SCI PHI, the journal, is here!

For those of you who wondered how soon I’d make it into print again…

Science fiction has long been known as “the literature of ideas,” and for the last two-plus years Jason Rennie has been discussing those ideas in The Sci Phi Show, a podcast that deals with philosophical issues raised by science fiction films, television, and classic print stories.

Recently Jason decided to expand TSPS‘s activity into print (or at least text-configured phosphors) by publishing a journal containing both fiction and non-fiction. I can now report that the first issue of Sci Phi: The Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy has been released — and you (yes, YOU!) can buy it! It’s available in a number of electronic formats (e.g., PDF, plain text, eReader, Mobipocket Reader) for reading on your PDA or your desktop computer; it’s also in mp3 audio form for listening through your iPod or similar player; and, finally, you can also get it as a printed, deceased-tree version like other journals.

Here’s the table of contents:

Jason, Ryan Nichols, and I have supplied the nonfiction component to this issue. The other pieces, including Paul S. Jenkins’s “Epilogue,” are short stories.

If you’ve listened to the Variant Frequencies podcast, and especially to his drama/novel “The Failed Cities Monologues,” you know Matt Wallace‘s mindbending work. “The Losting Corridor” is a similarly intriguing piece. Stephen Dedman‘s work has appeared not only in print (many times and places) but also in audio on Escape Pod. Paul S. Jenkins is the creator of The Rev Up Review podcast and the author of the novel The Plitone Revisionist.

Readers for the audio version include (besides me, reading my own article) the estimable Sandtrooper TD-0013, author of the Star Wars–debunking A Different Point of View, and Nathan Lowell, whose excellent “Golden Age of the Solar Clipper” novels (starting with Quarter Share) I would recommend to anyone, especially those who enjoy Heinlein in his prime.

The electronic/audio versions are $7.00 (which gets you all of them in one downloadable package), and the print version is $13.00. Give it a look! You may find that SFF still gives you something to think about, as well as being fun to read.

1. The complete title to my article is “Requiem for a Harlequin: Two Perspectives on Time, and a Celebration of Kairos, in Three Stories by Harlan Ellison.” How Mr. Dedman and I both happened to choose “Requiem” for our titles is anyone’s guess. [↩]