EDITORIAL

The shape of things to come

A new generation of authors are taking the science fiction/fantasy world by storm. Their writing, which has been dubbed the ‘New Weird’, is reinventing the genre: throwing out tired geeky formulae and adding urban grit and literary nous; throttling back the technology and powering up the characterisation.

And the ‘primary heat source’ of the New Weird is the UK, with new imprints like Tor and Orbit and Voyager going from strength to strength. For decades the US has been the undisputed home of science fiction and fantasy. These days cutting-edge editors are looking to the UK for inspiration and innovation.

What’s unusual about the
New Weird generation is how
many women are entering what has been, until now, an almost exclusively male preserve. Melanie Ashby took a walk on the weird side to find out what’s been happening

in the increasingly feminised world of fantasy and science fiction.
Signs are that a tide is turning in contemporary poetry too. More women poets are finding their voices than ever before. To mark this sea-change and alert you to some of the freshest new voices in the UK, we asked three experienced judges to select 10 of the best women poets to have emerged in the last decade.

The results reveal that the dominance of the ‘Big Six’ poetry publishers may be waning at last. Five of our poets were published by smaller presses – and something very interesting is happening to poetry in Wales…

2004 promises to be a great year for women, for the independent presses, for the regions. A weird and wonderful New Year for us all.

Debbie Taylor
Editor