From their website: "Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on science fiction and fantasy, pop culture, and geek fandom. This publication is a project of Interstellar Flight Press, a speculative publishing house."

This book is a collection of the best essays from their website from 2019. They are non-fiction and cover a really wide selection of SFF related topics, from cats in SFF to archiving SFF, and looking back at childhood favourites (Narnia books) to excerpts from SFF books.

I really enjoyed this collection and will follow the website from now on. I liked the book format as it gave me time to properly enjoy the essays, rather than just skimming as you often find yourself doing whilst watching TV (or similar) at the same time when reading a website.

It's given me lots of ideas of other SFF works to read, books, essays, short stories and more. As the book has come from web articles, it has lots of handy links so you know you're looking at the right item that they are talking about.

This would be a good gift for a SFF fan, whether that's yourself or a friend or family member!

Disclaimer: I would like to thank Interstellar Flight Press for providing a review copy of this book.

"Interstellar Flight Magazine Best of Year One" is a non-fiction collection of 18 SFF related essays, reviews, and interviews along with three tantalizing excerpts of new novels from Interstellar Flight Press.

Before deciding to read this book, I would suggest browsing the Interstellar Flight Magazines online articles which can be found at www.interstellarflightpress.com. This collection will appeal to readers that love non-fiction articles in SFF magazines. Even though the description and category clearly state that this collection is non-fiction and contains essays, I unthinkingly and incorrectly assumed it would include more fiction. (I was probably thinking of the Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine...) Fortunately, the articles are written to both entertain and provide useful information to all kinds of SFF fans. After finishing the collection, I added several authors and books to my "must read" list. I appreciated the three excerpts at the end of the book and am looking forward to reading the two that fall into my favorite sub-genres.

In conclusion, this book is a good introduction to what "Interstellar Flight Magazine" offers and can provide information on new material that readers may be interested in.

Sometimes the best compliment I have for any published material is that I wish I could hold a conversation with it. That's certainly how I feel reading through Interstellar Flight magazine's Best of Year One publication - a wonderful and engaging series of articles, interviews, and some excerpts featuring Science Fiction, Spec Fic, and Fantasy. I want, more than anything to have a chat with this magazine personified. I think it'd be delightful. As it is, books of any kind have yet to start talking to me, so I regret I didn't ask for the physical copy of this arc.

There are book people who are precious about pristine pages, and then there are little book gremlins like myself who pick up a pencil or pen and write our thoughts in the margins. We scribble out our questions that we thought of, highlight things that we enjoyed, and just generally have the closest thing possible to a conversation with an book that exists. It makes me wish I was part of this community - making a weird, familiar, relatable pop-cultural literary salon to go alongside it. What I'm saying is that I have a less destructive version of enjoying something than the kid whose mother wrote Maurice Sendak, saying "Jim loved your card so much, he ate it." I saw it. I loved it. I wanted to write in it, rather than eat it. .

Interstellar Flight's little collection is great. It's fun and thought provoking and *smart* without feeling egregiously snobby or dry, which is often a problem in other literary magazines.

Also I can't help but feel like I've been clocked as exactly this sort of person. It's great reading interviews with writers I've read, and even ones I've reviewed arcs for on Netgalley in the pages here. Between that and finding pockets of "Oh, I recognize this experience," from the vast breadth of writers (whether it's archival/museum work like I used to do, or being Jewish/Latina, or admitting I adored how bonkers Riverdale was...) I'm really excited to see more from Interstellar Flight, and potentially be the kind of person who writes for them some day (a story about how The Talmud actually provides the best concise horror survival manual, maybe? Or an ode to Southwestern American Gothic...)

Can't wait for the next one.

This was a good collection of essays. I learned a lot from this book that I would have otherwise never known.

I read this book as a pre-release e-book obtained through NetGalley, provided by the publisher.

This book is 18 “short stories”, plus 3 excerpts from upcoming stories. It's much like an in-print experience of a science fiction convention. There is something for everyone here – interviews with authors, writings by authors, sociological discussions about elements in stories – from cats to ghosts to earthquakes, to diversity among writers, to how science fiction particularly parallels social changes over time, and why historical records, including journals and libraries from time periods are good at showing us who we were and who we are becoming. Or, you can read stories about the interstellar uses for chocolate. Yes, something for everyone

I honestly expected to find more stories, not so many interviews and essays from authors expounding on issues about their writing or genre, but it was well-worth reading.

SFF non-fiction can show where we are, how we got here, and where we're going. This anthology does all three well, with engaging author interviews showing the past and present of SFF while the excerpts at the end leave the reader excited for what's coming next. Not every piece hit 100% but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The opening essay is particularly strong for its timeliness. Some of the other essays were too conversational (it's jarring when the interviews have cleaner grammar than some moments in the essays) but I understand that's a matter of personal taste. Overall, a good collection of works that left me satisfied, entertained, and more educated than I started.

This "best of year" collection presented a nice selection of articles, interviews, poetry, and essays that will mostly be of value to SFF fans and authors who want to keep up on current tends and persons of interest in that genre of literature. The material is well presented and of appropriate length and depth.

I was given a copy of this book for review

This book reads as a list of authors who have written sci fi, along with the names of the books. If you are seeking information on what to read or by whom, then this book is for you.

Summary: As with many magazines, you can flip through the pages and read what catches the eye. Or scan the table of contents and go for specific essays. This volume has articles of various kind - everyone will get their good share of enjoyable information. My highlight - and the reason why I requested this ARC - was Holly Walrath's "The Ones Who Walk Away", an essay about Ursula K. Le Guin's famous utopia "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (and Jemisin's counter-story). The article about Libraries was a happy find, and I enjoyed the Indie Gaming article. Some other interviews were unimportant for me, and I skipped them, others felt shallow and too short. In summary, there was too much focus on YA or horror in the interviews, and the second half fell flat for me. 

While I enjoyed this anthology, I find the price a little bit steep for the amount of valuable information. 

Contents:

★★★★☆ • The Ones Who Walk Away • Holly Lyn Walrath • this is actually the reason, why I requested the anthology from Netgalley. The essay discusses Ursula K. Le Guin's story "The Ones who walk away from Omelas", brings up interesting facts around that story, sets it in context, hints at literary analysises. I've read that story before, and this essay made me re-read it, re-think, and in addition read N.K. Jemisin's counter story "The Ones who Stay and Fight". One cannot ask for more.
★★☆☆☆ • Monsters Under the Bed (and Outside the Window) by E.D. Walker • an interview with T. Kingfisher mostly about her first horror novel The Twisted Ones and its connection to Arthur Machen classical "The White People". Horror, meh, not interested.
★★★★☆ • The Greatest Arsenal: Science Fiction Libraries and Archives by Jeremy Brett • libraries are the ultimate geek stuff for us readers. Brett makes a fantastatic case of showing the many cases of libraries within SFF stories. But wait, there is more: There are real libraries in our physical world dedicated to SFF, most prominent The Eaton Collection at UC-Riverside, a collection with more than 300,000 items. It's supposed to be the largest SFF library. The author makes a case of the trinity of libraries: the creators, the scientists, and of course we the nerds. As the curator of the SFF collection at Cushing, Texas, he takes care to include diversity - writers of color, women writers, LGBTQ writers etc. I was very interested in learning about those U.S. libraries, as I only know of one specialized in SFF near my hometown: the "Phantastische Bibliothek Wetzlar", which is not that little in comparison to the "world largest", as it has 291,000 items. I've given this one a shoutout.
☆☆☆☆☆ • mostly skipped Boundary Crossing, Liminality, & the Hungarian Literary Fantastic by T.D. Walker, because I wasn't that interested
★★★★☆ • Indie Games and Accessibility: A Personal Odyssey by Archita Mittra • When I read artsy platformer, I instantly checked out a let's play for Gris and fell in love with the watercolor world and music. I'm usually more into RPGs, but watching this filled me with joy. The author talks about games that I've never heard of before and this shows me that everyone needs to find their own way in the gaming department. Indie games seem to fulfill non-mainstream needs. Having learned about the existence of Gris was already enough for me.
★★★☆☆ • Diverse Space Opera, Fight Scenes and NaNoWriMo by E.D. Walker • Interview with author Valerie Valdes, who wrote Chilling Effect - I checked out reviews for that book, but that doesn't suit me currently: too comical mixed with romance Space Opera. But folks who are fan of it should be aware of the next volume Prime Deceptions scheduled for September. Her explanation of narrating martial art scenes and linking it to wuxia movies was fun. I also learned more about the NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month) pledging everyone to write 50k words within November.
★★★+☆☆ • Phantom Fares by Piper J. Daniels - less an essay, more a ghost story:  the author weaves together snippets about migratory birds, supernatural phenomena, and her sister’s abusive relationship with ghosts appearing after the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami (leading to the Fukushima break down): Multiple taxi drivers reported passengers disappearing, the eponymous Phantom Fares.
★★☆☆☆ • Riverdale, Writer’s Block, & Naval Warfare by Holly Lyn Walrath • interview with Poppy War author R.F. Kuang. I haven't read that yet and the interview didn't give away that much. I only feel old now, as I realised that she is 24 years old and in the middle of her studium.
★★☆☆☆ • Cats in Science Fiction Films by John Tuttle • ROFL: "A short Hiss-tory", how could one not love that subtitle? From the early days, cats tigered through SF flicks, and this essay has them all, including multitudous Star Treks, Men in Black, and the obligatory Marvel. The insights are not very deep, and it is more or less a fine list of occurences.
☆☆☆☆☆ • Unabashedly Hopeful, Heartbroken, & Silly by J.T. Morse • interview with author Christian McKay Heidicker. Skipped, as I don't know him.
☆☆☆☆☆ • Strange Bodies by Presley Thomas • a selfie of coming out. Memorable sentence: "I realized that coming out is itself its own kind of body modification as it changes the way others see you. Often with horns on your head instead of your shoulders." Besides of that, I couldn't relate, as there was much talk about a show "Project Runway" that I don't know at all.
☆☆☆☆☆ • Spinning Tales, Chinese Embroidery, & Musical Composition by E.D. Walker • interview with Elizabeth Lim, a YA fantasy author. YA in general is not my thing, and once again, "Project Runway" is a foreign term for me.
☆☆☆☆☆ • Perception, Uncertainty, and Dread: The Horror of Perspective by Caitlin Starling • skipped, because of horror.
★☆☆☆☆ • Space Opera Is Having a Moment and We Love It by E.D. Walker • I don't know how this made its way into a Best Of anthology, but any blogger's "Waiting for Wednesday" is probably better than this commented list of last year's space operas. It isn't even thorough.
☆☆☆☆☆ • Goth Weirdness, Slavic Folklore, & Ohio by Jody T. Morse • Interview with Emily A. Duncan. YA and horror in combination is a perfect case for ditching.
★★☆☆☆ • No Room in Narnia by Erin Becker • Do you know the fear re-reading one of your first books, because it might disillusion you and you'd have to reduce your 5 star rating to a generous 2 star? I guess, everyone has such a sad guy hugging the shelves. This essay is written by an atheist who once was a Christian and loved the world of Narnia, only to find out the it doesn't hold up anymore and feels stale. I can only say that you don't have to be a Christian to enjoy it, and there are Christians like me who never enjoyed Narnia much because of its thick allegory with religious symbols. Beside of that, the essay didn't provide much insights. 
★★☆☆☆ • Korean Folklore, Big Space Explosions, & Mathematics by Michael Glazner • interview with Yoon Ha Lee. I've recently read Phoenix Extravagant, the steampunk fantasy scheduled for 20.10.2020, and I enjoyed his novelette Foxfire, Foxfire. Both are based on Korean Folklore, so I liked this interview, though it was a bit shallow.
★★★★☆ • What Else is there to Say about the Joker? by Archita Mittra and Kaylee Craig • This is the rare case of thoughtful and deep commentary in this anthology. The two authors analyze both Joker films with Phoenix and Ledger respectively in the protagonist's role, comparing them and their interpretation against the political and social background of their time.

A lot of interesting stories and writer, a fascinating read. It's recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy in return for an honest review.</i>

I was a little hesitant with this collection when I realized it was essays and not short stories. However, there was a lot of really interesting articles and interviews here and I feel like I learned quite a bit about the SFF community. While all of the articles and interviews are well written, a reader's enjoyment of the content here is definitely going to depend on their familiarity and interest in the subject before starting the collection. That being said, the collection does a good job of covering a wide variety of topics and authors, so there is definitely something for everyone to enjoy here.

Interstellar is a new speculative publication, and this collection gathers numerous pieces from their first year in operation. It's a bit of a mix, quality-wise. While the interviews are great, some of the essays could have used more polishing prior to their initial publication; others require more contextualization for inclusion as stand-alone pieces here. As the magazine continues, I'd like to see more collections like this, but less of the unedited fan appreciation essays and more pieces that are a little deeper, more thoughtful, and more nuanced.

I wasn't paying attention when I got this and didn't realize that this is not a fiction anthology, but "nonfiction dedicated to geekery". But I enjoyed it (mostly) nonetheless. The content and topics are all over the place, so it's very unlikely that readers will enjoy or want to read every entry, but they'll probably like some of the content, particularly if they're a scifi fan. What's included is well written even though this book won't have wide appeal.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

A magazine to follow. A solid selection of stories and strong editing make it a joy to read. I enjoyed it more than I expected to.

I'm not going to say I adored every story, but there wasn;t one that I gave up on... no, not even tempted. A lot of great writers who I'll certainly be hunting out more by. Give it a go!