Interzone – The 5th Anthology

by John Clute (Editor), David Pringle (Editor), Simon Ounsley (Editor)

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

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

[Ishmael Soledad · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unlike others in this series, this one contains a few pieces that are worthwhile.

However.

Barrington J Bayley's piece Light is enough for me to give this anthology zero (if possible) and to shunt it into the bin. It is simply a piece of vacuous fiction that starts with an imagining of being a person in a painting, ends with the paining being burnt as the main character is facing arrest, and hinges around a sexual assault on an eleven year old girl by the main character.

Ok, science fiction is a wide church and boundaries are pushed, but Light is neither science fiction or of literary value. Any journal or book that gives credence of any sort to pedophilia has no place in my bookshelf.

Binned.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/998402.html[return][return]A collection of fifteen short stories published in Interzone in 1989-90, some well-known names represented (Brian Aldiss, Kim Newman, Ians Watson, MacLeod and MacDonald) and one or two who I don't think I'd otherwise heard of - Neil Ferguson, Ian Lee. Almost all the stories, whether serious or funny, have the distinctive narrative voice of English sf; the exception, for obvious reasons, being David Brin. Anyway, they are all very good, and there is an excellent introduction by John Clute.

[Dark-Draco · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of 15 short stories, most of which appeared in Interzone magazine in 1989/1990. Some of the authors are very recognisable - Brian Aldiss, David Brin, Kim Newman, while others are less well known. It's actually hard to pick a favourite I enjoyed all the stories, although some appealed more than others. 'Well-loved', 'Twitch Technicolour' and 'Piecework' had some interesting ideas and were great to read. 'A Life of Matter and Death' had a fantastic premise, but I felt it didn't really go anywhere, whilst 'Listen' and 'The Sculptor's Hand' had little to go on and yet were fantastic stories. In all, a great book to dip in and out of.