October 2008's Interzone (TTA Press, ISBN9770264359206, 68pp) opens with a long interview with Chris Beckett, and a short review of his debut collection The Turing Test. It's significant that every story in the magazine overlaps with that book in some way.
Marcher
'Poppyfields' is the fifth of Beckett's Marcher stories to appear in Interzone. Two have been selected by Gardner Dozois for his Year's Best, and a novel is due in the New Year. 'Poppyfields' demonstrates Beckett's ability to make the setting a character: On the site of a stalled building project a self-effacing naturalist studying the wildlife meets a young girl who has crossed over from an alternate universe by using a drug called Slip. She manipulates the man effortlessly, but then provides him with the way out of the trap that his life has become.
'Greenland' is a companion piece to 'Karel's Prayer' in IZ206, revisiting familiar territory to regular Beckett readers, that of the unreliable narrator only gradually coming to realize who he is. revisiting the scanner. It's but this time set in a future Britain becoming increasingly swamped by refugees from the rising seas, and in which the xenophobic Old Timers(?) increasingly abuse immigrants.
Piccadilly Circus
With its bug eyes and photograph-happy narrator, 'Rat Island' is a prequel to both 'Piccadilly Circus' from IZ199 and 'The Perimeter.' Both feature Clarissa Falls and her brother. This time they appear as children. Beckett shelters the reader from the eventual world of those stories, but --with 'Rat Island's foreboding ending-- seems to implicitly contradict them, as though the future that is the other stories is tied off. The answer is given in the line, "We have a plan in place, but it won't be pretty...I've secured your place in the ark, yours and Clarrie's." A chilling story and a textbook exemplar of how to write a prequel .
The rest of the fiction section features:
In Daniel Akselrod and Lenny Royter's 'If' a failed experiment has left much of the world's population borderline schizophrenic, haunted by their imaginary friends. Richard's friend is a six-foot plush camel that never stops talking. When Richard has the chance to affect a cure, can he bring himself to get rid of Mr. Fuzzy? There's an unexpected depth to what at first seems just a silly story.
Hannu Rajaniemi's 'His Master's Voice' is a stunning tale of a genetically enhanced cat and dog in a world where consciousness can be downloaded so easily that watermarks have had to be imprinted on the originals. Nipper and the cat set out to rescue their master's consciousness from the cyber-prison to which he's been consigned. One of the very best stories this year.
Tim Lees
'The Corner of the Circle' by Tim Lees is set in a future New York battered by the wake of passing starships emerging from a giant portal. It's Sensawunda alone make the fact that lush, deliberately retro SF full of traditional Sci-Fi tropes never quite meshes with its detailed character study, but it is worth reading for deja-vu-nostalgia alone.
An excellent end -despite that last caveat- to an excellent issue.
IZ218 wraps up with Bookzone, reviews of Gareth Lyn Powell's 'The Last Reef' and 'Saturn's Children' by Charles Stross plus interviews with the authors, and usual suspects Nick Lowe and Tony Lee eviscerating film and DVD releases.
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