The 'cover' of RED LION, WHITE BIRD
A Victorian pastiche about alchemy,
the illustration is from the famous
illuminated alchemical treatise
During this same period, I was involved with two major writing/publishing projects. The first was an outgrowth of the Science Fiction Writers' Group I helped start at the University of North Carolina. We had, in September 1989, published an original trade paperback anthology under the name FORBIDDEN LINES, which contained original fiction, essays, an interview with a famous movie director, and poetry, all with a science fiction, fantasy, or horror theme. 500 numbered copies were printed and were first offered at $8.00 apiece.
The 1989 anthology. The cover photo
is of an industrial site near
Wilmington, North Carolina.
Photo by Charles Overbeck.
Forbidden lines:
In spectroscopy, a forbidden mechanism (forbidden transition or forbidden line) is a spectral line associated with absorption or emission of light by atomic nuclei, atoms, or molecules which undergo a transition that is not allowed by a particular selection rule but is allowed if the approximation associated with that rule is not made. For example, in a situation where, according to usual approximations (such as the electric-dipole approximation for the interaction with light), the process cannot happen, but at a higher level of approximation (e.g. magnetic dipole, or, electric quadrupole) the process is allowed but at a much lower rate. [from Wikipedia]
As the cover lists, we were able to solicit gratis contributions from some famous professionals including Frederik Pohl, John Kessel, and 'Joe Bob Briggs' (the pen name of John Irving Bloom). The interview with cinematographer and director Byron Haskin was reprinted with permission from a book-length interview published by The Scarecrow Press.
The anthology table of contents:
Introduction (Paul B. Thompson)
Grandy Devil (short story, Frederik Pohl)
Kiss of the Kiwi (novelette, Tony Realini)
Evenstar (short story, Elizabeth Wyrick)
"Circuits Saying" (poem, Yeaton Clifton)
Black as Sin (short story, Anthony Enns)
The Superior Liar (essay, John Kessel)
If Bird or Devil (short story, Angeli Primlani)
"Night Dweller" (poem, Arlene Medder)
"Ice Pirates" (movie review, Joe Bob Briggs)
"Elspeth, at the Betrothal" (poem, Joanne Wyrick)
Zen Arcade (short story, Greg Dee Rawlings)
Into the Outer Limits (interview, Byron Haskin)
Queen of the Nothings (short story, Angeli Primlani)
"How the Owl was Silenced" (poem, Yeaton Clifton)
Halloween (short story, Peter Louton)
"Requiem for a Vampire" (poem, Joanne Wyrick)
To Hear the Sea-Maid's Music (short story, Tonya Carter)
Day Million (short story, Frederik Pohl)
Velocity Exercises (essay, Frederik Pohl)
"Winter's King" (poem, Joanne Wyrick)
Beast Singular (short story, Charles Overbeck)
"The Archer" (poem, Joanne Wyrick)
A few contributors' notes: Tony Realini became an M.D. opthalmologist. Joanne Wyrick has published a number of novels under her pen name, Jo Graham. In addition to being a writer, John Kessel is Professor of English at North Carolina State University. Greg D. Rawlings is a criminal lawyer in Denver, Colorado. Tonya Carter is, of course, my friend and collaborator Tonya C. Cook. Anthony Enns is Professor of English at Dalhousie University, in Nova Scotia. My wife Elizabeth Wyrick is chief publicist for the Music Department at Duke University. Angeli Primlani works with 3Arts, a theater and artists' collective in Chicago, IL. Yeaton Clifton received his PhD and lives and teaches in Michigan.
Corrections or revelations to the above list are welcome.
The anthology was an interesting exercise, but not exactly a sales success. Out of the print run of 500, about 150 sold. Fifteen years or so later, most of the remaining stock were remaindered and probably pulped. A dozen or so unsold copies are left and can be found on eBay.
Out of this experience Charles Overbeck decided a periodical was a better bet, and in late 1990 proposed we publish FORBIDDEN LINES as a bimonthly magazine. Charles had gained considerable editorial and production experience working for the student news magazine THE PHOENIX, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Charles had a strong interest in samizdat publishing, and conceived of FORBIDDEN LINES magazine as a sort of guerrilla style periodical devoted to science fiction, horror, and experimental fiction à la William S. Burroughs.
William S. Burroughs
never read FORBIDDEN LINES
His timing was good. The 1990s saw the final flowering of the self-published zine culture, which had grown expansively from the availability of low cost, high quality computer printing and paper copying. In less than a decade zines would become virtually obsolete as the World Wide Web made print publication redundant in most areas of interest catered to by print zines. But circa 1990-91 was a good time to enter zine publication, and the first issue of FORBIDDEN LINES the magazine appeared as a October-November 1990 issue.
The first issue of FORBIDDEN LINES,
October/November 1990.
Note the lack of credit lines on the
cover. Still, it contained 64 pages
of fiction, illustrations, poetry,
and general weirdness.
That's Charles Overbeck, playing
guitar in an industrial ruin
near Wilmington, N.C.
Photo by David C. Ball.
The magazine was printed by photo-offset in Benson, North Carolina, at first entirely on newsprint. Later the cover was printed on heavier weight white paper and more color was used. The last couple of issues had slick covers with three colors. The initial print run was 500 copies per issue. By the tenth issue or so, we upped that to 1,000 copies. At first we distributed copies ourselves, taking 5-10 copies per issue to independent bookstores, coffee houses, and the occasional head shop. In time we obtained (semi) professional distribution through a newspaper vending service. Peak circulation came around the twelfth issue, when 1,200 copies were printed and over 1,000 were sold. We provided review copies to semi-prozines like LOCUS and SCIENCE FICTION CHRONICLE. Advertising ourselves led to more and better submissions, and by the sixth issue the Writers' Group were no longer writing most of the material in the magazine.
Charles sells FORBIDDEN LINES
at a local SF convention, 1991.
I make out three issues on the table,
plus stacks of the anthology.
A strange phenomenon developed at this point. Although the circulation of later issues reached 1,000 or so, we were never able to sell more than a dozen subscriptions. We did not pay for material we published--not in money--but in author's copies, whereupon all rights to the work reverted to the author. Even so, very few of our authors or those who submitted stories to us bothered to subscribe. Inability to build a subscriber base eventually led to the end of the magazine. By 1994, Charles and I talked it over and decided to end publication. FORBIDDEN LINES was consuming a lot of time (and a lot of money) and not growing into a full-time, professional publication. Rather than limp along, we decided it was better to stop. The last issue, #16, was the sole issue in 1994. (We had switched from bimonthly to quarterly in late 1992).
The 9th issue, showing more advanced
graphics, color, and layout.
Art by Blair Wilson.
The early to mid 1990s was not only the final flowering of the print zine, it was also a boom time in horror fiction. Piggybacking on the mainstream success of writers like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Whitley Strieber and others, a wave of horror novels and films dominated the genre during that time. The epitome of this era was the rise of the so-called 'splatterpunks,' writers who brought extreme gore and violence to the genre. Partly inspired by its own title, FORBIDDEN LINES got more than its share of this kind of fiction. While Charles and I and the staff (mostly from the old Writers' Group, plus new recruits from the ranks of UNC students) wanted variety, graphic horror fiction began crowding out other genres. To vary the content we resorted to more non-fiction pieces, especially interviews with well known writers like James Morrow, Connie Willis, our old mentor John Kessel, and even non-fiction writers like UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass. Horror was not excluded, as we interviewed rising genre star Poppy Z. Brite, and visited the set of Hellraiser III, which was being filmed near High Point, N.C.
Forbidden Lines #7
Hellraiser III was filmed
in High Point, N.C.
Given the rise of Internet based websites, the eventual death of FORBIDDEN LINES seems inevitable. I learned a lot from the experience. Having been a writer at that point for about a decade, I got a lesson on what it meant to be a publisher and editor too. Publishing a genre magazine, even one as uncommercial as FORBIDDEN LINES, put me in contact with talented people, primadonnas, and outright weirdos I would never have encountered under ordinary circumstances. I discovered that some of the worst writers in the English language regarded their scribblings as so magical, so golden, that they had hysterical fits if anyone tried to edit them into readable condition. There was no direct correlation between talent and hauteur, but generally speaking, the best writers we dealt with were also the sanest, most down to earth, and least arrogant.
Reading slush at our weekly editorial meetings could be wonderful, or terrible, boring, or riveting. The good stuff was rare, but rewarding to find. We did cherish certain supremely bad manuscripts, and compiled a list of the worst turns of phrase gleaned from submissions. Don't ask; that list has long been suppressed.
All in all, I have to rate my experience as a publisher as a negative, by which I mean it did not advance my career. Though all experience teaches, and I learned a lot about publishing and managing a periodical from my days with FORBIDDEN LINES, I suspect my time would have been better spent writing my own work and developing wider contacts in the publishing world. The doldrums that lay ahead were entirely due to complacency on my part. I had a good thing going with TSR, but it couldn't--and didn't--last.
Next: Some samples from FORBIDDEN LINES Magazine.
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