Interzone 221 Reviewed
March-April 2009 Issue Of The UKs Major SF Magazine, From TTA Press
Mar 26, 2009
The March-April issue of Britain's leading SF magazine includes two new names, and four returning favourites -- one after an absence of two decades.
Will McIntosh
The fiction opens with "A Clown Escapes From Circus Town" by returning regular Will McIntosh, in which Beaner the clown breaks out from the eponymous town and encounters mediaeval knights and a man dressed as the Green Hornet. Beaner must cut through the onion-like layers of reality to find out what is true, but when he does, what is he to do with that knowledge? It's a testament to McIntosh's talent that he turns what should be a grim, downbeat ending into triumph.
Al Robertson
In Al Robertson's "Fishermen" corsairs take an artist captive when they intercept his sailing ship. They wish him to paint their village but the artist refuses. As the weeks then the months pass he comes to realize that the men and women of Omis are simply scratching out an existence in Robertson's "Changeling" the familiar is turned at an angle, so that what is familiar becomes strange. Literally wonderful.
"Saving Diego" by Matthew Kressel sees a Terran ex-drug addict travel out to the edge of the galaxy in response to a call for help from a friend. Given that Mikal abandoned a stoned Diego to the police years before in Seoul, the call for help is a surprise, as is the nature of Diego's addiction, and Mikal's fate is never going to be happy --. although it's implications are fascinating.
Alaya Dawn Johnson
The discovery of a dead woman's body is the catalyst for Alaya Dawn Johnson's "Far and Deep." The dead woman is found by her daughter, who is outraged that the island's elders forbid her a burial appropriate to her status. The story becomes a whodunnit to identify her killer and in the process the daughter begins to better understand her mother.
"Home Again" by Paul M. Berger is another story where -like the McIntosh- the protagonist is not who she thinks she is. Berger looks at a couple of SF standards-- deep space pilots and hyperspace-- from an unusual angle, and manages to make a comparatively short story eminently satisfying.
Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling's "Black Swan" opens in an Italian cafe with a journalist meeting his source, an edgy individual who has on several occasions passed the journalist new designs in computer-tech which seem to have come from nowhere. From there the story takes off in entirely unexpected directions, covering Nicola Sarkozy and parallel universes. What gives the story added poignancy is the sense that as our own possible futures close off one by one with the effects of climate change, depletion of fossil fuels and the lack of viable successors, Sterling opens a dizzying vista of alternate possibilities.
Jim Steel and the review team opens Bookzone with a review of Sterling's new novel, The Caryatids and Ian Sales interviews the author. Other reviews include Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle's Escape From Hell and Hal Duncan's Escape From Hell! (note the exclamation mark...) and the new Adam Roberts.
David Langford has news and obituaries in Ansible Link while Tony Lee reviews DVDs and Nick Lowe the latest film releases.
Yet another stunning issue - each one seems to be better than the last.
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