Science

Mike Ashley's acclaimed history of science-fiction magazines comes to the 1980s with Science Fiction Rebels: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1981 to 1990. This volume charts a significant revolution throughout science fiction, much of which was driven by the alternative press, and by new editors at the leading magazines. The period saw the emergence of the cyberpunk movement, and the drive for what David Hartwell called 'The Hard SF Renaissance', which was driven from within Britain. Ashley plots the rise of many new authors in both strands: William Gibson, John Shirley, Bruce Sterling, John Kessel, Pat Cadigan and Rudy Rucker in cyberpunk, and Stephen Baxter, Alistair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton, Neal Asher and Robert Reed in hard sf. He also shows how the alternative magazines looked to support each other through alliances, which allowed them to share and develop ideas as science fiction evolved.