Today is Chorus Day...

SFX #162, priced a trifling £3.99, is now available in all good newsagents, and several passable ones. Also, Sainsbury's.

Oh! I forgot to mention this last time, but - in what would appear to be a veritable avalanche of generosity on the part of SFX - you also get a free DVD, 'pon whose iridescent undercarriage is inscribed episode #1 of the parallel universe-hopping sci-fi extravaganza, 'Charlie Jade'.

Further examination of the Pulp Idol book reveals it to be a most wondrous tome of scintillating majesty and nascent genius. Great big props go to Laura Messenger's 'Dysmorphia', Beverley Allen's 'Maud: A Garden Tale', and Sheila Adamson's 'Goodbye Normal Jean' for being - respectively - bleak, creepy and effortlessly clever. Imbibe, post haste!

- Alex

SFX #162 is go!

The first bunch of Pulp Idol 2 books have gone out to subscribers (you may also find attached issue #162 of a magazine called 'SFX', which is worth a look, too). I had a quick flick through before work, and let me remind you that this is Good Stuff™, people, and worthy of your patronage. If money was sentient it would literally hurl itself out of your wallets and onto the counters of newsagents and supermarkets in an attempt to be involved in such a glorious transaction. Currency used in this manner would travel throughout the British economy, forever instilled with a sense of profound fulfillment, safe in the knowledge that it has, in some small way, made the world a better place.

- Alex

Faster, pussycat! Shill! Shill!

If you'll forgive a little shameless self-promotion: hi! My name's Alex Clarkson, and I'm the winner of Pulp Idol 2007, a short story competition held by SFX Magazine and Gollancz Publishing.

My entry was titled 'Da Capo', and it's eleven different kinds of awesome. If you don't believe me, ask renowned sci-fi author Geoff Ryman, who said of 'Da Capo': "a surrealistic but touching fantasy idea, and a current contemporary subject given a terrifying new twist." Sweet Jesus! There's simply no feasible way of containing your excitement short of an icepick lobotomy!

'Da Capo', plus 11 runner-up stories, is being bound into mini-book format by the good people at SFX or possibly Gollancz, and it'll be given away free (yes, you heard right! FREE, by God!) with the issue of SFX Magazine. Of course, by this point you, faithful reader, are doubtless frothing at the mouth with anticipation, and therefore I need not remind you to buy two copies of the magazine. This will ensure that you have a replacement in the event that you thumb the first one to shreds, which you most assuredly will.

The standard of writing in last year's Pulp Idol was amazing (not quite as good as this year, of course, because I didn't enter last year): eleven succinct and divinely dinky sci-fi, fantasy and horror romps, each one a glorious shot of literary ambrosia injected directly into your retinae. I am confident that the quality of stories published this year will be such that looking directly at the text will rend the very flesh from your bones à la the end of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'. If nothing else, it will almost certainly be the best eleven sci-fi short stories given away free on a magazine that you will read this year.

Cheers,

- Alex