Interzone: The 1st Anthology: New Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing

by John Clute (Editor), Colin Greenland (Editor), David Pringle (Editor)

Interzone was initially produced by an unpaid collective of eight people John Clute, Alan Dorey, Malcolm Edwards, Colin Greenland, Graham James, Roz Kaveney, Simon Ounsley and David Pringle. According to Dorey, the group had been fans of the science fiction magazine New Worlds and wanted to create a "New Worlds for the 1980s, something that would publish only great fiction and be a proper outlet for new writers."

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies

210 pages, softcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

John Frederick Clute (1940- ) is a Canadian born author and critic who has lived in Britain since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part of science fiction's history."

Clute's articles on speculative fiction have appeared in various publications since the 1970s. He is a co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (with Peter Nicholls) and of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (with John Grant), as well as The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction, all of which won Hugo Awards for Best Non-Fiction. Clute is also author of the critical essay collections Strokes, Look at the Evidence, and Scores. His 1999 novel Appleseed, a space opera, was noted for its "combination of ideational fecundity and combustible language" and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book for 2002. In 2006, Clute published the essay collection The Darkening Garden: A Short Lexicon of Horror.

Reviews

[pastiesandpages - Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interzone is a long running magazine of science fiction and fantasy writing with the first issue published in 1982.
This paperback collects 13 stories.
12 of them were published in the first 9 issues from 1982 to 1984 and the longest story, O Happy Day! by Geoff Ryman appears in the book as a newly published story.

Covering all types of sci-fi and fantasy and even verging on a bit of horror there's a good variety here and there's a definite feel for the early 80s as the stories reference emerging technologies and political and cultural concerns of the day.

As well as Geoff Ryman there are some names which will be familiar to many including Angela Carter, JG Ballard, Kim Newman, Cherry Wilder and Keith Roberts.

As with many anthologies it's a mixed bag and everyone will have different favourites.
I particularly enjoyed The Monroe Doctrine by Neil Ferguson, an alternate history where Marilyn is in the White House with Bobby Kennedy but not as you expect.
Angela Carter's story, The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe, is beautifully written, and Malcolm Edwards produces a very different and unsettling end of the world type tale with After- Images.

Cherry Wilder's story had a character referencing Anna Karenina which was a coincidence as that's one of the books I'm reading right now.

There was only one that didn't work at all for me which was Tissue Ablation and Variant Regeneration by Michael Blumlein which was more of a medical procedure document than a story.

For a snapshot of writing from established authors and newcomers in the early 80s it's a nice little collection and at just over 200 pages for the 13 stories none of them outstay their welcome.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Opens with the horrific dystopian tale of a future where women have chemically controlled men and have set up extermination camps for violent males run by gay male disposal crews. "O Happy Day!" by Geoff Ryman is singularly bleak. "After-Images" by Malcolm Edwards is another bleak tale, about the strange effects on time that occurred at the instant that London was hit by nuclear weapons, and Keith Roberts takes us into a mystical realm of air flight in "The Kitemaster". A young woman's desire to bear the child of an angel leads her to a life of denial and unhappiness in "Angel Baby" by Rachel Pollack. But was it really an angel, and what would its offspring be? John Shirley has a
psychedelic nightmare of "What Cindy Saw" where everyday reality is a construct of living tissues and malevolent cells, and Michael Blumlein's tale (his first!) is a Gray's Anatomy text writ as a surgeon removes each item from a living patient - "Tissue Ablation And Variant Regeneration".

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly decent short story collection, from the mid 80s, a couple of below par entries but highlights include After Images by Malcolm Edwards, Angel Baby by Rachel Pollack and The Object Of Attack by J G Ballard.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

When SF was making the move from pulp to literary

[Charl]

Too "innovative" and "avant garde" for me. I suspect the Emperor's naked, but I'm not a fan of stories that don't follow familiar structure, so maybe I'm just too much of peon to enjoy them.

[Ishmael Soledad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sketchy anthology (as are 3 and 4) with some good, some bad, and some ugly. Must've been a strange time for UK sci-fi, much evidence of repressed sexuality and perversions.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a really strong collection. Inevitably, given its publication in 1986, two of the stories feature Ronald Reagan centrally (including one which is just a long graphic description of Reagan being systematically dissected by a team of surgeons - my least favourite story in the collection) and several feature him obliquely, and at least one is specifically about nuclear war and again several reference it or can be read as metaphors for it. It is an interesting, but perhaps unsurprising, snapshot of the concerns of British SF at this time.

Angela Carter's "The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe" is featured and although it is undoubtedly outstandingly written, I confess that it went right over my head. Geoff Ryman's opening story "O Happy Day!" is a deftly executed examination of gender and sexual dynamics through the prism of the Holocaust, but I had some problems with the ending (the one male heterosexual teaches everyone else how to be human again - hmmmm....) and I can imagine that its interpretation could lead to some controversy. I loved John Shirley's bodyshock bio-horror story "What Cindy Saw" and Keith Roberts' "Kitemaster", a story about a society that has slipped so inexorably into religious dogma that they have forgotten exactly what it is they are supposed to fear and indeed if there is anything to fear at all (sound familiar?).

JG Ballard chips in with a story about (quelle surprise) weird astronaut messiah cults, "Object of the Attack". I think you know what to expect with old JG and whether you are going to enjoy his obsessions or not, but it is interesting to see how his influence, at least stylistically, pervades a lot of these stories, particularly the newer writers (exhibit A, Malcolm Edwards' "After-Images").

In sum, this is a great little collection that I would recommend to anyone who is looking for unusual, demanding, politically-aware SF in the New Wave tradition. If you are after Hard SF or Space Opera though, this isn't going to scratch that particular itch.

[Dark-Draco · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of stories, most of which were published in Interzone in 1982 and 1983. Usually, I love these collections, but found it hard to find a story that I liked. To me, only "Oh Happy Day!" by Geoff Ryman, actually felt like a proper story, with a half decent plot and good characters, but there was still something slightly lacking about it. Perversely, I quite liked "Tissue Ablation and Variant Regeneration" by Michael Blumlein, about the total dissection of a patient who is still totally awake. No real plot as such, but mesmerising none the less. The other stories were ok, but somehow none of the concepts really grabbed hold of me, and where I did become intrigued by the set up, found the story a bit of a let down.

[Kevin Gallan]

36/210

[Andy]

1ST EDITION OF 1ST ANTHOLOGY OF INTERZONE STORIES.