Grimdark Magazine Issue 1
At the end of last year I picked up Grimdark Magazine issue 40 to read Scott Lynch's new Locke Lamora story. It's a magazine that's been on my radar for a very long time but that for some reason I've never really dug into, despite ostensibly being a fan of grimdark fantasy (though I admittedly have only really scratched the surface of the genre - I suppose it would be fair to say that I'm a fan of the idea of grimdark fantasy moreso than I am of the actual genre, purely because I haven't explored it much beyond Joe Abercrombie).
Any short fiction magazine that persists for a decade and continues to publish the biggest names in its field must be doing something right, and so I figured a fun long term project would be to read every issue from the start. So today I sat down with the inaugural issue, from way back in 2015.
There are some big names here. There are stories by Adrian Tchaikovsky (at the time when he was most known for Shadows Of The Apt) and Mark Lawrence, plus an interview with Joe Abercrombie. There are also a couple of authors who I'm not familiar with, which is the reason I pick up magazines in the first place most of the time.
The opening piece in the issue is Tchaikovsky's story Shadow Hunter, which I enjoyed a lot. I only ever read the first three (I think) books in Shadows Of The Apt, but it was nice to return to that world. It's interesting to contrast his older fantasy writing with his modern SF work; I think he's objectively a better writer these days than he was in The Empire in Black And Gold, which is to be expected after working at his craft for close to 20 years since the publication of that book, and I think this story is a good illustration of his growth as a writer over the course of writing Shadows. It's punchy and gets right to the point in a way that the first couple of Apt books struggle to but his more recent work is very good at.
Much of this issue is concerned with defining what "Grimdark" is and showing how varied a subgenre it can be. This begins with an interesting article by Layla Cummins about the history of the term "grimdark" and the growing genre (this, remember, is in 2015). For some reason I never made the connection with Warhammer 40k as an originator of the term despite being a gamer and working in tabletop, and I certainly didn't know it came out of 40k fanfic. This theme continues through the two interviews present here, first with Joe Abercrombie having just released Half A King, and then with Graham McNeil of Black Library. I don't know much about 40k and haven't read any Black Library stuff, so I simply don't know who McNeil is. This was still a good read but I'm sure I would have got more out of it were I familiar with the subject.
The best part of Abercrombie's interview was his discussion of his dissatisfaction with traditional epic fantasy and its tendency to often take itself too seriously. I also really liked his reflection that "epic fantasy can get a bit obsessed about setting at the expense of character and plot", which is definitely a frustration I had and continue to have with the genre. Despite cladding myself as a fantasy reader I often find myself underwhelmed by a lot of the fantasy I pick up, and I think this is a big reason why I've been drawn to grimdark and Abercrombie's early work in particular.
Something I like about this inaugural issue is that the attempt to 'define' grimdark also extends to the stories presented here, which was a surprise. I was expecting mostly fantasy, but we also get two stories that aren't fantasy at all. Mike Gelprin's 'The Neutral' is a sort of softly-speculative near-future thriller, translated from Russian by Anatoly Belilovsky. Finding translated fiction here was a massive surprise, and I enjoyed this one a lot. Interestingly I didn't think I loved it at first, but in writing this review now I find that I've grown to like it more as I've had some time apart from it. The ending especially was a massive surprise, and one that works really well.
Similarly, Gerri Leen's The Woman I Used To Be' is a very bleak slice of SF. This one was really fascinating, a slowly-unfolding mystery that went to a place I wasn't expecting. I didn't love this one as much as some of the other pieces in the issue, but still enjoyed it, and thought it was a really interesting glimpse into how grimdark can function in other genres.
'The Red Wraith' is a piece of flash fiction in second person that's fine, but there really isn't enough of it for me to feel one way or another about it. This one is, unfortunately, forgettable.
The issue ends with Mark Lawrence's 'Bad Seed', and I think this is my favourite story in the issue, in large part likely because it's the one that most dully delivers what I'm lookong for in grimdark fantasy. I basically expected the whole issue to be like this, though I'm not at all upset about the amount of variety on display here.
I've been meaning to read the Broken Empire trilogy for a very long time and have had Prince Of Thorns on my shelf since it was first released but haven't got around to it, so this is actually the first piece of Lawrence's fiction that I've read. I assume that this is an origin story of sorts for one of the characters in that series, and it's made me want to read more. I really enjoyed this.
Overall this is a really strong first issue and I had a great time with it. I'm excited to see what issue two, and the next ten years, hold.