Postscripts
Entry updated 26 February 2021. Tagged: Publication.
UK Print Magazine and Semiprozine published in review-size by PS Publishing, Yorkshire, and edited by Peter Crowther assisted by Nick Gevers, with Gevers becoming the primary editor from issue #11 (Summer 2007). Since issue #18 (Spring 2009) it has treated itself as an Anthology series, rather than a magazine, though it has retained the numbering sequence. Originally published quarterly, the magazine switched to double numbers from #20/21 (December 2009), and these have since appeared annually (an exception being 2012 with two double issues, #26/#27 and #28/#29). Copies were originally paperbound, though contributors also received a special hardbound edition, but starting with #10 (Spring 2007), special issues and double volumes are hardbound.
The magazine took a few issues to settle into its stride. Crowther has always enjoyed slightly eccentric fiction, hard-edged and uncertain rather than traditional nuts-and-bolts sf, and the stories cover the whole range of fantasy, supernatural and sf. At one extreme is the Absurdist fiction of Rhys Hughes, such as "The Old House Under the Snow Where Nobody Goes Except You and Me Tonight" (Summer 2004 #2), which is in the realms of Lewis Carroll; at the other is "A Signal from Earth" (Autumn 2005 #5) by Stephen Baxter, a spinoff from one of his collaborations with Arthur C Clarke. The stories in between are not evenly balanced, the majority favouring the Rhys Hughes end of the scale, and also the horror dimension. Although there are stories by Jack Dann (in his James Dean alternate history series), Garry Kilworth, Alastair Reynolds and Robert Reed, there are far more stories by such writers as David Barnett, Ramsey Campbell, Paul Di Filippo, Joe Hill, Lucius Shepard and Howard Waldrop. The overall flavour is of a magazine that likes its sauces and spices more than its meat. This is further evidenced by the fact that the magazine has won two International Horror Guild Awards and one British Fantasy Award, and amongst its contents, two have won a Bram Stoker award, and a Horror Guild Award. Issue #15 (Summer 2008), however, was a special all-Sf issue for the World SF Convention.
From issue #18 (March 2009), which was a new writers special, Postscripts became a hardback anthology rather than a magazine, and each volume had a distinctive title; these were edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers until #32/33 in May 2014, at which point Gevers became solo editor since Crowther had stepped down. For fuller details of the anthology sequence, see the Checklist for Nick Gevers – though this omits #28/#29, Exotic Gothic 4 (anth 2012), edited instead by Danel Olson. The magazine/anthology sequence ended with volume 36/7 in 2016. [MA]
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