The Complete Patchin Review

Edited by Charles Platt

ISBN 978-1-4710-6723-5 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-913451-51-6 (ebook)

Ansible Editions, September 2022

Back cover design by Charles Platt

Print edition released in September 2022 as a trade paperback: 350 pages, 158,000 words. All proceeds from sales go to the TransAtlantic Fan Fund.

The Patchin Review ran for seven issues from 1981 to 1985 and generated much controversy in the SF community with its no-holds-barred criticism, satire, examination of dubious publishing practices, exuberant “Gabby Snitch” gossip column and numerous polemics both signed and pseudonymous. As its title indicates, the 2019 ebook contained the complete run, plus thematically related bonus articles by Charles Platt from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Science Fiction Eye.

Charles wrote a new introduction for the ebook reissue, excerpted below. Exclusive to this paperback are two “lost” Gabby Snitch gossip columns that appeared in Science Fiction Chronicle but couldn’t be traced when the ebook was in preparation; these have their own new introduction.

From the Introduction

Increasingly, I saw that editors were afraid to publish serious or experimental science fiction. A writer such as Philip K. Dick had broken into the field in the early 1960s writing short novels, each of which appeared as half of an Ace Double. A few years later, a writer such as Thomas M. Disch had imagined he could make a living writing serious literature such as Camp Concentration. I didn’t think that either Disch or Dick would have been able to find a publisher if they had begun writing in 1980.

Because I lived in New York City, and knew all the editors, and also knew most of the writers in the United States and Britain, I felt I was in a position to publish a small magazine of commentary that would be frank about the changes that were occurring and could agitate against some of them. That was my intention in The Patchin Review. I also decided to have some fun by publishing a self-satirical gossip column. I hoped that people would buy the magazine for the gossip and then read the more serious features.