Chapter 4 - The Second Revolution: The British Hard-SF Renaissance

Summary

The cyberpunk revolution had been fiercely fought in public. Not only had its proponents declared their intent in the leading magazines and at conventions, its detractors had likewise been highly vocal to the extent of questioning whether there had been a cyberpunk movement at all. What was clear, though, was that the magazines promoting cyberpunk, especially Omni and Asimov's, had done so as part of an opportunity to revitalize science fiction and present it as a medium suited for the new generation of readers and writers—the cyberpunk generation, one might say.

But at the same time there was another revolution happening, rather more subversive and subtle and far from obvious until it was well under way. This revolution began in the amateur and semi-professional magazines, and its roots can be traced as equally to the British magazines, notably Interzone, and to those in other English-speaking countries as well as the USA. It was therefore, arguably, an international revolution and the best place to start is in Great Britain which had, until the start of the 1980s, been experiencing something of a science-fiction wilderness.

Out of the Wilderness

The situation for science-fiction magazines in Britain at the start of the 1980s was grim but ever hopeful. Of the magazines that had flourished in the 1950s, New Worlds had been the only one to survive into the 1970s and then only as a paperback anthology series. Even that had ceased and editor Michael Moorcock had kept it alive for a few more occasional issues as an A4-size fanzine, until it breathed what seemed to be its last in September 1979 with #216. It would return again, but not until 1991. The original anthology series, New Writings in SF, that John Carnell had started when he believed the day of the digest magazine was over in 1964, had ceased after 30 volumes in 1978. Kenneth Bulmer, who edited the final few editions, had two further volumes compiled but they never appeared.

There was Ad Astra, which was really a magazine of speculative science and strange phenomena which ran one or two sf stories per issue. Edited by James Manning, its circulation of 18,000, though good by comparison with other magazines, was not enough to finance the high cost of production without significant advertising revenue.