Adventure Rocketship! Edited by Jonathan Wright

Good

A new magazine in book format Adventure Rocketship! Is a mix of fiction, interviews and essays on the subject of the future. This first edition is “Let’s all go to science fiction disco” and investigates the crossover between music and SF. The cover art is by Stanley Donwood, who also contributes a story to this edition. I very much enjoyed the mix of music and SF here with stand-out bits being the interview with China Mieville, the essay on the music of Rush (a band most of my friends were really into in school and one I therefore know well), J.G. Ballard’s contribution to post-punk, Tim Maughan’s excellent story set in near future Bristol and Lavie Tidhar’s short which is one of those ideas that you wish you’d thought of. There’s an essay on the music of Ladyhawke by Anne Perry which was really interesting and made me want to re-watch the film (I last saw it in the 80’s I reckon), an essay on the excellent Phonogram by Jared Shurin, an interview with China Mieville, stories by Liz Williams and Martin Millar and much much more. As with all such things there is variation here but where things didn’t speak to me, as a reader, it wasn’t for lack of quality more my own lack of interest in say, Boney-M for example. Are you a fan of music? are you a fan of speculative fiction? If you answer yes to either of those questions then you’ll enjoy this. If you answer yes to both of those questions then you’ll love this.

 

Overall – Really interesting new collection, I’m looking forward to the next one