excellence" in editing SFC, in the pages of which he subsequently apologized for his less than graceful acceptance of the award, which he regarded as "a consolation prize". No such response was necessary in 1993 and 1994, for SFC did indeed win the HUGO award in the semiprozine category in both those years, bringing to an end Locus's astonishing run of nine years' domination of the award ever since that category was first established.

   PN