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INTERZONE 256
The January–February issue of Britain's longest running sf magazine magazine contains new stories by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, T.R. Napper, Pandora Hope, Christien Gholson, Neil Williamson. The 2015 cover artist is Martin Hanford, and interior colour illustrations are by Richard Wagner, Warwick Fraser-Coombe, Ben Baldwin. All the usual features are Ansible Link by David Langford (news and obits); Mutant Popcorn by Nick Lowe (film reviews); Laser Fodder by Tony Lee (DVD/Blu-ray/VoD reviews); Book Zone (book reviews); Jonathan McCalmont's Future Interrupted (comment) and Nina Allan's Time Pieces (comment). Elaine Gallagher interviews Ann Leckie and Steven J. Dines interviews Wayne Haag. Read More for details, images and extracts.
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First published December 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 30, 2015
Two good stories and the rest mediocre.
January 22, 2021
nullimmortalis January 22, 2015 at 3:07 pm Edit
Nostalgia by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
“…once shu had already grown into the new skin, the smooth Barbie V between shur legs.”
Nostalgia portrayed as a tangible thing that can be charred or smoked or collected – represented, say, in a fiction about truth, where gender with new pronouns are closed smooth systems as well as memories of people who penetrated you or whom you penetrated, all whisked away into a substance called nostalgia? On the surface, this is a story of communal studentish young people from, say, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro or fiction by Ursula Pflug, where death is a belief that the person is still alive upstairs. A clean slate. Something that tantalised me nicely, as good fiction should.
nullimmortalis January 23, 2015 at 11:15 am Edit
An Advanced Guide To Successful Price-Fixing In Extraterrestrial Betting Markets by T.R. Napper
“They are currency, but they are also the fuel we use to fold space…”
As I read this story, I felt I had been destined to read it forever; it has the sort of clinging importance to my life, as I, in my own ‘borderline Aspergers’, have felt aliens betting on the way I do things, not just big things, but meticulous details I do either intentionally (for them) or synchronously (like these real-time reviews) or quite unconsciously as accidents. But there is a devastatingly conscious accident by the self in this story that took me by surprise, but it shouldn’t have surprised me. This read was an exciting experience for me, not only for what I have already described, but also for aspects more detached from me like its convincing futuristic world, living on a spire with a mars-scape, the deadened, smoothed-over feel sometimes of the mock or real Irreality of loved ones and of enemies, of humans and of aliens alike (a bit like the ‘slates’ in the Stufflebeam), plus the fascinating details of real gambling, the obsessive self-deception when aspiring to the profitability of making bets on things, with that spire as ‘objective correlative’, a dead monument to once ancient hope.
nullimmortalis January 23, 2015 at 2:55 pm Edit
imageThe Ferry Man by Pandora Hope
“I’d said to Barry, ‘It’s like I’m in an alien world,’ but he never watched science fiction and didn’t know what I meant,…”
On one level, a poignant tale of a newly widowed man who now needs a reason not to die, despising his son and daughter-in-law. He seems to be a Norwegian fjord ferryman manqué, one who takes to buying ‘hugs’ from a local woman. But there are other layers of not only penetrability (scratches) but also impenetrability with the easy word ‘hugs’ being, for me, things people often offer to others on the Internet as a palliative for sorrow, in tune with Stufflebeam’s ‘slates’ — in telling contrast to a ferryman linking a physical connection from shore to shore. All this amid a painterly, mythic undercurrent that relates Fuseli as well as Hansel and Gretel. There is a madness about this story. A madness that tells you more about human and animal connections than sanity or science fiction ever can.
nullimmortalis January 24, 2015 at 2:17 pm Edit
Tribute by Christien Gholson
“: spiral towers of cartilage, hard as stone;”
This has an entrancing feel of reading some unknown holocaust religion’s holy book, laced with Blake’s mystical poems. It is a bespoke prose poem with SF visionary tropes, and the haunting mystery is to discover to whom it is bespoke. It conveys the insulation of the earlier stories in this gestalt of stories, an insulation here by mobile spiral shells between the beings, like ‘the space between the stars’, the sun shining between the dust particles… a tribute band playing the songs of a dead band?
“We are these beings and we are not these beings.”
And, tellingly, in the light of earlier comments, this is all seen from the point of view of another explicit Ferry Man! It as if it was meant to be: an uncoordinated synergy. And there are more ‘hugs’, eventually empty ones: “Was it a comfort to have someone there to hold in the final moments?” At one moment, I even visualised, as if bespoke for me, those children in Hitler’s bunker put to sleep with their mouths forcibly clamped shut on poison capsules? Bespoke for me, bespoke for you? “…I feel it’s important to simply let the story sink into the mind and leave it at that.”
nullimmortalis January 24, 2015 at 3:42 pm Edit
Fish on Friday by Neil Williamson
“We’re not Nazis.”
Coda and chips? This seems to be an alternate world letter from a supermarket to one of its lady customers (to tell you how old she is would be a spoiler) following the recent Scottish independence to become a Nanny State. Swiftian and swift. Hugged to death by health?
Nostalgia by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
“…once shu had already grown into the new skin, the smooth Barbie V between shur legs.”
Nostalgia portrayed as a tangible thing that can be charred or smoked or collected – represented, say, in a fiction about truth, where gender with new pronouns are closed smooth systems as well as memories of people who penetrated you or whom you penetrated, all whisked away into a substance called nostalgia? On the surface, this is a story of communal studentish young people from, say, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro or fiction by Ursula Pflug, where death is a belief that the person is still alive upstairs. A clean slate. Something that tantalised me nicely, as good fiction should.
nullimmortalis January 23, 2015 at 11:15 am Edit
An Advanced Guide To Successful Price-Fixing In Extraterrestrial Betting Markets by T.R. Napper
“They are currency, but they are also the fuel we use to fold space…”
As I read this story, I felt I had been destined to read it forever; it has the sort of clinging importance to my life, as I, in my own ‘borderline Aspergers’, have felt aliens betting on the way I do things, not just big things, but meticulous details I do either intentionally (for them) or synchronously (like these real-time reviews) or quite unconsciously as accidents. But there is a devastatingly conscious accident by the self in this story that took me by surprise, but it shouldn’t have surprised me. This read was an exciting experience for me, not only for what I have already described, but also for aspects more detached from me like its convincing futuristic world, living on a spire with a mars-scape, the deadened, smoothed-over feel sometimes of the mock or real Irreality of loved ones and of enemies, of humans and of aliens alike (a bit like the ‘slates’ in the Stufflebeam), plus the fascinating details of real gambling, the obsessive self-deception when aspiring to the profitability of making bets on things, with that spire as ‘objective correlative’, a dead monument to once ancient hope.
nullimmortalis January 23, 2015 at 2:55 pm Edit
imageThe Ferry Man by Pandora Hope
“I’d said to Barry, ‘It’s like I’m in an alien world,’ but he never watched science fiction and didn’t know what I meant,…”
On one level, a poignant tale of a newly widowed man who now needs a reason not to die, despising his son and daughter-in-law. He seems to be a Norwegian fjord ferryman manqué, one who takes to buying ‘hugs’ from a local woman. But there are other layers of not only penetrability (scratches) but also impenetrability with the easy word ‘hugs’ being, for me, things people often offer to others on the Internet as a palliative for sorrow, in tune with Stufflebeam’s ‘slates’ — in telling contrast to a ferryman linking a physical connection from shore to shore. All this amid a painterly, mythic undercurrent that relates Fuseli as well as Hansel and Gretel. There is a madness about this story. A madness that tells you more about human and animal connections than sanity or science fiction ever can.
nullimmortalis January 24, 2015 at 2:17 pm Edit
Tribute by Christien Gholson
“: spiral towers of cartilage, hard as stone;”
This has an entrancing feel of reading some unknown holocaust religion’s holy book, laced with Blake’s mystical poems. It is a bespoke prose poem with SF visionary tropes, and the haunting mystery is to discover to whom it is bespoke. It conveys the insulation of the earlier stories in this gestalt of stories, an insulation here by mobile spiral shells between the beings, like ‘the space between the stars’, the sun shining between the dust particles… a tribute band playing the songs of a dead band?
“We are these beings and we are not these beings.”
And, tellingly, in the light of earlier comments, this is all seen from the point of view of another explicit Ferry Man! It as if it was meant to be: an uncoordinated synergy. And there are more ‘hugs’, eventually empty ones: “Was it a comfort to have someone there to hold in the final moments?” At one moment, I even visualised, as if bespoke for me, those children in Hitler’s bunker put to sleep with their mouths forcibly clamped shut on poison capsules? Bespoke for me, bespoke for you? “…I feel it’s important to simply let the story sink into the mind and leave it at that.”
nullimmortalis January 24, 2015 at 3:42 pm Edit
Fish on Friday by Neil Williamson
“We’re not Nazis.”
Coda and chips? This seems to be an alternate world letter from a supermarket to one of its lady customers (to tell you how old she is would be a spoiler) following the recent Scottish independence to become a Nanny State. Swiftian and swift. Hugged to death by health?
February 17, 2015
Nostalgia - Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam: arranque pouco auspicioso desta edição da Interzone. A autora tem publicado regularmente na revista, com resultados mistos mas claramente a afastar-se da FC como cerne narrativo e a usar os elementos do género como decoração cada vez mais ténue. É o caso deste conto, em que o possível elemento FC estará na personagem talvez transexual, de género indefinido. Essa ambiguidade nunca explicada mantém-se em ponto de fundo numa história onde a amante desta personagem regressa à cidadezinha americana que a viu crescer. O motivo desse regresso, participar numa cerimónia pela morte de um amigo de infância, merecia ser melhor esclarecido. O amigo afinal não está morto mas o facto de a comunidade o considerar morto poderá indicar que ele, tal como a transexual, não cai dentro de padrões de comportamento normativos e aceitáveis numa comunidade fechada e é por isso proscrito. Mas o conto não segue este caminho. Aliás, o conto não segue nenhum caminho discernível. Insinua algumas ideias que poderiam, sendo exploradas, ser interessantes, mas nada mais.
An Advanced Guide to Successful Price-Fixing in Extraterrestrial Betting Markets - T.R. Napper: este escritor rebentou na #254 com um conto fabuloso de futurismo pós-apocalíptico passado na China. Este não lhe fica atrás, a começar neste título cerebral e complexo que oculta uma história divertida sobre jogos mentais, autismo funcional, fascínio com padrões matemáticos e espécies alienígenas intrigadas com a imprevisibilidade do cérebro humano e viciadas nos jogos de azar. Napper parece claramente ser uma daquelas vozes a prestar atenção.
The Ferryman - Pandora Hope: há algo de tenebroso e sobrenatural nesta história longa onde um viúvo encontra algum consolo nos braços de uma mulher que oferece abraços mediante pagamento. Haveria por aqui muito que explorar, desde a solidão da viúvez às tensões familiares, passando pelo lado fantástico de uma mulher cuja casa se assemelha a uma floresta e um homem cujo passado poderá estar ligado à mitologia nórdica. Haveria, mas o conto não é suficientemente claro para se perceber por onde vai, ou quer ir. Retirem-se os elementos de fantástico e ficamos com uma banal história de solidão na terceira idade.
Tribute - Cristine Gholson: Há algo de inacabado nesta história difusa. Saltamos entre dois pontos de vista. Por um lado o de uma criatura jovem, habitante de estepes desoladas, a tentar tirar sentido do falecimento dos seus progenitores e muito intrigada pelas minúsculas criaturas esbracejantes que algo lhe deixa em aparente oferenda. O outro ponto de vista é a do arquivista de uma cidade milenar, que assiste à tomada do poder por um grupo que invoca ameaças de antanho e envia vítimas sacrificiais através de um portal para apaziguar as divindades ameaçadoras cuja defesa da cidade é a base do seu poder sobre os seus concidadãos. Intrigante, mas o conto é mais eficaz a invocar imagens mentais do que a tornar-se claro no seu mundo ficcional.
Fish on Friday - Neil Williamson: Este escritor também tem surpreendido os leitores da Interzone com contos consistentemente interessantes. Este curto foi, ao que parece, inspirado na recente tentativa de independência escocesa, mas Williamson vai muito mais além, imaginando os dilemas de uma sociedade sob a égide da bonomia de controles sociais potenciados por tecnologia pervasiva. Ou, colocando a questão noutros termos: onde está a liberdade e a privacidade quando a bem da nossa saúde e bem estar as dietas são restritas, somos obrigados a manter comportamentos socialmente aceitáveis e saudáveis, e os dispositivos do dia a dia estão repletos de sensores cujos dados coligidos criam perfis precisos dos hábitos das pessoas? Williamson coloca a questão em tom de bom humor, com uma velhota ex-hactivista a levar um puxão de orelhas da agência para a saúde e bem estar por não ver uma televisão cheia de programas desportivos e ter dado a volta aos sistemas do frigorífico para mandar vir bifes em vez dos filetes de peixe transgénico considerados benéficos para a saúde, clima e sociedade. Sorrimos, mas há aqui implicações reais da convergência entre moralismos sociais, proliferação de sensores internet of things e o interesse específico de organizações. Mesmo nos mais suaves sonhos dos proponentes do Big Data/Internet of Things, a mão do Grande Irmão está presente. Pesada, mas com um sorriso, enquanto nos diz que as restrições aos comportamentos considerados desvios à norma são necessárias para nosso bem.
An Advanced Guide to Successful Price-Fixing in Extraterrestrial Betting Markets - T.R. Napper: este escritor rebentou na #254 com um conto fabuloso de futurismo pós-apocalíptico passado na China. Este não lhe fica atrás, a começar neste título cerebral e complexo que oculta uma história divertida sobre jogos mentais, autismo funcional, fascínio com padrões matemáticos e espécies alienígenas intrigadas com a imprevisibilidade do cérebro humano e viciadas nos jogos de azar. Napper parece claramente ser uma daquelas vozes a prestar atenção.
The Ferryman - Pandora Hope: há algo de tenebroso e sobrenatural nesta história longa onde um viúvo encontra algum consolo nos braços de uma mulher que oferece abraços mediante pagamento. Haveria por aqui muito que explorar, desde a solidão da viúvez às tensões familiares, passando pelo lado fantástico de uma mulher cuja casa se assemelha a uma floresta e um homem cujo passado poderá estar ligado à mitologia nórdica. Haveria, mas o conto não é suficientemente claro para se perceber por onde vai, ou quer ir. Retirem-se os elementos de fantástico e ficamos com uma banal história de solidão na terceira idade.
Tribute - Cristine Gholson: Há algo de inacabado nesta história difusa. Saltamos entre dois pontos de vista. Por um lado o de uma criatura jovem, habitante de estepes desoladas, a tentar tirar sentido do falecimento dos seus progenitores e muito intrigada pelas minúsculas criaturas esbracejantes que algo lhe deixa em aparente oferenda. O outro ponto de vista é a do arquivista de uma cidade milenar, que assiste à tomada do poder por um grupo que invoca ameaças de antanho e envia vítimas sacrificiais através de um portal para apaziguar as divindades ameaçadoras cuja defesa da cidade é a base do seu poder sobre os seus concidadãos. Intrigante, mas o conto é mais eficaz a invocar imagens mentais do que a tornar-se claro no seu mundo ficcional.
Fish on Friday - Neil Williamson: Este escritor também tem surpreendido os leitores da Interzone com contos consistentemente interessantes. Este curto foi, ao que parece, inspirado na recente tentativa de independência escocesa, mas Williamson vai muito mais além, imaginando os dilemas de uma sociedade sob a égide da bonomia de controles sociais potenciados por tecnologia pervasiva. Ou, colocando a questão noutros termos: onde está a liberdade e a privacidade quando a bem da nossa saúde e bem estar as dietas são restritas, somos obrigados a manter comportamentos socialmente aceitáveis e saudáveis, e os dispositivos do dia a dia estão repletos de sensores cujos dados coligidos criam perfis precisos dos hábitos das pessoas? Williamson coloca a questão em tom de bom humor, com uma velhota ex-hactivista a levar um puxão de orelhas da agência para a saúde e bem estar por não ver uma televisão cheia de programas desportivos e ter dado a volta aos sistemas do frigorífico para mandar vir bifes em vez dos filetes de peixe transgénico considerados benéficos para a saúde, clima e sociedade. Sorrimos, mas há aqui implicações reais da convergência entre moralismos sociais, proliferação de sensores internet of things e o interesse específico de organizações. Mesmo nos mais suaves sonhos dos proponentes do Big Data/Internet of Things, a mão do Grande Irmão está presente. Pesada, mas com um sorriso, enquanto nos diz que as restrições aos comportamentos considerados desvios à norma são necessárias para nosso bem.
January 28, 2015
A better than average issue with fun tales by T.R. Napper, Pandora Hope and Neil Williamson.
- "Nostalgia" by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam: a strange tale that doesn't seem to hold together about a girl who smokes a drug known as nostalgia that brings back feelings of the past. This is while having a relationship with a sexless person, and yearning for feelings with her past relationships.
- "An Advanced Guide to Successful Price-Fixing in Extraterrestrial Betting Markets" by T.R. Napper: an intriguing story about a man fascinated by numbers who not only likes to make bets on horses, but also act as the outcome of bets laid by off-stage aliens who find the unpredictable actions of humans fascinating. But it all comes crashing down when an alien bookie tells him to act more random or else his life may be claimed for losing an alien bet. Getting out of it may involved such a random act of bet fixing that he may lose his life anyway.
- "The Ferry Man" by Pandora Hope: a mystical fantasy about a man depressed after the death of his wife; until he discovers a woman who gives hugs that makes him feel better. As he spends more and more time (and money) on the woman, his son and daughter-in-law become concerned especially over a scratch on his arm given by the woman's cat that apparently becomes infected. The nature of the infection and the hold the woman has over the man (and vice versa) becomes apparent at the end of the story.
- "Tribute" by Christen Gholson: the story starts with a strange creature in a deserted land who wonders about the strange beings being left in its land to die. This is interleaved with a story about a monster that will rampage in a city unless its receives a 'tribute' of live sacrifice. The connection between the two halves becomes clear at the end.
- "Fish on Friday" by Neil Williamson: a humorous story told in a future independent Scotland about an agency trying to convince an old lady to eat healthily and not pine for traditional fare.
- "Nostalgia" by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam: a strange tale that doesn't seem to hold together about a girl who smokes a drug known as nostalgia that brings back feelings of the past. This is while having a relationship with a sexless person, and yearning for feelings with her past relationships.
- "An Advanced Guide to Successful Price-Fixing in Extraterrestrial Betting Markets" by T.R. Napper: an intriguing story about a man fascinated by numbers who not only likes to make bets on horses, but also act as the outcome of bets laid by off-stage aliens who find the unpredictable actions of humans fascinating. But it all comes crashing down when an alien bookie tells him to act more random or else his life may be claimed for losing an alien bet. Getting out of it may involved such a random act of bet fixing that he may lose his life anyway.
- "The Ferry Man" by Pandora Hope: a mystical fantasy about a man depressed after the death of his wife; until he discovers a woman who gives hugs that makes him feel better. As he spends more and more time (and money) on the woman, his son and daughter-in-law become concerned especially over a scratch on his arm given by the woman's cat that apparently becomes infected. The nature of the infection and the hold the woman has over the man (and vice versa) becomes apparent at the end of the story.
- "Tribute" by Christen Gholson: the story starts with a strange creature in a deserted land who wonders about the strange beings being left in its land to die. This is interleaved with a story about a monster that will rampage in a city unless its receives a 'tribute' of live sacrifice. The connection between the two halves becomes clear at the end.
- "Fish on Friday" by Neil Williamson: a humorous story told in a future independent Scotland about an agency trying to convince an old lady to eat healthily and not pine for traditional fare.
August 4, 2015
This mag would have and should have folded a long time ago if not for being funded by the financial crutch that is the British Arts Council. Like its sister mag Black Static, it is consistenly bad. I remember reading an early issue years ago, featuring a stupid story about Emily Dickinson and some story called Beetroo (sic) or some such stupidness. The magazine was rubbish then and it hasn't changed much. You can find better sci-fi stories online for free. The fact that it's awarded British Fantasy Society awards means nothing. The BFS has been meaningless for a long time now, a throwback elitist cliquey little society that pats its members on the back.
May 29, 2016
Really liked the Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam and T.R. Napper stories in this one.
April 18, 2015
Good analysis, interesting ideas. The stories were entertaining.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews