Flytrap
Entry updated 6 August 2018. Tagged: Publication.
US Amateur Magazine published and edited by Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw from Oakland, California, via the Tropism Press imprint in US quarto format, usually around 40 pages. It was started simply for fun, with a main run of ten issues, usually two per year tied in with one or another sf Convention (where most of its 200 or so sales were made), from November 2003 to November 2008. Several years elapsed before a further issue appeared: #11 dated March 2014.
Besides a regular column by Nick Mamatas, Flytrap featured mostly very short stories and poetry, attractively assembled and printed. Contributors included Barth Anderson, Elizabeth Bear, Greg van Eekhout, Theodora Goss, Jay Lake, Melissa Marr, Benjamin Rosenbaum and Catherynne M Valente, all writers known for their sharp, perceptive metafictions and visions of Fantasy. Whilst most stories would be classified as fantasy, folklore or Slipstream, some verge closer to sf, such as "419 Memoirs" (November 2006 #6) by Michael Canfield, about the question of virtual Identity, and "Crushing Butterflies" (June 2008 #9) by M K Hobson, which invokes Ray Bradbury's famous "A Sound of Thunder" (28 June 1952 Collier's Weekly) as the raison d'etre for controlling Time Travel. [MA]
links
previous versions of this entry