Interzone 18, Winter 1986

by David Pringle (Editor)

60 pages, Unknown Binding

Published December 1, 1986

Reviews

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gregory Benford opens the issue with the long tale “As Big As The Ritz”. Young asteroider Clayton Donner, on Earth for education, meets the daughter of the founder of Brotherland, an asteroid settled by identical clones. It is shrouded in mystery due to the settled ring called the Hoop, around a black hole called the Vortex. Invited to the asteroid, Clayton discovers however, that the source of the founder’s wealth is not the energy from the hole but something much rarer. A wrong number and a reference to a violent video start a cascade of irreality for Mee as he discovers he is the secret master of the Universe in “Boiled Alive” by Ramsey Campbell, and Simon Ounsley gives us a bizarre vignette of human chrysalises in “Paths Of Dying”. Ponce de Leon walks into a Florida bar… so begins Peter Lamborn Wilson’s “Fountains Of Time”, where the famed Spanish explorer is doomed to seek the Fountain of Youth for all eternity, not realising that he has already achieved immortality. (Try to ignore the NAMBLA leanings.) An expert in eliminating monsters finds he has bitten off more than he can chew in a girls’ school full of “Mind Vampires” in Greg Egan’s tale, and Ian Watson gives us a scrambled fable of Jesus and Santa, whose roles are not as our history records in “When Jesus Comes Down The Chimney”. OK issue.