Interzone 217, Not so Mundane this time

[Roy1]

This issue brings a welcome returnee to Interzone’s pages: Paul McAuley, plus other stories from Karen Fishler, Paul G. Tremblay, Jason Sanford and Suzanne Palmer. Paul has at least 60 short stories to his credit and “Little Lost Robot” is his 17th in Interzone.
Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers were mechanical intelligences intent on eliminating organic rivals from the galaxy. Fred’s future of humanity waging constant war with implacable robots came first (1963) but later authors, like Greg Benford, and Alastair Reynolds, followed making the idea a familiar trope of hard SF, even TV’s Star Trek used it in the ‘Doomsday Machine’ episode. Such stories usually reflect the embattled humans’ point of view but Paul takes the viewpoint of “one of the mechanical crusaders, a big space robot that’s suffering from mission creep.”

Other fiction in IZ 217

Africa is Karen Fishler’s third Interzone story. She started her writing career in The Third Alternative, TTA Press’s first magazine. Her stories have appeared in US magazines between times. Cover image
illustrator: Paul Drummond

The Two-Headed Girl by Paul G. Tremblay, whois a prolific short fiction author and editor whose first novel, The Little Sleep, is forthcoming (February 2009) from Henry Holt.

Comus of Central Park is M.K. Hobson’s first appearance in Interzone but she has appeared in TTA’s Black Static and many other short story publications. She blogs here and lives in Oregon.
illustrator: Darren Winter

Concession Girl is Suzanne Palmer’s second Interzone story, ‘Spheres’ in 207 was her first. Suzanne has an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts, a wisteria vine named Cthulhu, and works in IT. She lives in New England and has a novel in process.
illustrator: Darren Winter

The Ships like Clouds, Risen by their Rain is Jason Sanford’s Interzone debut but his ‘When Thorns Are The Tips Of Trees’ is slated for a future issue. Jason is editor of the online fiction magazine storySouth and the moving force behind the Million Writers Award which aims to showcase the year’s best online published stories. He whittled 2007’s 164 nominated ‘notable’ stories down to a short list of 10 and you can vote before July 17 from here
illustrator: Vincent Chong

Little Lost Robot, author Paul McAuley, illustrator: Paul Drummond

Non Fiction in Iz 217
Editorial Pete Bullock Electronic Editions and the TT A Press Podcast
Ansible link News & Gossip Obituaries David Langford
Mutant Popcorn Film Reviews from Nick Lowe
Bookzone Book Reviews from Paul Kincaid, David Mathew, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Jim Steel, Paul Cockburn, John Howard, Juliet Mckenna, Andrew J. Wilson
Laser Fodder DVD Reviews Competitions, Tony Lee

Interzone 217 will be out 3 July 2008

Coming up in a future Interzone, celebrate the upcoming British SF author Chris Beckett's new collection and his second novel with a special issue featuring at least 2 of his stories and an interview, subscribe now.

[Roy1]

The magazine will be printed and subscription copies will go out July 3/4 but the UK distributer will not send them to retail outlets until July 10.

[Anthony G Williams]

In a complete contrast with Interzone 216, the special "Mundane SF" issue, the six stories in the latest issue of the British SFF magazine are emphatically "non-Mundane"; they all feature elements of the fantastic, aliens or deep space travel.

Africa by Karen Fishler (illustrated by Paul Drummond: also featuring on the cover): It is the very far future. Humanity has been banished from Earth by all-powerful aliens (apparently for making a complete mess of it) and now survives only in vast spaceships travelling the Galaxy. And in the form of the Guardians orbiting the Earth, whose task it is to prevent humanity from returning to the planet which has been completely cleansed of their works and allowed to revert to a wild state. There are only two Guardians left, when a spaceship materialises nearby.

The Two-Headed Girl by Paul G Tremblay: A strange fantasy about a girl and her constantly-changing second head. I first assumed that it was a figment of her imagination, but it seems not…

The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by their Rain by Jason Sanford (illustrated by Vincent Chong): Another story in which it is difficult to grasp entirely what's going on, even at the end. A settlement on a strange world constantly battered by violent storms brought by "spaceships" which at first seem to be clouds. But it is strictly forbidden to dig downwards, because of what people might find there…

Concession Girl by Suzanne Palmer (illustrated by Darren Winter): A more conventional tale concerning a human space station being visited by aliens trying to resolve their differences, and the unexpected diplomatic role played by a girl selling hot dogs.

Little Lost Robot by Paul McAuley (illustrated by Paul Drummond): A different take on Saberhagen's Berserker series, this time seen from the viewpoint of an ancient but still all-powerful robotic killer spaceship. Problems arise when the ship detects signs of life in a system which seems strangely familiar.

Comus of Central Park (illustrated by Paul Drummond): An amusing parable about a woman living in New York who finds a faun (half man, half goat) in Central Park, and the mayhem which follows when she introduces him to society.

A very varied and interesting collection, all of them worth the read. Somewhat to my surprise, the one which intrigued me most was Jason Sandford's tale. Even though it was difficult to figure out precisely what was going on, there was enough to stop me from getting lost and it was strongest in that "sense of strange" which features in the best SFF.

There are the usual news and extensive review sections, the latter focusing more on film and TV than books, with no less than nine pages on the visual media, covering not just major studio releases such as the X-Files, Indiana Jones, Iron Man, and The Incredible Hulk, plus TV series Torchwood and Sliders, but lesser-known genre films from Japan and Korea.

(From my SFF blog)