If you want to know the true culprit behind the creation of Last Wave, blame Gardner Dozois. My editing jones was apparently in remission, and I was content writing, until I read an essay he wrote for Locus in which he claimed that there were wonderful stories going unpublished because they were too weird or bizarre for genre conventions.
That’s when the proverbial light bulb went on over my head, and I knew I had to start a magazine to publish those stories. I didn’t care whether the stars were properly aligned for such a project. I only knew I had to get those stories in print.
I edited and published five issues from 1982 through 1985, containing fiction and poetry from writers such as Tom Disch, Avram Davidson, Philip K. Dick, David R. Bunch, Carter Scholz and others. I had a ball, but lost quite a bit of money, which meant the experience gave me everything I needed to know to formulate Edelman’s First Rule of Publishing: “Use somebody else’s money!”