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I reviewed the 0 issue of GUD magazine at the beginning of this year, and was pleased to have #1 plonk on our doormat a week or so back. I noted that the earlier issue ‘a good mix of contemporary, speculative fiction’, and that it was ‘as strong a semiprozine as I’ve seen’. Others were equally complimentary.
I’ve got a heap of Science Fiction nagging at me to be read – a bigger heap than normal as my work routine has changed and I am now driving to work, rather than travelling by train, and have consequently less reading time! As a consequence of this, rather than being able to read from cover to cover properly, time has only allowed me to quickly skim this issue. Presentation-wise, it matches the high standards of the first issue (the interior b&w illustrations/photos for the most part just a smidgeon below the overall standard). Content-wise it appears to similarly match the first with offering a good mix of contemporary, specultative fiction. There are over 30 contributions, a mix of mostly shorter short stories, poetry and illustrations.
The fiction starts of with ‘Electroencephalography’ by Darby Larson, a story of robots which the young Asimov might have written after a vivid nightmare brought on my a late supper of pickled something or other, and promptly scrunched up and popped into the bin as the ravings of a lunatic not likely to be published in the 1940s; and Sean Melican’s ‘In the Dark’ looks at the perils of communication with aliens; these being a couple of stories closer to the traditional SF that is my preference, whereas the majority of the stories are at the contemporary, speculative end of the spectrum.
You can buy the PDF version online for only $3.50, which is pretty good value for money, and you’ll get much more sustenance, and fewer spots than if you spend that money on a Big Mac with Fries and a shake. Heck, there’s even lesbian sex in this issue!
