A new magazine focusing on new fiction in the vein of classic pulp magazines like Planet Stories, Weird Tales, and Thrilling Wonder Stories is now out: Cirsova.
It launched the first and second issues with Kickstarter campaigns. The first issue you can obtain from Amazon, the second one is being produced and should come out soon. There is talk of doing a subscription option for the third and fourth issues. Number 3 will focus on pirates, and the fourth will be a double-size winter issue.
I got the first issue, and it’s an overall nice magazine. There is a novelette, 6 short stories, a poem, and an essay. Cover is by Jabari Weather, who also produced the cover for the second and third issues as well.
The name comes from role playing games. The creator of the magazine worked to create a setting for D&D in a fictitious “Cirsova Empire,” but it was never completed. It’s the name of their blog, which they use for the magazine as well, and looks like most of the material that was created for the setting is up on the blog. Considering the gaming background, I would almost expect some gaming material in the magazine. And we get one page of materials, “The Tomb of the Dwellers.”
I read through some of the stories to get a feel for them. All were pretty good, as noted they are in the general heroic fantasy and sf genre. The novella was set in a bygone era, and seems loosely based on ideas from H.P. Lovecraft, with humans ruled by Great Ones (who seem to be dying off), and wild shoggoths causing problems. The essay is a review of one of E.C. Tubb‘s Dumarest of Terra novels.
I contributed to the Kickstarter campaign to get the second issue. I’ll do a more substantial review when it comes out. It has a similar set of works, another novella, several short stories and another essay. But I encourage others to check this out. I think this fills a void for a source of such short fiction.
