INTERACTION

Details of the July-August issue have been added to the Interzone>Current Issue category of this website. We hope that the issue arrives in good time and that you enjoy it. Looking forward to plenty of lively discussion on this thread.

Landed in sunny Hove yesterday. A thing of beauty as always.

Arrived in South Yorkshire yesterday

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Jo Thomas
http://www.journeymouse.net/

I could tell by the frantic way our guard dog Satan was barking at the Postie this morning, that it had arrived in a sunny, sticky Carluke in South Lanarkshire (actually Satan's real name is Molly but it helps to keep the Postie on his toes by yelling "Down, Satan!").

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Ian Hunter
http://www.ian-hunter.co.uk
Editor/Publisher of Unspoken Water
http://www.ian-hunter.co.uk/unspoken-water
Poetry Editor of the BFS Journal
Director of Read Raw Ltd
http://www.readraw.co.uk

Arrived today, together with BS35 in (a very warm) SW France.

Thanks for the updates folks, mine arrived Monday, and for those of you with Kindles and related devices Interzone Magazine 247 e book is live on Amazon.com and you can 'look inside'. This is the .co.uk link.

My real-time review of Interzone #247:
http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/201 ... rzone-247/

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MY WEBSITE: www.nemonymous.com

Interzone 247 now a live ebook on Smashwords. Slightly more complex to post on Smashwords than Amazon hence the delay. Follow this link or find our TTA Press page on Smashwords to see it

Here is my review of issue 247:

http://wizzley.com/interzone-247-review-of-july-august-2013-issue/

Sadly, this will be my last issue of Interzone. I have been a subscriber since issue #12 and have reviewed issues since #220 on LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com/series/Interzone). It seems to me to have lost its focus on cutting edge SF.The last memorable story for me was Nina Allans's The Silver Wind back in #233.

Coincidentally, the low point of this issue was the completely daft accusation by your columnist Jonathan McCalmont that cyberpunk was created by male SF writers to sideline female writers. This alone would have been a reason to cancel IZ.

Alan Poulter

Hi Alan, that does surprise me. If you read my review above, I thought the collection of fiction in the latest issue was the best for a while. I do agree with you about Jonathan McCalmont though; I do not know why they are letting him put those essays in the magazine.

Sorry to lose you Alan after all those years and issues. I thought for example CW Johnson's Beyond the Light Cone in 242 pretty memorable and I subscribed from issue 4 or 5. Theres always one or two stories in an issue that I like a lot. "Cutting Edge" is a tricky concept. For SF that's much harder now, I feel, because technology moves so rapidly.

I find the Jonathan McCalmont pieces fascinating and provocative - I'm very glad to see them in Interzone. I don't think he was saying that cyberpunk was created in order to sideline the female writers of the seventies, more that it was an unfortunate side effect. Like how early seventies bands aren't given a fair chance by those of us who grew up accepting as gospel the idea that punk saved music from prog.

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Theaker's Quarterly Fiction

It is easy to be 'provocative', but where is the evidence? I have been reading SF since the early 60s and have kept up with SF by subs to the BSFA, Locus and (till recently) Interzone. I recall nothing in any of these sources that in way supports the 'provocative' statement. Since no academic references are given I am not going to bother to trawl for any. Ironically, my favourite cyberpunk novel is Gwyneth Jones 'Escape plans'.

In relation to my earlier point above about weak SF content in Interzone:

Quote from: GARDNERSPACE: A SHORT FICTION COLUMN BY GARDNER DOZOIS (Locus, August 2013), reviewing Interzone 246:

"I must say that I’m not happy to see all of the fantasy that has been creeping into Interzone in recent issues, although some of it has been well-executed; I’d like to see more core SF and perhaps even some harder science fiction in the magazine, which, after all, was once the natural home of writers such as Alastair Reynolds, Charles Stross, Greg Egan, Paul McAuley, and Iain Banks."

NB why are there no references like the above for the assertions made in 247's column?