Launch of Decade 1: The Best of Albedo One

It’s been out for a few weeks now, but I’m only now getting around to officially announcing the launch of Decade 1: The Best of Albedo One, an anthology edited by myself and published by Aeon Press that gathers a personal selection of the best short stories to feature in Albedo One, Ireland’s magazine of science fiction, fantasy and horror, during the first 10 years of its existence (issues 1 to 26).

I vividly remember standing at the bar in the Horse and Tram pub not far from O’Connell Bridge in Dublin chatting with Bob Neilson, Dave Murphy and Philippa (Brendan) Ryder about the sad lack of a home-grown science fiction, fantasy and horror magazine and one or other of us suggesting we start our own.

I remember in great detail the four of us sitting around the dining table in Philippa’s house soon afterwards hammering out the details of the magazine, coming up with the name, an ideal page count, estimating the costs involved (The ‘One’ in the title stands for 1.0 or 100%, as opposed to the albedo of Earth, which is only 0.39 or 39%, that being the amount of light from the sun that reflects back into space from our wee planet).

What I had forgotten was the excitement of pulling together (literally and figuratively) each new issue in those early years. But the process of reading through the fiction of those 26 issues brought that excitement flooding back. And I had forgotten just how good the stories were, making my final choice more difficult than I had anticipated. But in the end I had to make some hard decisions and now you can hold in your hands a distillation of the very best Albedo One had to offer during the 1990s and early 2000s.

It features fiction by Neil Williamson, Gill Alderman, Mike O’Driscoll, John W. Sexton, Robert Neilson, David Murphy and a host of others and is available in various formats here, here, here and here.