Thursday, April 05, 2007

Tähtivaeltaja Hits 100 Issues

Tähtivaeltaja, Finland’s premier sf zine, started appearing 25 years ago (as Time & Space for the first few issues), an the 100th issue just came out. That’s quite a feat, and what makes it even more amazing is that it’s been edited by the same guy, Toni Jerrman, basically the whole time!

Tähtivaeltaja has never been content to just tread water, but instead it’s been constantly improving and looking for new things (and telling all about them too). Its main emphasis is and has been science fiction, but horror, comics, rock music, and different subcultures have also been strongly represented. Nowadays the zine doesn’t contain nearly as many accounts of people drinking booze or Toni raving about crappy gigs of bands nobody has ever heard of1) as it used to, but the zine is no less interesting. Tähtivaeltaja is the place to look for for information about new and interesting writers, upcoming trends in science fiction and fantasy, and informed book reviews.

The 100th issue is no exception to the usual quality. There are interviews of Jeff VanderMeer and Warren Ellis, a translated short story by Alastair Reynolds, the winning entry for last year’s erotic short story competition by Mari Saario, and a comic by Petri Hiltunen—in addition to the normal mix of news, reviews and columns, of course. As an additional bonus, attached to the issue is a 40-page Jeff VanderMeer chapbook about the King Squid. Excellent reading, as always!

Congratulations to Toni for the milestone! I’m looking forward to reading the next 100 issues.

1 By the way, one of those unknown bands he used to go on and on about way back when was The 69 Eyes—which I think quite a few have since come to know…

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