EDITORIAL By G. W. Thomas
THE prospect of starting a magazine fills me with delight. Why? Because each new magazine has a personality all its own. Fantasy & Science Fiction publishes the same genres and authors as IASFM but both magazines could hardly be confused for each other. Each has its own style, flavor, call it what you will.
CYBERPULP is sitting at such a threshold. Will it be like my favorite magazines of old? Will it be creepy and fantastic fun like Weird Tales? Will it feature hard SF like Astounding or adventure SF like Thrilling Wonder? Then there is the logical fantasy of Unknown Worlds, the classic detective stories of Black Mask or EQMM, and the all-out adventure of Argosy? Which will it be like? Which genres will be featured?
What is a genre anyway? The best definition I can think of is "a group of stories that follow a collection of conventions or themes". For instance, the detective in a hard-boiled Mystery is always a tough loner but one with a strong code of personal justice while a space opera will most likely have a bunch of muscular near-perfect male WASPs who jet from planet to planet. The writer can choose to defy these conventions but runs the risk of alienating that genre's readership.
Let's look at the individual genres you will find in CYBERPULP Magazine and in our book lines:
FANTASY is probably the oldest genre. Tales of gods and goddesses, heroes and monsters, Fantasy is based originally on myths, then legends like those of King Arthur and finally, on fairy tales. The conventions of Fantasy include hero and heroine quests, a quasi-medieval world without gunpowder, where magic really works. The Sword & Sorcery tale, as created by Robert E. Howard, is a recent Pulp offshoot that adds more supernatural elements to the mix.
HORROR is the next oldest, existing as campfire-style tales well back into antiquity. Pliny the Younger tells a haunted house story with rattling chains and all in the 1st Century AD. Petronius has a werewolf tale at the beginning of The Satyricon from about the same time. The genre as it exists today began with the Gothics inspired by Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto in 1764 then took a more gruesome line with the Penny Dreadfuls like Varney the Vampire (1847) and then a more psychological feel under Edgar Allan Poe. The Victorians refined the "ghost story" between 1840-1900.
SCIENCE FICTION is a fairly new genre, being an offshoot of Fantasy. Much of the very first SF reads like Fantasy today because it is based on the scientific knowledge of the day. As Science has progressed so has "the literature of ideas". Some critics have labeled Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) as the first good SF novel. Edgar Allan Poe inspired Jules Verne to write his Voyage Fantasique. H. G. Wells took the genre away from voyages and used extrapolation to create new worlds. In the 1920's Hugo Gernsbach modeled Pulp SF on these masters. Science Fiction has several sub-genres or themes like the Time Travel story, the Alien Invasion story, the Dystopic Future, and the Apocalyptic tale.
MYSTERY fiction had a slow start with several forerunners like Gaboriau and Wilkie Collins, but it was Edgar Allan Poe again who solidified the genre with his "The Murder in the Rue Morgue" (1841). Poe sets the rules for the mental duel that is the Mystery. The writer can't plant false evidence, only deflect the reader, the criminal must be known to the reader, etc. The writer who doesn't play fair will not find an audience. The Mystery has several sub-genres including the Who-Dunnit, The How-Dunnit and the Why-Dunnit. There are hard-boiled detectives in the American Pulp style and meek amateurs in the British Cozy fashion. The Police Procedural and the Forensic Mystery follow law-enforcement personnel on the job. Offshoots of the Mystery are the Suspense tale and the Crime story. In the Suspense tale the writer sets up a dangerous situation for the hero to puzzle his way out of. In the Crime story the writer simply shows the violent and fascinating world of criminals.
ADVENTURE could simply be called a story in which adventure occurs. The genre is a little more specific, usually tales of action in far-off places, where the hero or heroine is imperiled by Nature or humanity. The earliest Fantasy tales are adventurous but unlike Fantasy, modern adventure fiction usually tries to stay within the realms of possibility, much in the same spirit that Jules Verne wrote much of his "science fiction". Tales of journeys to far lands, like those of Marco Polo, would be the first adventure tales. The early magazines like The Strand and later the Pulps were filled with adventurous fiction. Certain writers in the genre have become icons of different kinds of adventure: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island is a Pirate yarn. Talbot Mundy's Grim Jim novels are Asian adventures. H. Rider Haggard was king of the African adventure with Allan Quartermain, just as Jack London excelled at the Klondike adventure. The Pulps spawned numerous "Adventure Heroes" like Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Spider, The Avenger, etc. Being so general, Adventure fiction can have an endless number of offshoots but some of the more common ones were Romantic Adventure (Adventure with a strong romance element), Spicy Adventure (Adventure with a sexual element), Historical Adventure (Adventure set in a certain time period), and the War or Action Adventure (Adventure in a dangerous location).
WESTERN fiction is easily defined as an Adventure tale set in the American West. Louis L'Amour preferred to call his writing "frontier stories". The Western has many conventions, both from fiction and film, which include the gun-fighter, the lone lawman, the evil cattle barons, the showdown, etc. The Weird Western is a relatively new cross-genre tale in which the Western has a supernatural element. Pulps like Weird Tales featured stories like "A Werewolf Western" but Stephen King's "The Gunslinger" series has added fantasy elements to these stories.
This is a pretty good catchall for what Cyber-Pulp is offering. Of course, we won't be fenced in by too many definitions. If we like it, if we think you'll like it, then we will publish it. For instance, which of these genres defines the avant-garde work of our Hertzan Chimera? None of them. And despite this, he appeals largely to fans of speculative fiction. Who are we to argue? No matter the genre, we promise to entertain you. Cyber-Pulp is genre fiction at its best.
GW
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Cyberpulp Magazine is a multi-genre magazine (SF, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Western, pulp Adventure) featuring 12 stories headlined by C. J. Burch's "Buried Things", and also including tales by Jack Mackenzie, Steven L. Shrewsbury, R. Cee, Matthew Spense, Abby Goldsmith and Eric S. Brown. Features an interview with Eric S. Brown as well as 2 non-fiction pieces by G. W. Thomas and reviews. The feature poet is Larry Sells. Cover art by M. W. Anderson.
