Summary: Electric Velocipede, 2008

John Klima's Electric Velocipede appeared twice more this year, but the second issue was a double issue, and John announced plans for thrice-yearly publication from now on. The magazine also transitioned to perfect-bound and rather longer issues. The mix of fiction and poetry and nonfiction, and the general style and "feel" of the magazine is unchanged.

So, 2008 saw issues 14 and 15/16. There were a total of 34 stories, four novelettes, the others short stories, seven of them "short-shorts". Total word count about 125,000. These numbers are rather higher than in past years. As ever, the magazine is more willing than many such 'zines in the field to published the occasional novelette, and more prone to publish fairly standard SF, though I would say that while we saw our share of SF this year at Electric Velocipede, there may have been a greater focus in the more traditionally slippery fare of these smaller press 'zines. (The numbers don't back me up on this though -- it was just a feeling I had, probably a result of reading order or something.) It remains a strong and entertaining entry in the field.

From Spring, I particularly enjoyed D. E. Wasden's "The Artificial Sunlight of Memory", a sad look at robots on Mars doing child care, and their obsolescence despite (or because?) they seem to be gaining sentience; and also Lisa Mantchev’s short sharp time travel tale "Perfect Tense", in which various versions of a woman through time fiddle with her personal history. From Winter, my favorites were William Shunn's "Timesink", in which a researcher discovers a curious effect on time attributable to electromagnetic fields ... and reveals the implications quite sneakily indeed; and Aliette de Bodard's "The Dragon's Tears", a fairy tale flavored piece in which a man tries to steal the title substance to save his dying mother, but is forced to confront the dragons instead; and Corey Brown's "Child of Scorn", an odd sort of time travel story with a sort of time cop chasing a man back to the time of Alexander the Great. Other strong pieces, in both issues, came from Leslie What, Melissa Mead, Darren Speegle, Robert J. Howe, Claude Lalumière, and Patrick O'Leary.

As for the statistics corner ... 22 of 34 stories were by women, or about 65%. Last year the totals were 3 of 17, or 18%; but #14 was an all-women issue, increasing the totals this year (and possibly lowering last year's numbers if some stories were shifted around). And the SF proportion was some 12 of 34 stories, 35%, just the same as last year.

Tags: 2008, magazines, yearly summaries