Presentation on Interzone and Captain Future: Wizard of Science

Interzone

• Founded in 1982 in Great Britain.
• Is considered a semiprozine the class of Hugo Awards created after Locus started sweeping the Best Fanzine category. This is a nebulous category, defined by the Hugo Bylaws as:

Best Semiprozine. Any generally available non-professional publication devoted to science fiction or fantasy which by the close of the previous calendar year has published four (4) or more issues, at least one (1) of which appeared in the previous calendar year, and which in the previous calendar year met at least two (2) of the following criteria:

1. had an average press run of at least one thousand (1000) copies per issue,
2. paid its contributors and/or staff in other than copies of the publication,
3. provided at least half the income of any one person,
4. had at least fifteen percent (15%) of its total space occupied by advertising,
5. announced itself to be a semiprozine.

• Interzone won the best semiprozine award in 1995 and become the second of three zines other than Locus to win the award (which has only not one the award four times since the category was created since 1984).
• Is a journal of science fiction and fantasy that publishes criticism as well as fiction. While both fields are covered in the critical articles, the stories are almost entirely SF.
• David Pringle edited the magazine from its first publication in 1982 until his retirement in 2004. Since, it has been edited by Andy Cox.
• Published quarterly from 1982 until 1988. Bimonthly from 1988 to 1990. Monthly from then until 2003 when the magazine fell behind schedule and begin to be published bi-monthly. It continues in this format.
• Noted for having a high standard of fiction and developing new talent (Alistair Reynolds and Greg Egan, for example).
• Has an interesting history of author publications, that probably suggests its semi-pro status. The complete publication history is available online, and some unusual trends emerge. Gibson has two stories, while lesser-known talents have published twenty stories.
• While the magazine does have a habit of fostering developing talent, JG Ballard is one of the most frequent contributors throughout the magazine’s history. Additionally, I would suggest that the publication statistics are skewed towards British SF, but even this doesn’t completely hold: Paul Di Fillipo, who is an American writer and part of the original cyberpunk movement, has more stories than almost any other author.
• As the magazine is long running and hugely important, it would be hard to give a full break down of authors, but, primarily, the stories seem to fall into the tail-end of the New Wave (Ballard and Michael Moorcock), cyberpunk (Di Fillipo, Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling, and William Gibson), and the post-cyberpunk hard SF movement (Charles Stross, Rudy Rucker, Reynolds, etc).
• Despite this storied history, the magazine currently hangs on the verge of bankruptcy.
• Our run of the magazine is 15 issues from 2002-2004.
• Issues during the (brief) run feature 5-6 stories, one interview, film reviews, book reviews, and an editorial.

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interzone_(magazine)
• http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/IZ/

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Captain Future: Wizard of Science

• Published quarterly from 1940-1944 (no issue in Fall of 1943).
• All issues concerned the adventures of Captain Future, who was largely copied from Doc Savage, an earlier pulp adventure hero.
• The character was created by Edmond Hamilton and each issue of the magazine featured a novel by him (except Spring 1943 & Spring 1944 which were written by Joseph Samachson)

Titles (from Wikipedia):

1. The Space Emperor Wntr/40
2. Calling Captain Future Spng/40
3. Captain Future’s Challenge Smmr/40
4. The Triumph of Captain Future Fall/40
5. The Seven Space Stones Wntr/41
6. Star Trail to Glory Spng/41
7. The Magician of Mars Smmr/41
8. The Lost World of Time Fall/41
9. Quest Beyond the Stars Wntr/42
10. Outlaws of the Moon Sprn/42
11. The Comet Kings Smmr/42
12. Planets in Peril Fall/42
13. The Face of the Deep Wntr/43
14. Worlds to Come (Joseph Samachson) Spng/43
15. Star of Dread Smmr/43
16. Magic Moon Wntr/44
17. Days of Creation (Joseph Samachson) Spng/44

14-17 Credited to “Brett Sterling,” which was a “house name:”

(From Scipedia): A house name is an author name owned by the publishing house, rather than something the author chooses (which would be a pen name). House names may be used to convey a particular feel, and typically are used for the works of several different authors. This also allows the publishing house to use the same apparent author name for different series, leading the reader to expect a continuity of styles

Joseph Samachson, who wrote two of the last four novels was a bio-chemist who wrote SF and comic scripts under a pseudonym. He invented The Martian Manhunter for DC.

• Captain Future was Curtis Newton, a boy-wonder raised in space by robots following the death of his parents at the hands of a mad scientist. Two of Curtis’s robot parents can be thought of as the inspiration for R2D2 & C3PO in Star Wars, as their high-jinks often served the same function.
• These novels (and their usage of high adventure and recurring characters) can be thought of as early precursors to comic books (and, in fact, the character did have a comic incarnation after the pulp industry more or less shut down).
• Additionally, the stories in Captain Future are often simplistic, although they get increasingly emotionally complex, thanks largely (as some have suggested) to the influence Hamilton’s wife, Leigh Brackett (a much more talented SF writer who wrote the screenplay for Empire Strikes Back (amongst other SF works)).
• Following Edmond Hamilton’s death in 1978, the character went through a renaissance of sorts, as the Captain Future novels were filmed as anime in Japan. While never being sold in the US, translations of these cartoons have enjoyed immense success in France, Italy, and Germany. The visual style and content of the anime was also a major inspiration for Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem the feature-length music video commissioned for Daft Punk’s album, Discovery.
• We have nearly the entire run (missing one issue).
• Each issue features a Captain Future novel, a short story, and a serialized novel. Additionally, a letter column called Under Observation and a really odd feature called Worlds of Tomorrow that was a collection of reports on space colonization (usually taking place between 1971-2000) and inhabitants of the solar system (and beyond, they ran out of planets). Histories are usually grim (de-evolution on Neptune, environmental devastation on Earth).

Sources

• http://www.captainfuture.com/deutsch/pulp/main.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Future
• http://scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/House_Name
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Samachson