-
INTERVIEW: Charles Tyra launches new science fiction magazine "Goblins & Galaxies"
- 2025/05/01
- 再生時間： 22 分
- ポッドキャスト
-
サマリー
あらすじ・解説
My novelette, An Illicit Mercy, is part of a new promotion in May: FREE Sci-fi & Fantasy.Over 165 stories, novels, samples and excerpts, available at no cost.A heroic, humorous, and inspirational space opera!Get your FREE copy of Showdown at Jupiter's Edge: A Maxo Magnaveer Adventure by Daniel P. Douglas.Space cop Maxo Magnaveer, desperate for a major career boost, takes a wild left turn at Mercury to pursue a greedy pirate, setting himself onto a collision course with destiny!In the year 2247, Detectant Maxo Magnaveer yearns for an opportunity to prove himself in the Cosmic Law Force so he can be promoted to squad captain. When a greedy privateer, Colonel Zaza D'Rump, brazenly hijacks a shipment of synthetic foods on its way to Mars with plans to starve the colony to death unless he is given control of Earth's shipping lanes, Maxo sees his opportunity to rise above, save the day, and finally move up in rank and prestige.Fooled by those he thought were allies, Maxo stumbles on the slippery edge of failure more than once as he races to what could be a catastrophic battle above Jupiter near D'Rump's secret base, Porto Blago. With his career and so many lives at stake, Maxo gains the help of old and new friends, and begins to realize his quest may not be about proving himself to anyone, but about discovering himself and rising to his true purpose in the universe.First, however, he'll have to survive the showdown at Jupiter's edge...by Brian Scott PaulsThis article introduces what I hope will be the first of many interviews with those who work in the science fiction field, and perhaps readers as well.My inaugural guest is Charles Tyra, Publisher at Randolph Literary Press, which currently publishes Cosmic Horror Monthly, and will soon publish a new magazine, Goblins & Galaxies.Click below to watch the interview, or continue reading for a transcript of our conversation I’ve edited for clarity and readability.Brian Scott Pauls: You’ve described Cosmic Horror Monthly as a love letter to Weird Tales, one of the original fantastical pulp magazines. How do you define “weird fiction?” Newer readers who aren't steeped in the pulps may not know what that means and how to differentiate other types of science fiction and fantasy from weird fiction.Thanks for reading The Cosmic Codex! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Charles Tyra: With CHM, it did kind of start out as trying to pay tribute and homage to a magazine I loved growing up. And when it comes to weird fiction, you could probably ask ten publishers or editors, and they might all have a different answer. But for me, it's kind of like taking one of the sub genres like horror or science fiction or fantasy, and then you have something that's off with the world. And it's specifically unexplained. We just experience this distortion through the mind and the eyes of the main character.Brian: The triad of weird fiction authors, to me at least, seems to be the “acronyms”: H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard. All three wrote—in addition to fantasy and horror—science fiction. Do you find in weird fiction a blending of genres that tend to be more distinct when they don't carry that label?Charles: That's a good observation. They can be blended in all different ways as well as standing alone. And those three writers like had their own distinct style with doing that.Clark Ashton Smith took weird fiction in the direction of fantasy, Lovecraft in the direction of cosmic horror, and Robert E. Howard in the direction of sword and sorcery.Brian: Clark Ashton Smith has a small segment of his bibliography that is science fiction. But what do you think characterizes Clark Ashton Smith as a science fiction writer compared more modern writers?Charles: That's a writer that I really enjoy, but I haven't read [all] his works, compared to like Lovecraft. So how he differentiates in terms of science fiction is hard to say.Brian: Why don't you take the same question with Lovecraft? What makes a Lovecraft science fiction story different from an Isaac Asimov science fiction story?Thanks for reading The Cosmic Codex! This post is public so feel free to share it.Charles: The real difference is the science fiction is not really at the forefront. It's definitely there. You have characters that are scientists and that are trying to discover things. And rather than being enlightened, like a lot of characters in Asimov stories, they find something, and they're horrified, and their lives changed forever in a bad way.Brian: Do you have a favorite weird fiction science fiction story?Charles: It's gonna kind of depend on what era we're talking about. One of my favorites that combines weird fiction and science fiction is “The Diamond Lens”, by Fitz-James O'Brien. That's a super old one.Brian: But it's very good. James Gunn put it in one of his collections in The Road to Science Fiction. He called it a good candidate for the first modern ...