Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Deathray--the Magazine!

So a coupla of weeks ago, Devilman and I were trolling the local mega-book emporium, looking for reading material when we came across Deathray Magazine. What a super fantastic find...

Deathray is a British magazine, now in its sixth issue, that's motto says it all "Where Science Fiction Lives"...and not just SF either, but fantasy, and horror, and manga, and anything that might fall under the super fantastic rubric. But what really makes it stands out is that its a glossy mag, a la Fangoria or Entertainment Weekly that delves deeper than the mega corporate SF/F offerings. By which I'm saying that while it has lots of film, dvd and gaming stuff, it also has lots of book reviews, and author interviews (Ursula K. LeGuin anyone?). In fact, that's a good show right there--when was the last time you saw a cover of a glossy magazine trumpet the fact that it contains an exclusive interview with Ursula K. LeGuin?

Here's another example--Deathray has a feature called Time Trap, where they pick a year gone by (issue 6 this year is 1981) and then do a little retrospective on the various genre stuff that appeared during that year. 1981 happens to have Time Bandits, C.J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station, Excalibur, and Herbert's God Emperor of Dune.

That's the good news. The bad news is that in the US Deathray costs 10 bucks. But in its defence, it's glossy, it's large, there's a lot of info inside, and it's printed in the UK. 10 bucks seems a small price to pay. We got it at a Borders so clearly they have tied in with the big US magazine distributors. In the UK, its supposed to be readily available at WHSmith, Sainsburys and Tesco.

I'd like to see this magazine survive, so I'm gonna do my part and pick it up each month. I suggest you do too....

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