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Interzone

New Science Fiction & Fantasy 2023 BRITISH FANTASY AWARD WINNER

INTERZONE 265

30th Jun, 2016

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Cover:

Item image: Interzone 265 Cover

If That's The Way That It Is by 2016 cover artist Vincent Sammy

 

Contents:

Item image: IZ265 Contents

 

Fiction:

All Your Cities I Will Burn by John Schoffstall
illustrated by Martin Hanford

Item image: All Your Cities I Will Burn

They say that when telling a story, it’s important to pick the right place to start. Not too far into the story, but not too long before its beginning. In telling my story about the love of Captain Terrell Johnson and Peggy O’Neill, about the Meteor Gods and the end of the world, I’m going to start 435 million years ago. I hope that’s not too soon.

 

The Eye of Job by Dan Reade
illustrated by Richard Wagner

Item image: The Eye of Job

I am standing on the back deck of a home off Elkton. Not mine. I don’t know whose it used to be. The tiny yard is waist-high grass, and a stone’s throw away Keg Creek slips by on the other side of burr oak. The water gurgles sleepily in the coming dawn. Rising above it all is the Eye.

 

Belong by Suzanne Palmer 

Item image: Belong

Gwenna Thirty-Seven stared at the display set into the back of her left hand, where it said, in surprisingly large letters: REJECTED. She tapped it, shook her hand, tapped it harder, reset the display, but the word remained.

 

On the Techno-Erotic Potential of Donald Trump under Conditions of Partially Induced Psychosis by Ken Hinckley
illustrated by Dave Senecal 

Item image: on the techno-erotic potential of Donald Trump under conditions of partially induced psychosis

Streaked with Toner. In the latter stages of Dr Axsel Scinder’s investigations – as the funding dried up in the aftermath of the economic crisis and the high-rise Institute crumbled around him – he found himself obsessively viewing projected (and thus grotesquely enlarged) cine-loops of the Presidential candidate.

 

The Inside-Out by Andrew Kozma
illustrated by Warwick Fraser-Coombe 

Item image: The Inside-Out

Anarchy told me about the abandoned ghetto because it knew I’d find it impossible to resist, which is what led us to take the subway to the Bright Hem. As with so much of the new home the Topoi designed for us, the subway was supposed to make humans feel like we were back on Earth, but perhaps because Spiders like Anarchy can find a comfortable seat in a crowded car just as easily as I can, it doesn’t. The subway was full of graffiti, just like on Earth, but here it was in a dozen other languages. Non-human languages. Hell, they could’ve been children’s drawings for all I knew, because all I knew was that I knew very little about humanity’s new home IO, the Inside-Out, the Dyson sphere the Topoi engineered as their home.

 

A Man of Modest Means by Robert Reed

Item image: A Man of Modest Means

Sure, everybody makes shit up. But the false and wrong don’t matter so much when the man is sleeping in somebody else’s bed. Invite him into yours for the night and every word matters. He says that he’s a spectacular lover, except of course he isn’t. Oh, and he swears to be nothing but considerate, except two minutes later he farts the pictures off the wall. And don’t get me started about trust. Every guy promises to be trustworthy. What does that tell you? And most of them claim to be trusting souls. Except they’ll eventually ask about past boyfriends and husbands, and worst of all, they want to know about kids. And then there’s the creepy stare. That stare seems inevitable. I’m sitting in bed talking about my life, sharing what I want to share, and he’ll give me the standard the-bitch-is-a-wack-job look.

 

Black Static 53 Out Now:

Item image: Black Static 53

Black Static is published at the same time as Interzone. Issue 53 contains a novelette by Priya Sharma, plus six stories by Steve Rasnic Tem, Harmony Neal, Kristi DeMeester, Stephen Hargadon, Danny Rhodes, and Charles Wilkinson. Cover art is by Tara Bush and interior illustrations are by Tara Bush, and Richard Wagner. Features and reviews are supplied by Stephen Volk, Lynda E. Rucker, Gary Couzens (films) and Peter Tennant (books). To take out a discounted subscription to Black Static or Black Static and Interzone combined please visit this website's shop.

 

Interface:

Editorial
Jo L. Walton

After two years of faintly fusty Hugo Awards, the announcement came as a breath of fresh air with a zesty tang. In June, at WisCon 40, Nalo Hopkinson launched The Lemonade Award, to be presented for kindness and positive change in science fiction. The trophy is truly sublime. Sublemon: each winner gets a sleekly fluted silvery Alessi® PSJS Juicy Salif Citrus Squeezer, a monstrous twelve-incher straight out of H.R. Geiger. When life gives you lemons, no one can hear you scream. Nalo Hopkinson should probably get the Lemonade Award for starting the Lemonade Award.

 

Future Interrupted
Jonathan McCalmont

Telling People What They Want To Be

The history of science fiction teaches us that a little social relevance can be a dangerous thing. Commercial science fiction did not come fully-formed, it sprang from a pre-history littered with prestigious ancestors who laid found­ations, coined phrases, and paved ways. People like Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell prospered because they recognised the them­atic links between this pre-history and the emerging crazes for popular science and amateur radio. These early fandoms provided editors with pre-existing audiences and commercial science fiction was born of the desire to pander to those audiences by validating their identities and telling them what they wanted to hear.

 

Time Pieces
Nina Allan

Canon Fodder

Debates about what constitutes ‘canon’ are ten a penny within the science fiction community. Barely a week seems to pass without someone getting up on a metaphorical podium to insist that in order to have a valid opinion on the current field, any seriously committed fan will as a matter of course need to have read Heinlein, Asimov, Herbert, Campbell, Clarke. Such claims and counter claims are by no means confined to the SF world, however. Last month, students of English Literature at Yale University launched a petition demanding that English 125/6, a study module covering major pre-20th-century English poets and a compulsory course requirement, be dropped from the curriculum. “It is unacceptable that a Yale student considering studying English literature might study only white male authors,” ran the text of the petition. “A year spent around the seminar table where the literary contributions of women, people of colour and queer folk are absent actively harms all students, regardless of their identity…and creates a culture that is especially hostile to students of colour.”

 

Ansible Link
David Langford

News and obituaries

 

Reviews:

Book Zone
Juliet E. McKenna, Jack Deighton, Lawrence Osborn, Duncan Lunan, Paul Kincaid, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Stephen Theaker

Item image: IZ265 Book Zone

Books reviewed include The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief by Lisa Tuttle (plus author interview), Extinction by Kazuaki Takano, Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay, Not So Much, Said the Cat by Michael Swanwick, Into Everywhere by Paul McAuley, The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie, World of Water by James Lovegrove, Hunters & Collectors by M. Suddain

 

Mutant Popcorn
Nick Lowe

Item image: IZ265 Mutant Popcorn

Cinema releases reviewed include Gods of Egypt, X-Men: Apocalypse, Captain America: Civil War, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Warcraft: The Beginning, Angry Birds, Ratchet & Clank, Independence Day: Resurgence, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, When Marnie Was There, Tale of Tales

 

Laser Fodder
Tony Lee

Item image: IZ265 Laser Fodder

DVDs and Blu-rays reviewed include The 5th Wave, The Call Up, Enemy Mine

 

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.

The best thing though is to follow any of the Shop/Buy Now/Subscribe links on this website and buy this new issue, or better still take out a subscription, direct with us. You'll receive issues much cheaper and much quicker, and the magazine will receive a much higher percentage of the revenue.

Potential subscribers outside the UK should note that six issues of 12-issue subscriptions have absolutely no postage added: you'll pay exactly the same as a UK subscriber.

New subscribers can get this issue free by using "IZ265" as their Shopper's Reference during checkout.

 

Please Help Spread the Word:

If you enjoy Interzone please blog about it, review it, or simply recommend it to your friends. Thank you!

 

Coming Soon:

'The End of Hope Street', a novelette by Malcolm Devlin, plus stories by Tade Thompson, Georgina Bruce and others. Interzone 266 is out in September. Subscribe now!

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