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Interzone #289 (November-December 2020): New Science Fiction and Fantasy
Interzone's 2020 cover artist is Warwick Fraser-Coombe Cryptozoology by Tim Lees illustrated by Richard Wagner The Ephemeral Quality of Mersay by John Possidente illustrated by Jim Burns The Way of His Kind by James Sallis Smoke Bomb by Matt Thompson illustrated by Vincernt Sammy There's a Gift Shop Now by Françoise Harvey The Third Time I Saw a Fox by Cécile Cristofari 2019 James White Award Limitations by David Maskill Guest Editorial Jim Burns Future Cancelled Futures, Possible Worlds Andy Hedgecock Climbing A Farewell to Worms Aliya Whiteley Ansible Link David Langford Book Zone Duncan World Engines Destroyer + World Engines Creator by Stephen Baxter • Stephen Machine by Elizabeth Bear + The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem • Maureen Kincaid Mordew by Alex Pheby •Juliet E. Divine Heretic by Jaime Lee Moyer + Hollow Empire by Sam Hawke • Jack Hold Up the Sky by Cixin Liu Mutant Popcorn Nick Lowe Films reviewed include Bill & Ted Face the Music, Tenet, The New Mutants, Carmilla, Wolfwalkers, Possessor, Love You Forever, Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite!
133 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 12, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 18, 2020
A lower than average issue with stories that didn't really attract my attention apart from stories by Cécile Cristofari and David Maskill. The tale by Maskill is the 2019 James White Award Winning story.
- "Cryptozoology" by Tim Lees: a tale of a couple who join a trip to track down a 'cryptid' or legendary creature. As the story goes, it turns out that the girl is fascinated by them while her boyfriend goes along, but is sceptical. As their journey looking for cryptids continue, tensions boil over, and they separate. At the end, he sees something that makes him rethink their relationship but by then it may be too late.
- "The Ephemeral Quality of Mersay" by John Possident: on a space station, a reporter reports on a possible crisis that affects the entire station. But it later turns out to be a manufactured crisis to cover over a criminal operation.
- "The Way of His Kind" by James Sallis: a story about the arrival of new people to a town, leading to changes to its way of life. Whether it is better or worse is left up to the reader.
- "Smoke Bomb" by Matt Thompson: a story of a future where people can be altered to become biological reactors to produce liquids of exquisite quality. The story is of one such person and her guardian who gets a well known artist as a client, but who may have other plans for the person that may not involve the guardian.
- "There's a Gift Shop Now" by Françoise Harvey: on a walk through a place once used to do experiments on children, to horrible effect.
- "The Third Time I Saw a Fox" by Cécile Cristofari: a night watchman with the ability to talk and interact with the exhibits suddenly struggles to recall his encounters with foxes while telling his stories to the exhibits.
- "Limitations" by David Maskill: two researchers stuggle to interact with a possible alien being who lives in a toxic atmosphere in their lab. Their attempts usually end in failure. But with each failure, the attempts repeat with changes and slowly the researchers realize what's going on and maybe what must be done to end the repeating cycle.
- "Cryptozoology" by Tim Lees: a tale of a couple who join a trip to track down a 'cryptid' or legendary creature. As the story goes, it turns out that the girl is fascinated by them while her boyfriend goes along, but is sceptical. As their journey looking for cryptids continue, tensions boil over, and they separate. At the end, he sees something that makes him rethink their relationship but by then it may be too late.
- "The Ephemeral Quality of Mersay" by John Possident: on a space station, a reporter reports on a possible crisis that affects the entire station. But it later turns out to be a manufactured crisis to cover over a criminal operation.
- "The Way of His Kind" by James Sallis: a story about the arrival of new people to a town, leading to changes to its way of life. Whether it is better or worse is left up to the reader.
- "Smoke Bomb" by Matt Thompson: a story of a future where people can be altered to become biological reactors to produce liquids of exquisite quality. The story is of one such person and her guardian who gets a well known artist as a client, but who may have other plans for the person that may not involve the guardian.
- "There's a Gift Shop Now" by Françoise Harvey: on a walk through a place once used to do experiments on children, to horrible effect.
- "The Third Time I Saw a Fox" by Cécile Cristofari: a night watchman with the ability to talk and interact with the exhibits suddenly struggles to recall his encounters with foxes while telling his stories to the exhibits.
- "Limitations" by David Maskill: two researchers stuggle to interact with a possible alien being who lives in a toxic atmosphere in their lab. Their attempts usually end in failure. But with each failure, the attempts repeat with changes and slowly the researchers realize what's going on and maybe what must be done to end the repeating cycle.
January 1, 2021
Editorial duties are taken by artist Jim Burns where, in the light of Covid, he reflects his roads not taken are most likely now behind him. Andy Hedgecock’s Future Interrupted considers “the slow cancellation of the future,” the recycling of cuture in all its forms, the lack of innovation during the past forty or so years. Aliya Whiteley’s Climbing Stories relates the thoughts and fears engendered in her by finding slow worms in her compost bin at the allotment.
Book Zone returns to its place just after the fiction. Duncan Lawrie finds Stephen Baxter’s World Engines: Destroyer and World Engines: Creator a muddle as if he’s crammed all his favourite SF tropes into one package, seemingly designed to provide a “complete history of the solar system and the evolution of life as we currentlu understand it.” Stephen Theaker notes Machine by Elizabeth Bear is heavily influenced by James White’s Sector General stories and so promised too much but was ultimately entertaining while The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem is like a post-apocalyptic Gilmore Girls but was very good and the author is now a new favourite of his. Maureen Kincaid Speller thinks Mordew by Alex Pheby is amazing, not a thing she says lightly: the author shows an extremely thorough knowledge of the fantasy formula but constantly resists its confines. Jaime Lee Moyer’s Divine Heretic, a reworking of the story of Joan of Arc in which she is chosen by fae spirits who are “as dangerous as they are brilliant,” didn’t work for Juliet E McKenna but may well for others, while she is enthused enough by Hollow Empire by Sam Hawke, the second A Poison War novel, to read her next book. I review Cixin Liu’s collection Hold Up the Sky whose stories mostly deal with mind-expanding concepts but sometimes lack emotional engagement.
In Cryptozoology by Tim Lees a man whose marriage is breaking down tries to rescue it by embarking on an expedition with his wife (who believes they exist) to find all the legendary monsters (in which he doesn’t believe.) When they argue, and she leaves he carries on on his own. The story ends the way we know it will.
The Ephemeral Quality of Mersay by John Possidente combines two stories in one as a journalist on space station Humboldt has a starship captain relate her experiences on a planet with odd seasons at the same time as murders are occurring on the station.
The Way of his Kind by James Sallis is a very short tale of the advent of a new kind of human – or are they aliens?
The Smoke Bomb of Matt Thompson’s story is an unusual type of drink, concocted by the altered digestive system (seen through skin and organs rendered transparent) of an indentured woman. Her keeper becomes wary of a new customer.
Again very short, There’s a Gift Shop Now by Françoise Harvey tells of an experimental school with oddly proportioned rooms and spacious ceilings - which had unfortunate effects on its pupils. It’s now a tourist attraction full of warning signs.
The narrator of The Third Time I Saw a Fox by Cécile Cristofari is an old man working the night shift in a museum. He talks to the exhibits dinosaur and whale skeletons (casts) and the anatomically extreme “circus man”. They talk back.
Rather appropriately this year’s James White Award winner, Limitations by David Maskill, deals with a medical problem being suffered by a fluorine-breathing alien, an alien which can protect itself via Biological Quantum Optimisation.
Book Zone returns to its place just after the fiction. Duncan Lawrie finds Stephen Baxter’s World Engines: Destroyer and World Engines: Creator a muddle as if he’s crammed all his favourite SF tropes into one package, seemingly designed to provide a “complete history of the solar system and the evolution of life as we currentlu understand it.” Stephen Theaker notes Machine by Elizabeth Bear is heavily influenced by James White’s Sector General stories and so promised too much but was ultimately entertaining while The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem is like a post-apocalyptic Gilmore Girls but was very good and the author is now a new favourite of his. Maureen Kincaid Speller thinks Mordew by Alex Pheby is amazing, not a thing she says lightly: the author shows an extremely thorough knowledge of the fantasy formula but constantly resists its confines. Jaime Lee Moyer’s Divine Heretic, a reworking of the story of Joan of Arc in which she is chosen by fae spirits who are “as dangerous as they are brilliant,” didn’t work for Juliet E McKenna but may well for others, while she is enthused enough by Hollow Empire by Sam Hawke, the second A Poison War novel, to read her next book. I review Cixin Liu’s collection Hold Up the Sky whose stories mostly deal with mind-expanding concepts but sometimes lack emotional engagement.
In Cryptozoology by Tim Lees a man whose marriage is breaking down tries to rescue it by embarking on an expedition with his wife (who believes they exist) to find all the legendary monsters (in which he doesn’t believe.) When they argue, and she leaves he carries on on his own. The story ends the way we know it will.
The Ephemeral Quality of Mersay by John Possidente combines two stories in one as a journalist on space station Humboldt has a starship captain relate her experiences on a planet with odd seasons at the same time as murders are occurring on the station.
The Way of his Kind by James Sallis is a very short tale of the advent of a new kind of human – or are they aliens?
The Smoke Bomb of Matt Thompson’s story is an unusual type of drink, concocted by the altered digestive system (seen through skin and organs rendered transparent) of an indentured woman. Her keeper becomes wary of a new customer.
Again very short, There’s a Gift Shop Now by Françoise Harvey tells of an experimental school with oddly proportioned rooms and spacious ceilings - which had unfortunate effects on its pupils. It’s now a tourist attraction full of warning signs.
The narrator of The Third Time I Saw a Fox by Cécile Cristofari is an old man working the night shift in a museum. He talks to the exhibits dinosaur and whale skeletons (casts) and the anatomically extreme “circus man”. They talk back.
Rather appropriately this year’s James White Award winner, Limitations by David Maskill, deals with a medical problem being suffered by a fluorine-breathing alien, an alien which can protect itself via Biological Quantum Optimisation.
January 9, 2021
A very intense story of poignant regret that I shall never forget. And the dream of memory or the memory of dream, a co-vivid dream, I suggest “in another, stranger construct of your brain”, someone else’s brain, as if I have, as another old man, become, by reading about him, absorbing his narrative words, become this old man’s changeling, moving retroactively towards the third time he met a fox where wildlife is not trussed as exhibits nor stuffed rabbits.
The above is quoted from a review that is either too long or too impractical to post here.
It is from my latest review of the fiction in an INTERZONE issue and there are many other such detailed and itemised reviews available of previous INTERZONE issues as posted on-line under my name.
The above is quoted from a review that is either too long or too impractical to post here.
It is from my latest review of the fiction in an INTERZONE issue and there are many other such detailed and itemised reviews available of previous INTERZONE issues as posted on-line under my name.
December 11, 2020
I enjoyed reading all the stories in this issue, however most of them felt a bit... short. They are no longer stories so most of the short stories provide little plot, but more good writing and a hint of world building. The best story was the James White Award winner. In “Limitations" David Maskill tells the story about scientists doing experiments on a small alien that has crashed in its flying saucer. However the alien has some very strange defense mechanisms.
February 11, 2021
Whilst most of the stories are average, it is the book and film reviews which make this magazine interesting.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews