INTERACTION

Turned up in sunny Vienna today

IZ 230 arrived in Uppsala sometime earlier this week, BFLE=Before Facebookless Era.

Arrived yesterday in Split, Croatia.

Sam Tomaino on SF Revu.

"The Sep/Oct 2010 issue of Interzone has arrived and has the kind of stories only it would print."

Anthony G. Williams on his blog:-

http://sciencefictionfantasy.blogspot.c ... e-230.html

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A little late to the party but I'd like to register my extreme distaste for Mike Cobley's review of Charles Yu's novel which comes from the same narrow-minded place as the quotes Langford records in his "As Others see As". By starting out his review by attacking Yu for being able to publish and gain recognition for SF stories in literary circles he is essentially criticising him on the basis that to be a proper SF writer you have to be accredited by the proper SF institutions.

The remainder of the review attacks the novel from a similarly narrow viewpoint. If you are going to write SF time travel stories you have to do in it a particular way. Heaven forbid that you should privileged character over plot when writing SF, or approach your story in a manner different from that laid out by past grand masters of the form.

I wish more SF readers be less focused on looking for the same "cards" when occasional changes in strategy might make for some interesting variety in play.

As book reviews editor, Glen, I try and match reviewers with books that they will enjoy and be able to write about from a knowledgeable base. Obviously on this occasion I failed to match Mike with a book he liked, but he gave an honest opinion and sufficient information on the novel that the readers could make up their minds as to whether or not it was a book that would be of interest to them.

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I appreciate that it was an honest opinion but I thought it was based less on the book's own merits and more on the perception of their being an "us" and a "them" and one being intrinsically better than the other. I'm not saying that their shouldn't be disagreement about whether a book is good or not, and I think that amongst the general disparagement of mainstream/literary fiction he did raise some clear points as to why this book in particular didn't work for him, but I wish there had been more of the latter than the former.

Having said that I do appreciate the review section, Mike Cobley's contributions and the honesty of both. I'm sorry if my initial post came off as too aggressive - which in hindsight I think it was. I'm just a little disappointed this particular review felt so reactionary. Ignoring, mixing and breaking down genre barriers and rules is something I think is very important in keeping fiction interesting.

I agree with that, up to a point... but the impression I got from Mike Cobley's review (I have not read Yu's book) is that Yu is not adding any new twists to the subgenre of time-travel fiction, he's simply rehashing obvious paradoxes (from Heinlein or Gerrold, etc) with only a bit of literary wit to enliven the familiar tropes.

I'm all in favour of diversity in SF-authorship, and it's good to see that writers who are best-known in other literary circles are venturing (fearlessly?) into the SF field, but ignoring the genre's history, and pretending that attention-grabbing work - recycling decades-old notions - is wholly 'original', probably won't win many fans who respect truly ground-breaking ideas in novels that shrug off the stagnation which threatens SF in 21st century.

Innovation in SF isn't about breaking existing rules, it's about writing new rules.

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Let's put it this way - I've got a promotional copy of the novel and I'm now suffienctly intrigued that I'll be starting it very soon.

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I think the story that appealed to me the most in the issue was the Lavie Tidhar. The opening was so mysterious and then before I knew what was going on it was hurtling along like vintage Heinlein.

One complaint though: - the Aliette de Bodard story wasn't long enough. I wanted to know more about the machines as gods.

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I spent the evening with this issue, and throroughly enjoyed the fiction. The Alliette de Bodard story was the stand out one, and will probably infiltrate my dreams and thoughts over the next few days.

Gardner Dozois reviews Interzone 230 in Locus 598 and says the strongest story “is Lavie Tidhar’s The Insurance Agent, a writer who’s having a good year so far, with several excellent stories published.” He also says that Nina Allan’s The Upstairs Window and Tim Lees’s Love and War are both “good”, and Patrick Samphire’s Camelot is “elegantly crafted”.

Rich Horton also reviews Interzone 230 in the same issue and makes The Upstairs Window one of his Recommended Stories.

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