GeezerVison

Entry updated 10 August 2026. Tagged: Publication.

US Semiprozine, Fall 1993 to #8 (undated 1998), initially quarterly but with a two-year gap before the final issue #8 in Spring 1988, trade paperback format, edited and published by Bryan Cholfin from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The uncompromising style of Cholfin's Broken Mirrors Press informed this attractive Small Press fiction quarterly, which enjoyed a remarkably high level of editorial quality. Its issues included new fiction by Brian W Aldiss, Michael Bishop, Karen Joy Fowler, Gwyneth Jones, R A Lafferty, Ursula K Le Guin, Jonathan Lethem and Lisa Tuttle; it also republished Gene Wolfe's novella Empires of Foliage and Flower (1987 chap; Winter 1993), which had previously been available only in an exorbitantly priced de-luxe edition. Le Guin's novelette "The Matter of Seggri" (Spring 1994) was nominated for the 1994 Nebula Award and won a James Tiptree Jr Award. Crank!'s high standards – and the resulting pressure on an editor who ran the entire operation single-handed – militated against long-term success; the publication schedule became uncertain and ceased altogether in 1998.

There is an excellent retrospective anthology, The Best of Crank! (anth 1998) edited by Bryan Cholfin, featuring all the above-mentioned stories and authors. [GF/DRL]

further reading

• Bryan Cholfin, editor. The Best of Crank! (New York: Tor, 1998) [anth: hb/Pangorda]

links

• Galactic Central illustrated checklist
• Picture Gallery

previous versions of this entry

• Internet Archive