Sybil's Garage
Encyclopedia
Sybil's Garage is a speculative fiction
, poetry
, and art
journal, published by Senses Five Press. Issues one through six were released as a small press magazine, or zine
. Issue seven was released in trade paperback format. The publication combines artwork with fiction and poetry for a unique aesthetic. The majority of the stories have tended toward slipstream fiction (see interstitial art
), but some stories fall into traditional genres such as science fiction
, fantasy
, and horror fiction
. Above each story is the author's suggested musical accompaniment, thus adding to the magazine's intended effect of engaging multiple senses. Sybil's Garage was founded in 2003 by Matthew Kressel and Devin Poore of Hoboken, New Jersey
as an experiment in creating their own zine
. In May 2007 issues one through four were entered into the permanent collection of the Hoboken Historical Museum
. Issue No. 7 was pre-released at Readercon
, the conference on imaginative literature, on July 9th, 2010. The issue was released officially on July 21st, 2010.
In April 2010, three stories from Sybil's Garage No. 6 received honorable mentions in Best Horror of the Year, Vol 2, edited by Ellen Datlow
. They are Toiya Kristen Finley's "Eating Ritual," James B. Pepe's "I Am Enkidu, His Wild Brother," and Genevieve Valentine's "The Drink of Fine Gentlemen Everywhere." In addition, for the same issue, the poems "City of Bridges" by J. E. Stanley and "God’s Cat" by Lyn C. A. Gardner were nominated for Rhysling Awards in the Short Poem Category. Simon Petrie's "Downdraft" was nominated for New Zealand's Sir Julius Vogel Award
.
Stories from Sybil's Garage received honorable mentions in both the 2006 and 2007 editions of the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
, edited by Ellen Datlow
, Kelly Link
, and Gavin Grant
. In the 2007 edition (page xxxviii), praise is given to Eric Gregory's story, "The Redaction of Flight 5766," and poems by Bobbi Sinha-Morey and Ed Lynskey. JoSelle Vanderhooft's poem, "The Tale of the Desert in the Rain," is given an honorable mention on page 468. All works listed here appeared in issue three.
The intertextual "handwritten" notes in the margins of issue six reference work by Gary Numan and Tubway Army on their album Replicas.
. The woman on the TV is associate editor Alaya Dawn Johnson's sister, Lauren, singing at a karaoke bar in Manhattan. This image was originally intended for the cover. In addition, the cover would feature a miniature galaxy floating in mid-air, spewing out the authors names in a spiral. Ultimately, however, the aspect ratio and contrast made the image unsuitable as the primary image.
Randomly sprinkled throughout issue five are quotes from the 1983 concept album "Dazzle Ships
" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
(OMD). Many of the quotes are from the tracks "Genetic Engineering" and "ABC Auto Industry." The time 9:16 above the table of contents refers to the last stated time in the track "Time Zones," where recorded voices speak the exact time in multiple languages. The bar code under the quotes on page 71 is the same bar code on the back of the issue.
The cover photograph for issue four was taken in Hoboken, NJ. The plant leaning out the window is a ten year old spider plant still living in Matthew Kressel's apartment. The leaping fish is a marlin, and the planet in the background is Jupiter. The empty store in the photograph is now occupied by a company that sells "joke" shirts. The leaping marlin was inspired by the Hoboken fish store, Joseph Apicella & Sons, which had a huge metal sign in front of their shop of a leaping marlin. Due to lack of customers, the fish specialty store closed in Spring of 2007.
On the acknowledgments page of issue four is a vertical strip of text that begins, "You should. You should quit..." The quote is from the Richard Linklater
film Slacker where an anonymous man walks into a coffee shop and is admonished by a psychotic stranger sipping coffee.
In issue No. 3, on the page after the table of contents and also page 70, a silhouetted man and woman play chess. The quotes above their heads reiterate the last two moves of the famous immortal game
of 1851 between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky. The game was honored in the movie Blade Runner
, and the quotes in Sybil's Garage are taken verbatim from the film, reiterating one of the aesthetics
of Sybil's Garage, the merger of the old and the new (a strong theme in the film as well). In Sybil's Garage, the woman wins the game.
The rusty, shanty-looking photo on page 10 of issue No. 3 is actually the rear of the Hoboken Ferry Terminal, which according to the NY Waterway
's website transports over 24,000 passengers daily.
album, Project Infinity, which reads, "Sounds of man in space with sounds." The mandolins on the cover of issue No. 2 were taken from an image in a Sears Roebuck catalog circa 1910. At the top of the table of contents for the same issue is musical notation of a Bach composition adapted for the mandolin.
Matthew Kressel drew the shoelace on the top of page 3 of issue No. 2. Many of the images in that issue were taken from a hand-made, autographed book of engravings entitled Prelude to a Million Years by Lynd Ward
, copy 102 of 920, generously donated by David Crane.
, Bruce Holland Rogers
, William Shunn
, Bram Stoker Award
winning author Lee Thomas, Richard Bowes
, Steve Rasnic Tem
, Paul Tremblay, Yoon Ha Lee, K. Tempest Bradford
, Samantha Henderson, Kris Dikeman, Lauren McLaughlin, and Mercurio D. Rivera, among others. They have also published interviews with such luminaries as slipstream fiction writer Kelly Link
, multiple award-winning author Jeffrey Ford
, and Hoboken historian Jim Hans.
A full index of Sybil's Garage contributors can be found here.
of the area, that "It's probably a garage by now." Thus the name was born. Devin Poore wrote a detailed essay on the creation of the magazine in Sybil's Garage No. 2.
Speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as...
, poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, and art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
journal, published by Senses Five Press. Issues one through six were released as a small press magazine, or zine
Zine
A zine is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier....
. Issue seven was released in trade paperback format. The publication combines artwork with fiction and poetry for a unique aesthetic. The majority of the stories have tended toward slipstream fiction (see interstitial art
Interstitial art
Interstitial art is a term first coined in the 1990s, and increasingly popularized in the early 2000s, that refers to any work of art whose basic nature falls between, rather than within, the familiar boundaries of accepted genres or media, thus making the work difficult to easily categorize or...
), but some stories fall into traditional genres such as science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
, fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
, and horror fiction
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
. Above each story is the author's suggested musical accompaniment, thus adding to the magazine's intended effect of engaging multiple senses. Sybil's Garage was founded in 2003 by Matthew Kressel and Devin Poore of Hoboken, New Jersey
Hoboken, New Jersey
Hoboken is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 50,005. The city is part of the New York metropolitan area and contains Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub for the region...
as an experiment in creating their own zine
Zine
A zine is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier....
. In May 2007 issues one through four were entered into the permanent collection of the Hoboken Historical Museum
Hoboken Historical Museum
The Hoboken Historical Museum, founded in 1986, is located in Hoboken, New Jersey and presents rotating exhibitions and activities related to the history, diverse culture, architecture and historic landmarks of the city...
. Issue No. 7 was pre-released at Readercon
Readercon
Readercon is an annual science fiction convention, held every July in the Boston, Massachusetts area, in Burlington, Massachusetts). It was founded by Bob Colby and statistician Eric Van in the 1980s with the goal of focusing exclusively on science fiction in the written form Readercon is an...
, the conference on imaginative literature, on July 9th, 2010. The issue was released officially on July 21st, 2010.
Honors and awards
Richard Larson's "The Noise," from Sybil's Garage No. 7, will be published in Wilde Stories 2011: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction.In April 2010, three stories from Sybil's Garage No. 6 received honorable mentions in Best Horror of the Year, Vol 2, edited by Ellen Datlow
Ellen Datlow
Ellen Datlow is an American science fiction, fantasy, and horror editor and anthologist.-Biography:Datlow was the fiction editor of Omni magazine and Omni Online from 1981 through 1998, and edited the ten associated Omni anthologies...
. They are Toiya Kristen Finley's "Eating Ritual," James B. Pepe's "I Am Enkidu, His Wild Brother," and Genevieve Valentine's "The Drink of Fine Gentlemen Everywhere." In addition, for the same issue, the poems "City of Bridges" by J. E. Stanley and "God’s Cat" by Lyn C. A. Gardner were nominated for Rhysling Awards in the Short Poem Category. Simon Petrie's "Downdraft" was nominated for New Zealand's Sir Julius Vogel Award
Sir Julius Vogel Award
The Sir Julius Vogel Awards are awarded each year at the New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention to recognise achievement in New Zealand science fiction, fantasy, horror, and science fiction fandom...
.
Stories from Sybil's Garage received honorable mentions in both the 2006 and 2007 editions of the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
Year's Best Fantasy and Horror is a reprint anthology published annually by St. Martin's Press. In addition to the short stories, supplemented by a list of honorable mentions, each edition includes a number of retrospective essays by the editors and others....
, edited by Ellen Datlow
Ellen Datlow
Ellen Datlow is an American science fiction, fantasy, and horror editor and anthologist.-Biography:Datlow was the fiction editor of Omni magazine and Omni Online from 1981 through 1998, and edited the ten associated Omni anthologies...
, Kelly Link
Kelly Link
Kelly Link is an American editor and author of short stories. While some of her fiction falls more clearly within genre categories, many of her stories might be described as slipstream or magic realism: a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and realism...
, and Gavin Grant
Gavin Grant
Gavin J. Grant is a science fiction editor and writer. He runs Small Beer Press along with his wife Kelly Link. In addition, he has been the editor of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet since 1996 and, from 2003 to 2008, was co-editor of the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology series along with...
. In the 2007 edition (page xxxviii), praise is given to Eric Gregory's story, "The Redaction of Flight 5766," and poems by Bobbi Sinha-Morey and Ed Lynskey. JoSelle Vanderhooft's poem, "The Tale of the Desert in the Rain," is given an honorable mention on page 468. All works listed here appeared in issue three.
Editors and staff
Matthew Kressel is the editor-in-chief and publisher of Sybil's Garage. For issue seven, associate editors included Paul M. Berger, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Rajan Khanna, Devin Poore, Mercurio D. Rivera, and Greer Woodward.Issue No. 6
The scarecrow on the cover of issue six is a real scarecrow photographed in a pumpkin field in New Paltz, New York. The subway station in the background is the Brooklyn-based G-train India Street (Greenpoint Avenue) station, symbolizing the move of Senses Five Press from Hoboken, New Jersey to Greenpoint, New York.The intertextual "handwritten" notes in the margins of issue six reference work by Gary Numan and Tubway Army on their album Replicas.
Issue No. 5
The remote control on the cover of issue five is the remote that editor Matthew Kressel still uses for his television. The tentacle and the mushroom were created with the 3D modeling software PoserPoser
Poser is a 3D CGI rendering and animation software program optimized for models that depict the human figure in three-dimensional form, mostly used to pose and animate the figures in a similar way as a mannequin...
. The woman on the TV is associate editor Alaya Dawn Johnson's sister, Lauren, singing at a karaoke bar in Manhattan. This image was originally intended for the cover. In addition, the cover would feature a miniature galaxy floating in mid-air, spewing out the authors names in a spiral. Ultimately, however, the aspect ratio and contrast made the image unsuitable as the primary image.
Randomly sprinkled throughout issue five are quotes from the 1983 concept album "Dazzle Ships
Dazzle Ships (album)
The "Manor Version" of "Telegraph" was recorded at the same time as Architecture & Morality. "Swiss Radio International" was dropped from the album at the last minute...
" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are a synthpop group whose founding members are originally from the Wirral Peninsula, England...
(OMD). Many of the quotes are from the tracks "Genetic Engineering" and "ABC Auto Industry." The time 9:16 above the table of contents refers to the last stated time in the track "Time Zones," where recorded voices speak the exact time in multiple languages. The bar code under the quotes on page 71 is the same bar code on the back of the issue.
Issue No. 4
"Sybil's Garage" appears translated into several languages throughout issue number four. The red characters painted on the side of the building on the cover say "Sybil's Garage" in Japanese. A close phonetic approximation is "SHI-BO-RU NO GA-RA-JE." Other languages that appear throughout the issue are Russian, Greek, German, Korean, Hawaiian, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic and Italian.The cover photograph for issue four was taken in Hoboken, NJ. The plant leaning out the window is a ten year old spider plant still living in Matthew Kressel's apartment. The leaping fish is a marlin, and the planet in the background is Jupiter. The empty store in the photograph is now occupied by a company that sells "joke" shirts. The leaping marlin was inspired by the Hoboken fish store, Joseph Apicella & Sons, which had a huge metal sign in front of their shop of a leaping marlin. Due to lack of customers, the fish specialty store closed in Spring of 2007.
On the acknowledgments page of issue four is a vertical strip of text that begins, "You should. You should quit..." The quote is from the Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater
-Early life:Linklater was born in Houston, Texas. He studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love of film through...
film Slacker where an anonymous man walks into a coffee shop and is admonished by a psychotic stranger sipping coffee.
In issue No. 3, on the page after the table of contents and also page 70, a silhouetted man and woman play chess. The quotes above their heads reiterate the last two moves of the famous immortal game
Immortal game
The Immortal Game was a chess game played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky on 21 June 1851 in London, during a break of the first international tournament. The very bold sacrifices made by Anderssen to finally secure victory have made it one of the most famous chess games of all time...
of 1851 between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky. The game was honored in the movie Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
, and the quotes in Sybil's Garage are taken verbatim from the film, reiterating one of the aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
of Sybil's Garage, the merger of the old and the new (a strong theme in the film as well). In Sybil's Garage, the woman wins the game.
Issue No. 3
The cover image for issue No. 3 was modified from an actual photo of Devin J. Poore's grandfather's garage in Columbus, Indiana. The original photo can be seen on page 69 of issue No. 3. In early 2006, at a party, writer Mercurio D. Rivera attempted to call the phone number on the door of the pick-up truck. The phone rang, but no one answered.The rusty, shanty-looking photo on page 10 of issue No. 3 is actually the rear of the Hoboken Ferry Terminal, which according to the NY Waterway
NY Waterway
NY Waterway, or New York Waterway, is a private transportation company running ferry and bus service in the Port of New York and New Jersey and in the Hudson Valley...
's website transports over 24,000 passengers daily.
Issue No. 2
On the cover of issue No. 2, small print reads "Sounds of odd literature with sounds," which is a paraphrase of text on the Man or Astro-Man?Man or Astro-man?
Man or Astro-man? is a surf rock group that formed in Auburn, Alabama, in the early 1990s and came to prominence over the following decade.Primarily instrumental, Man or Astro-man? blended the surf rock style of the early 1960s like that of The Spotnicks with the new wave and punk rock sounds of...
album, Project Infinity, which reads, "Sounds of man in space with sounds." The mandolins on the cover of issue No. 2 were taken from an image in a Sears Roebuck catalog circa 1910. At the top of the table of contents for the same issue is musical notation of a Bach composition adapted for the mandolin.
Matthew Kressel drew the shoelace on the top of page 3 of issue No. 2. Many of the images in that issue were taken from a hand-made, autographed book of engravings entitled Prelude to a Million Years by Lynd Ward
Lynd Ward
Lynd Kendall Ward was an American artist and storyteller, and son of Methodist minister and prominent political organizer Harry F. Ward. He illustrated some 200 juvenile and adult books...
, copy 102 of 920, generously donated by David Crane.
Published authors
Sybil's Garage has published such notable authors as Bruce BostonBruce Boston
Bruce Boston is an American speculative fiction writer and poet who was born in Chicago and grew up in Southern California. He received a B.A. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, 1965, and an M.A., 1967...
, Bruce Holland Rogers
Bruce Holland Rogers
Bruce Holland Rogers is an American author of short fiction who also writes under the pseudonym Hanovi Braddock. His stories have won a Pushcart Prize, two Nebula Awards, the Bram Stoker Award, two World Fantasy Awards, the Micro Award, and have been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award and...
, William Shunn
William Shunn
William Shunn is a science fiction writer and computer programmer. He was raised in a Latter-day Saint household, the oldest of eight children. He attended the Clarion Workshop in 1985...
, Bram Stoker Award
Bram Stoker Award
The Bram Stoker Award is a recognition presented by the Horror Writers Association for "superior achievement" in horror writing. The awards have been presented annually since 1987, and the winners are selected by ballot of the Active members of the HWA...
winning author Lee Thomas, Richard Bowes
Richard Bowes
Richard Bowes is an American author of science fiction and fantasy.Richard Bowes was born in Boston in 1944. He attended school both in Boston and on Long Island, New York. In his third year, he took writing courses with Mark Eisenstein at Hofstra University...
, Steve Rasnic Tem
Steve Rasnic Tem
Steve Rasnic Tem was born in Jonesville, Virginia, which is in the heart of Appalachia. He went to college at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and also at Virginia Commonwealth University. He got a B.A. in English education. In 1974, he moved to Colorado and studied creative...
, Paul Tremblay, Yoon Ha Lee, K. Tempest Bradford
K. Tempest Bradford
K. Tempest Bradford is an African-American science fiction and fantasy author and editor. She was a non-fiction and managing editor with Fantasy Magazine from 2007 to 2009 and has edited fiction for Peridot Books, The Fortean Bureau and Sybil's Garage.,Bradford is an activist for racial and gender...
, Samantha Henderson, Kris Dikeman, Lauren McLaughlin, and Mercurio D. Rivera, among others. They have also published interviews with such luminaries as slipstream fiction writer Kelly Link
Kelly Link
Kelly Link is an American editor and author of short stories. While some of her fiction falls more clearly within genre categories, many of her stories might be described as slipstream or magic realism: a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and realism...
, multiple award-winning author Jeffrey Ford
Jeffrey Ford
Jeffrey Ford is an American writer in the Fantastic genre tradition, although his works have spanned genres including Fantasy, Science Fiction and Mystery. His work is characterized by a sweeping imaginative power, humor, literary allusion, and a fascination with tales told within tales...
, and Hoboken historian Jim Hans.
A full index of Sybil's Garage contributors can be found here.
Etymology of the magazine's title
While Devin Poore and Matthew Kressel were walking through the streets of Hoboken in early 2003, trying to come up with a name for the zine, Matthew suggested Sybil's Cave, a Hoboken landmark. Devin replied, in response to the rapid urban sprawlUrban sprawl
Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density and auto-dependent development on rural land, high segregation of uses Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a...
of the area, that "It's probably a garage by now." Thus the name was born. Devin Poore wrote a detailed essay on the creation of the magazine in Sybil's Garage No. 2.
See also
- Science fiction magazineScience fiction magazineA science fiction magazine is a publication that offers primarily science fiction, either in a hard copy periodical format or on the Internet....
- Fantasy fiction magazine
- Horror fiction magazineHorror fiction magazineA horror fiction magazine is a magazine that publishes primarily horror fiction with the main purpose of scaring or frightening the reader. Horror magazines can be in print, on the internet, or both.-Defunct magazines:*The Arkham Collector...