Interzone launched in 1982, the first major SF magazine in Britain since New Worlds and by now, 35 years later, the longest-lived. It inherited some of New Worlds' energy and ambition, but grew in other ways, notably its attempt to develop "radical hard SF" that would blend its literary standards with ideas from burgeoning fields of cybernetics and nanotechnology.

Members of the collective that founded the magazine published five anthologies of stories from Interzone, somewhat overlapping in their inclusion of stories from 1982 to 1991. Several years then passed before Pringle alone produced The Best of Interzone, with stories from 1990 to 1995 -- it was not an overview of Interzone stories to date, but a sixth book to follow the others.

Pringle retired in 2004 and the magazine was taken over by Andy Cox, whose magazine The Third Alternative since 1994 became Interzone's companion magazine Black Static in 2007. No "best of" anthologies from Cox's era have been issued.

Most reprinted authors: Kim Newman (6), J.G. Ballard and Brian Stableford (4 each), then Eric Brown, Neil Ferguson, David Langford, Ian Lee, Ian Watson, and Cherry Wilder (3 each).