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The Third Alternative # 40 - Winter 2004
01/02/2005 . Source: Rod MacDonald 
magazine: UK publisher/editor address: Andy Cox, TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambridgeshire CB6 2LB. Price: £ 3.95 (UK), $ 7.00(US), $10.00 (CAN). ISSN: 1352-3783. check out website: www.ttapress.com
'The Third Alternative' (TTA) is now ten years old. It's also a year since I made a favourable assessment of this magazine (January 2004) so it was an opportunity to see how things have changed since the Earth's last orbit around the Sun.
Nothing has changed, you'll be relieved to hear. It's still a good quality magazine with many literary assets and it still has a unique position in the market which is possibly the reason it has lasted so long while others have fallen by the wayside.
Cover art on TTA usually has much to say for itself. Depicted here is 40's cover by Vincent Chong. While it's not to my liking, something inconsequential to the vast majority, it remains good artwork despite this conflict of personal preference. It expresses a lot about the magazine - the storyteller, as the title states, is essentially what this publication is all about.
I didn't do a count but advertising information tells us that there are 68 A4 pages with a total of 80,000 words which is what you'd expect in a novel. It has a good feel to it and I certainly wasn't embarrassed about leaving it on my coffee table - I couldn't say this about some other Science Fiction magazines I've had in my possession!
The first thing you see while flicking through the magazine is artwork. What makes this issue special, I think, is the variation from six different artists. All the work is very effective and evocative. As I said before in my last review of TTA, the artwork provides that vital first impression. If it's rubbish, the stories are tainted by this atmospheric lack of quality. The production people have made sure that the artwork is up to a high standard, commensurate with a tenth anniversary issue. It's worth buying the magazine just for this alone.
We do have fiction, however, and there's nothing to disappoint the discriminating reader. My only complaint concerns the propensity to write present-tense stories, mainly in short sentences. While this may add a certain immediacy, I think it makes many stories sound similar and gives them an heir of unreality.
Issue 40 has fiction from Steve Mohn, Paul Meloy, David J Schwartz, Darren Speegle, Melanie Fazi, Vandana Singh and Eugie Foster. My favourites were 'Thirst' by Singh and a curious tale of a gifted child, 'Running On Two Legs' by Foster. While some stories were better received than others, all had a reasonable level of quality.
Usual columns and a couple of interviews made up the rest, not to forget the section on book reviews which, while excellent, wasn't up to the standards of Crowsnest. This disparity nevertheless imparts a goal to which the review writers can aspire!
Using a different guest editorial for each issue is a good idea in that each then becomes unique. (We get lumbered with Uncle Geoff's diatribes every month...that's a joke, Geoff...honest...ouch!) The publishers behind the magazine remain the same, of course, and they seem to be able to steer a straight course across a dangerous sea where many other publishers flounder and sink.
Overall, issue 40 is worthy of being an anniversary issue. Let's hope TTA can continue its run of success to be here in 2015. There's no reason why not!
Rod MacDonald
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