Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies

The Rise of the Cyberzines concludes Mike Ashley's five-volume series, which has tracked the evolution of the science-fiction magazine from its earliest days in the 1920s to its current explosion via the internet. This series has traced the ways in which the science-fiction magazine has reacted to the times and often led the way in breaking down barriers, for example in encouraging a greater contribution by women writers and stimulating science fiction globally. Magazines have continued to build upon past revolutions such as the 'new wave' and 'cyberpunk', producing a blend of high-tech science fiction and expansive speculative fiction that has broadened the understanding of science and its impact on society.

This final volume, which covers the years 1991-2020, shows how the online magazine has superseded the print magazine and has continued to break down barriers, especially for the LGBTQ community and for writers of colour. Alongside the previous generation of writers from Greg Egan to Brian Stableford, Alastair Reynolds to Stephen Baxter, and Mike Resnick to Connie Willis, came a new cohort of writers including Aliette de Bodard, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Ted Kosmatka, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jay Lake, Kelly Link, Ken Liu, Anil Menon, Nnedi Okorafor, Charles Stross and Lavie Tidhar, who added new dimensions to the genre. Whilst the old guard magazines Analog, em>Asimov's, SF and Science Fiction Age, despite dwindling circulation, continued to entertain with more traditional science fiction, particularly in the hands of editors Gardner Dozois and Gordon Van Gelder, the new magazines including Pulphouse, Strange Horizons, Event Horizon, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Fireside, Fiyah and Uncanny, with such ground-breaking editors as Kristine Katherine Rusch, Ellen Datlow and Neil Clarke, widened the market for science fiction and gave it a new lease of life to cope with whatever the twenty-first century might deliver.