Atlanta-Based Magazine Is New Take On Old School Sci-Fi Magazines
“Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker” opens in theaters this December, and the new films in the Star Wars franchise have pushed the technical side of the filmmaking far beyond what was possible at the time of George Lucas’ original trilogy.
But special effects are not everything in science fiction. One Atlanta writer and publisher is paying tribute to a very low-tech classic of the genre: the sci fi magazine.
It’s called “Infinite Worlds” and volume one comes out with a release party at Criminal Records on May 18 at 5 p.m.
Publisher Winston Ward — an Atlanta-based writer known primarily for running the flash fiction site, The Five Hundred — has been a fan of the genre since becoming a fan of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” at age five. But the idea to publish a magazine came after winning an entire year’s worth of back-issues of Analog Science Fiction Magazine from 1969.
“I was really happy reading the stories,” he tells “City Lights” producer Myke Johns, “and while I was reading it, I realized that I could do it better … not because I have so much more knowledge, but I have access to technology. I could get illustrators from all over the world, I could get stories from all over the world, I could print full-color.”
The first issue features three works of short fiction and twenty five full-color illustrations, indeed, from artists spanning the globe. Also included is an interview with the Atlanta metal band Mastodon, about their many influences from science fiction.
“I wanted to draw in noteworthy people or acts that are on the fringes of science fiction and see how it influenced them,” Ward says, “not necessarily just the Jonathan Frakes of the world.”
Ward says that he plans to release two issues this year and to make Infinite Worlds a quarterly publication after that.
“There’s no question that science fiction is the mainstream now,” he says, pointing out the sheer number of sci-fi and superhero films raking in millions at the box office. “But reading the Analogs, and the Omni Magazine and Amazing Stories, I could see the roots of where these big blockbusters came from. It really does come down to writing. Without the initial words, there wouldn’t be science fiction.”
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