Interzone

Cover:

Sleepy Hollow by 2015 cover artist Martin Hanford

 

Contents:

 

Fiction:

Five Conversations With My Daughter (Who Travels In Time) by Malcolm Devlin
illustrated by Richard Wagner

1.

Carrie was six when she first told me she could travel in time.

I was sleeping on the sofa that night. Lauren wouldn’t let me in the bedroom. She wanted me out of the house, but I’d talked her down. I’d told her I would need time to find somewhere else to go and she’d said I could stay at Kirsty-from-work’s place if I liked her so goddamn much. I tried to come up with a retort that would make me sound like the grown-up, but she shut the bedroom door in my face before I could say anything at all. I waited outside instead and listened to her holding her breath on the other side. She was upset with me, but she wasn’t going to let me hear her cry.

 

We Might Be Sims by Rich Larson 

On the one year anniversary of their mission, Jasper, naked and angry again, decides they are trapped in a simulation. “Think about it, dumbfucks,” he says, pushing both palms against the low metal ceiling, flexing his bone-and-sinew arms. “The launch was just how it is on the flicks, right? All the rumbling, the big countdown, the gravity swing. Just like a movie.”

 

Heartsick by Greg Kurzawa
illustrated by Ben Baldwin 

Two weeks after his sixty-third birthday, Martin found himself squirming on the crisp white paper of the examination table. The paper, sensitive to his slightest discomfort, objected to his weak struggles with agitated crackling. Gripping the edges of the table, Martin kept his face turned insistently away from the good doctor Medhira, determined not to watch what was being done to him. But now Medhira was reaching deeper, and Martin found it increasingly difficult to breathe.

 

Florida Miracles by Julie C. Day
illustrated by Richard Wagner 

Esta, it’s extremely important that David and his razorblade join us, Mrs Henry tells me. Don’t fret, child. He’ll barely notice the blood.

“Three days,” I say. I grab a slice of pizza from the box on the coffee table, then glance at David and his blood-spattered paper towel. It’s gotten to the point that David barely winces when he draws the blade across his skin.

 

Scienceville by Gary Gibson
illustrated by Vince Haig 

“Congratulations,” said Chase, when Joel showed him the letter. “Looks like you’ve got your first stalker.”

“Let me see.” Phil yanked the letter out of Chase’s hand. “And she says she lives in Science­ville?” He darted a look at Joel. “Oh man. Even I don’t get ones that crazy.”

 

Laika by Ken Altabef

This was definitely not the way I wanted to spend my Memorial Day weekend. A hundred and forty miles, slogging through holiday traffic. Driving’s what I do most days anyway, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to cut through the baking summer heat with a flashing light bar and a yelping siren.

 

Black Static 49 Out Now:

Black Static is published at the same time as Interzone. Issue 49 contains new novelettes and stories by Ralph Robert Moore, Thana Niveau, Simon Bestwick, Stephen Hargadon, Erinn L. Kemper, and Tim Lees, plus all the usual columns, reviews, and interviews. To take out a discounted subscription to both magazines please visit this website's shop.

 

Interface:

We All Need Diverse Books
Maureen Kincaid Speller

The children’s writer Meg Rosoff recently courted controversy when she argued against the need for a children’s book about a queer black boy, which had been published thanks to crowdfunding. According to Rosoff “there are not too few books for marginalized young people” and that literature does not have the “job of being a mirror”. Her view was that children’s literature was becoming rather too literal, and that there were plenty of books about marginalised children, as if all forms of marginalisation were easily interchangeable, when this is manifestly not so.

 

Future Interrupted
Jonathan McCalmont

Harder-Core-Than-Thou

‘Core Science Fiction’ is one of the most contentious terms in contemporary science fiction. Often deployed by reviewers and publicists in quite an unthinking manner, the term is associated with a strain of science fiction that echoes the style and subject matter of stor­ies first published in pulp magazines during the so-called Golden Age of science fiction. In order to understand why ‘Core SF’ is a contested term, it is first necessary to understand how the discourse surrounding genre fiction periodically changes in an effort to reflect emerging commercial realities.

 

Time Pieces
Nina Allan

Doctor Change Or Doctor Die

It’s hardly a secret that the novelist A.L. Kennedy is a Doctor Who fan. She’s spoken about her lifelong love of the programme on multiple occasions, she’s referenced it in her fiction, and this year sees the fulfilment of her long-held wish to write something set in the Whoniverse with the publication of her Doctor Who tie-in novel The Drosten’s Curse. “In a literary landscape of nervous agents and terrified publishers, where no risk can be taken and the next novel should be like the last novel that did well, or a mash-up of two that did quite well, or a version of a version of something that had solid sales in 2010, literate sci-fi may be the only arena where the wild, surprising and wonderful can hide,” Kennedy wrote on the Guardian Books blog earlier this summer. “For me, like many other people, the Doctor was the beginning of thinking outside the standard boxes provided. As with all good sci-fi, the Who stories allow us to view our world and our habits and our species in an anthropological manner.”

 

Ansible Link
David Langford

News and obituaries

 

Reviews:

Book Zone
Jack Deighton, Ian Sales, Jim Steel, Paul Kincaid, Stephen Theaker, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Ian Hunter, Andy Hedgecock

Books reviewed include The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu, The Bone Clocks and Slade House by David Mitchell, The House Of Shattered Wings by Aliette De Bodard, Sherlock Holmes: The Thinking Engine by James Lovegrove, If Then by Matthew De Abaitua, Luna: New Moon by Ian Mcdonald, The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan, Heart Of The Original by Steve Aylett, Stories For Chip: A Tribute To Samuel R. Delany edited By Nisi Shawl & Bill Campbell

 

Mutant Popcorn
Nick Lowe

Cinema releases reviewed include The Martian, The Last Witch Hunter, Hitman: Agent 47, The Boy And The Beast, Pan, Hotel Transylvania 2, The Lobster, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, Crimson Peak, The Brand New Testament

 

Laser Fodder
Tony Lee

DVDs and Blu-rays reviewed include The Dance Of Reality, The Flash Season One, Arrow Season Three, Iceman, Infini, Mad Max: Fury Road, Turbo Kid, Dark Matter Season One, Haven Season Five, Metal Hurlant Resurgence, Terminator Genisys, Technotise: Edit & I, Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, Eyes Without A Face, Seconds, Tour Of Duty, Elimination Game, Alien Strain, Song Of The Sea, Downtime

 

How To Buy Interzone:

Interzone is available in good shops in the UK and many other countries around the world, including the USA where it is stocked by Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and others. If your local store (in any country) doesn't stock the magazine they should be able to order it for you so please don't hesitate to ask them. You can also buy the magazine from a variety of online retailers, or a version for e-readers from places like Weightless Books, Amazon, Apple, Smashwords, etc.

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Coming Soon:

Interzone 262 in January 2016 will include the brand new – and final – Wergen story by Mercurio D. Rivera, plus stories by Ian Sales, T.R. Napper and others. The cover art will be the first of six linked images by Vincent Sammy. Subscribe now!