PS Publishing have published a number of damnably collectible chapbook in recent years, the more sfnal of which I have reviewed here. Each year there has been a handsome Gollancz volume containing four of the novellas ('cities', 'infinities' and 'futures'), which will have brought the stories and publishers to a wider audience.

Launched earlier this year, Postscripts is PS Publishing's foray into the magazine market. In contrast to the glossy TTA Press version of Interzone, this is a somewhat more understated volume, which is able to put some Big Names on the cover by way of compensation. The Guest Editorial is by Christopher Fowler's, and is a revised version of his GoH Speech at last year's British Fantasy Society annual convention - but that means that the editorial for the launch issue has its only mention of the raison d'etre for the new magazine as 'catering to the genres of the weird, the wondrous and the downright scary'.

Adam Roberts. Roads Were Burning.

Akin to Robert's 'Jupiter Magnified' novella from PS Publishing, this short has a similarly surreal feel to, with the burning of the roads in the UK having less impact on the population, and the main character, than you might expect. The burning tarmac inexorably approaches London with him somewhat surprised - very Ballardian in the way in which the disaster is not clearly explained, and in the detachment in which it is viewed by the main character.

Ed Gorman. Riff.

Short piece in which a terminally ill patient spends his last days in a hospital bed, warmed by the temporary friendships of those in neighbouring beds, and the revenge he has wreaked on his unfaithful wife.

Jay Lake. The Rose Egg.

Eggs being 'enhanced graphic generation', which enable graffiti artists to do with one throw of an egg what used to take them several hours with spray cans of paint. When this new tech appears on the streets a young gang member makes the most of it, eventually finding himself keeping the company of some dudes who are v-e-r-y high in the hierarchy. The story builds to a climax in which a very high price is paid. Inventive and fast-paced, and as with much of Lake's writing, vividly described.

Gene Wolfe. Prize Crew.

Short SF horror in which a crew which boards an empty alien vessel find themselves getting seriously freaked out by the ship. When one disappears completely (including the room she was in) things are bad enough, but what have they brought back to Earth?

Allen Ashley. The Overwhelm.

Meteorological conditions (an indreasingly oppressive fog), mirror a social worker's life, culminating in a claustrophobic denouement.

Eric Brown. A Choice of Eternities.

Brown's Kethani stories have featured in Interzone several times, involving several variations on the impact of alient technology enabling immortal life after death for humans. Here there is a quandary as the elderly mother of an adult with learning difficulties is concerned at the thought that he will be resurrected without those learning difficulties caused by a road traffic accident as a child.

Joyce Carol Oates. Stripping.

Very short, very dark piece of prose in which the narrator sheds (psychologically and physically) that skin which is not clean.

Brian W. Aldis (sic) Tarzan of the Alps.

Somewhat disappointing short piece which would be shaggy dog story if the giveway story title was presented at the end, which would leave us margingally amused as the misheard film title.

Lawrence Gordon Clark. Original Sin.

An architectural dig finds some strange bones, which suggest an off-world reason for humanity fucking up the planet (said fuckup being amply demonstrated to the scientist).

James Lovegrove. Seventeen Syllables.

Gruesome horror in which an elderly academic decides to de-clutter his life. Nothing wrong with that, except that he doesn't know when to stop.

Ramsay Campbell. Direct Line.

A teacher picks up a dropped mobile phone and ... gets more than he expected. The lurking horrors in the dark are less scary than the horrors which the poor sod has to teach day day in day out.

Stephen Gallagher. Restraint.

A woman finds herself in a very difficult predicament. She has crashed her car into a ditch and finds herself in hospital, her two kids nearby. Bad enough, but worse still, the body of her husband is in the boot of her car, and she has retrieve the car and and return to the task of disposing of the body. Except ... the person who drove them off the road is still on their tail, and that person appears to be .... no, surely it can't be...?

Peter F. Hamilton. Footvote.

Middle class angsters in London find themselves in a quandary by the opening up of a wormhole to a distant planet. Torn, because the private individual who has created the wormhole is only allowing certain types through - is the promised land, monoculture, monoethnic, libertarian, more attractive than the world they live in now?

Conclusion

The magazine is predominantly fiction, with only an interview with James P Blaylock, and an article by Mike Ashley which looks at SF magazine collection, as non-fiction content. The fiction is of an invariably high standard, and for this SF reader the stories by Lake, Wolfe and Hamilton were sfnal and entertaining (the Brown Kethani stories leave me feeling a little bit of 'enough already!'). Those whose preferences tend to the dark, horror genre will doubtless be pleased with the content of that type in this magazine - the Ramsay Campbell story impressed me, less for the horror element than the painfully observed school teacher at the centre of the story. An excellent sampler for PS Publishing's range of chapbooks, and for those whose preferences in SFF&H is SF-&H, then this will be right up your street (or dark alley), with the only minor quibble being that my preference would be to have at least one novella-length story, as a dozen short stories makes the reading process a little stop-start.