Kaleidotrope

Somehow this escaped my attention, but the first issue of Kaleidotrope got a couple of nice write-ups in the March 2007 issue of Xerography Debt. Both Eric Lyden and Gavin Grant received copies of the zine. Here's what they had to say:

Eric:
On first glance I wasn’t sure this was my cup of tea. But as I glanced I saw it had an article on the Transformers so I figured if nothing else I should give a quick skimming. And in spite of the fact that Jim Cleveland (the author) didn’t care for the Transformers movie (he says it was too violent for his tastes which was kinda the point—no one died on the TV show so in the movie they offed a whole bunch of Transformers. Add to that the minor but very memorable cursing and... how any true fan can dislike the movie is beyond me.) it was an enjoyable read for anyone who grew up with the show. So I read a little more and aside from the poetry (Poetry + Eric = dislike. That was a clumsy was of putting it, but fact is it just ain’t my thing) I found it to be a pretty enjoyable read. The fiction was all solid (and I’m trying to think of one story that was a real stand out, but in general it was all good. None of it quite reached “Holy shit, I will never forget this story!” level, but it was all good) and I enjoyed the back page blather where Stuart Crause just sorta goes on about topics ranging from magnetism to fashion to math. One of the better literary type zines I've seen lately. 44 not quite full size but bigger than half sized pages. No price listed but send a couple bucks at least to Fred Coppersmith

Gavin:
First issue of a new science fiction leaning lit zine that will be familiar to readers of ELECTRIC VELOCIPEDE or FLYTRAP. It’s not up there with those two yet, but these are early days and Fred shows a good amount of enthusiasm putting this together and getting it out there. The Horoscopes were a nice addition, i.e. “Leo: You have an active imagination and a keen imagination,so it will be all the more sad when that pack of rabid wolves finally get to you.” It’s the “finally” in there that gets me. All those years avoiding the wolves only to be brought down at last. Ach.

Electric Velocipede and Flytrap are definitely models of the sort of high quality, if not necessarily the exact same material, that I'd like to see in Kaleidotrope. And I think each issue -- I've already started putting together #3 -- is a little stronger than the one before, as I learn from my mistakes...and learn to make new ones.