The Third Alternative is published by TTA Press, who are based in rural Cambridgeshire in the UK, and promises 'extraordinary new fiction - cinema - art'. TTA Press hasn't got the highest profile, and I picked up Issue 26 at the Murder One/New Worlds bookshop on Charing Cross Road, London recently. I can't recall having seen a copy before either there or in the Forbidden Planet bookshop nearby on any previous visit.

The TTA editor was disinclined to provide a review copy for www.bestsf.net when I contact him by e-mail, so it was with a slight hint of ill grace that I handed over £3.25 to purchase the issue.

The production quality of the magazine is excellent, certainly well ahead of Interzone, and the opposite end of the, er, spectrum to the other UK magazine Spectrum SF, which has gone for the text only, no illustrations approach. But as I buy SF magazines primarily for the fiction, illustrations and art are a bonus rather than an essential. And conversely, unfunny cartoons and substandard covers and illustrations in the majority of SF magazines are a slight nuisance with which I manage to live.

The Editorial news is that TTA is breaking into the USA with an office stateside. Now then <ill grace> if the TTA editor had given me a complimentary copy I would at this point refer you to the TTA website and offices in the UK and the US on a quid pro quo basis, but as he didn't, I won't. Nyah. </ill grace>

Mention should be made of the fact that TTA is funded by the Arts Council of England - in particular eastengland|arts.

And without further ado, on with the reviews of the 'extraordinary new fiction' therein

Danith McPherson. Of Blood and Earth.

The Aztec Days of the Dead festival in a remote South American village is a backdrop to a well-written tale of a most unpleasant businessman whose machinations and previous wrongdoings come back to haunt him in several ways.

Hi-tech scheming, money and power are shown to be no match for the simple magics passed down the generations.

Antony Mann. Burma Skyway.

A more straightforward SF story, in which a corporate conglomeration is building in the Burmese jungle a series of hi-tech holiday destinations for the rich and the well-off. And as you might expect, the local workforce are being exploited. Eco-terrorists use a novel way of bringing to the one of the employees a full realisation of what is happening on the ground (although it is somewhat unlikely that they would go to so much bother for a middle-ranking engineer).

James Lovegrove. Running.

Interviewed in this issue, Lovegrove provides a 2-page short in which running away from personal demons becomes a literal solution. Lovegrove obviously runs himself, in that he portrays the pleasures of running - with the exception of rubbing Vaseline into parts of the body which would otherwise chafe. But perhaps that's just me.

Echoes of the McPherson story in terms of ghosts coming back to haunt.

Glen Dennis. In the Pineal Colony.

The second-published story (not that you would necessarily spot it) by the author. The chance of a holiday romance turns sour for the nameless POV guy when his travelling companion Alice hits it off with another holidaymaker.

To offset jetlag POV and Alice take capsules which produce sleep regulating hormones from the pineal gland. Simon shows interest in a mythical hybrid/Rainbow people, descendants from humans which bred with Neanderthals. The trio seek out a native ritual, in which the pineal gland of reptiles are eaten. And as you might expect, there ae consequences.

An interesting story, which echoes of JG Ballard in a sense of people slightly adrift amongst a subtly strange, changing landscape.

Simon Ings. All Cats Are Grey.

Musings on media and Monroe/celebrity-sexuality yearnings in a non-narrative mode.

Alexander Glass. The Necropolis Line.

Glass has appeared in Interzone a number of times over the past year. Here he paints a dark, dark picture of a new-Victorian, gloomy, fog-bound and dank London in which a train carries the plague? dead of London to burial pits and cemetries outside of the capital. Who would work on such a line? And why?

We find out. An excellent, chillingly macabre and atmospheric story.

Other content

• Somebody called Allen Ashley provides a column which takes up a page and a half . He says that he aims to make this column the first thing a regular reader turns to upon receipt of a new TTA. Hmmmm.
• James Lovegrove is interviewed by David Mathew
• A column by Christopher Fowler about his personal cinephilia
• A lengthy and revealing and enjoyable review of film director Michael Powell's movies by Roger Keen
• The Review : interview/reviews of Jon Courtenary Grimwood, Michael Faber, Paul McAuley, and reviews of a dozen novels and several collection of short stories - Jason Brown, Shug Hanlan, Alan Wall, Philip K Dick, Maurice Richardson.
• A godawful inside back cover advert for a book by Mat Coward which trumpets 'hilarious cartoons by Roby Kirbyson' which bizarrely uses a cringe-inducingly poor and unfunny cartoon by said ROBK

Conclusion.

Obviously pitching itself at the literary end of the market, and only slightly in danger of taking itself too seriously. Certainly worthy of a higher profile (or maybe that might spoil the fun - wouldn't want to be too 'mass market!').

The fictional content is of a high quality, with the Glass story my pick of the bunch, and certainly TTA should be added to anyone reading a substantial amount of short SF - a nice change from yet another Lydia Duluth or The Company or Draco's Tavern story from certain other SF magazines. But with the proviso that this is the first issue I have read, so I can comment on either how representative this issue is in terms of quality, nor in terms of range of the stories.

And of course I'm going to give you their website details: http://www.tta-press.freewire.co.uk. If you visit their website, tell them I sent you ;-)