Interzone is a British science fiction magazine, started in 1982 and still in regular publication as of 2015, passing issue #260 that year. (That makes it Britain's longest-running SF magazine by a good margin.) Although it is technically classified as a "semi-prozine", and has won a Hugo Award in that category, it has a fully professional style of presentation, and has published stories by any number of big-name professional writers. Likewise, although as a British magazine it features mostly work by British authors, it has also published stories by American, Australian, and other writers, such as Greg Egan (something of an Interzone discovery — one of many) and David Brin. David Langford contributes a regular column.
The magazine naturally has its own Web site
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Tropes associated with Interzone include:
- Covers Always Lie: There's no intent to deceive, but Interzone covers are frequently commissioned or selected on standalone artistic merit, with no reference to any stories inside.
- Crapsack World/Downer Ending: In its early days especially, the magazine seemed strongly to favor dark and cynical stories, to the point where even its own editors complained that many of the submissions which they received featured miserable people wandering around blasted wastelands thinking about failed past relationships. It has evolved a perhaps more nuanced approach since then, but none of the editors have ever been afraid to publish stories that went a little dark.
- Fanservice Cover: Although Interzone aims for a serious and high-minded style, determinedly averting this trope for most of its thirty-plus years, one or two covers in the late 2000s led to accusations of sexism.
- Mundane Dogmatic: Interzone dedicated a whole issue to "Mundane SF" in 2008, and is certainly not afraid to publish stories which adhere to this principle in any issue.
- New Wave Science Fiction: Interzone first appeared just after the period usually assigned to the New Wave movement. However, as a relatively literary, sometimes experimental, serious-minded, British SF magazine, it consciously perpetuated many features of the British New Wave.
- New Weird: The magazine exists to publish genre fiction, but generally tries to avoid more dated tropes, taking many of the stories it runs towards New Weird territory.
- Shout-Out: The magazine's name is borrowed from William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch, and Burroughs is a major acknowledged influence on the sort of avant garde fiction often published in the magazine. "Interzone" also sounds like a cool term for that sort of experimental literary work, with its blended influences.
