New Genre – Winter 2006

That genre fiction is rarely thought of as quality work should come as no surprise to anyone who has tried submitting it to undergraduate writing workshops. The editors of New Genre take their crack at the stigma of the g-label via a pair of essays which posit that there is no shame in writing, reading, and using the very word “genre.”

That genre fiction is rarely thought of as quality work should come as no surprise to anyone who has tried submitting it to undergraduate writing workshops. The editors of New Genre take their crack at the stigma of the g-label via a pair of essays which posit that there is no shame in writing, reading, and using the very word “genre.” A bit of preaching to the converted, yes, but an interesting opening to this issue. “Science fiction” and “horror” are labels that cover a wide range of subject matter, skill, and originality, and these stories certainly reflect that. While I found the horror tales a bit conventional (one downright plodding), the sci-fi stories were both knockouts. Most impressive was Paul A. Gilster’s “Three Views from Deir el-Medir,” a sophisticated narrative about an engineer who is about to launch the first unmanned probe to a star. He is a man who can’t understand why his wife is apparently recovering from a terminal illness; who “[likes] the idea of a tomb with a star map inside it”; who struggles to understand the mysteries of life and death. Bump up the quality of the horror, and I think this magazine has the potential to really stick its thumb in the eye of literary snobbery.
[www.new-genre.com]