A general number in the press's print annual, edited by Eckhard Gerdes. The general issues carry no single theme: the editorial brief is the strongest innovative fiction in English the editor finds that cycle, from award-winning writers and emerging ones alike.

Gerdes launched the journal in 1986 alongside Depth Charge Press and has kept the numbered issues coming for nearly four decades. Across that run the general numbers are where the press takes the measure of the field between its single-author Festschrift volumes built around Federman, Barth, and Jaffe.