Interzone

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Cover:

417h3r105 v2 by 2017 cover artist Dave Senecal

 

Contents:

 

Fiction:

The Influence Machine by Sean McMullen
illustrated by Richard Wagner

I am an Associate of the Royal College of Science, which is unusual for an inspector in the Metropolitan Police. With the twentieth century only months away, education for police is becoming important. Much of my work consists of lecturing to sceptical constables with ten times my experience about how electricity may be used to murder people, how to spot the illegal tapping of telegraph wires, and why it’s important to preserve the fingerprints on murder weapons. Occasionally I am even called to real crime scenes.

 

A Death in the Wayward Drift by Tim Akers
illustrated by Richard Wagner

My body is a jar. I fill it with the storm of winter, and it is gray and furious. I fill it with summer’s warmth, and it is light, benevolent, whole. I fill it with death, and it is a burden that must be carried.

My brother’s death.

 

Still Life With Falling Man by Richard E. Gropp
illustrated by Richard Wagner

I count backward from ten and think about the end again. This is how I got here.

I’ll wake up before I hit zero. I know this. I’ll be back in the house on the beach. I know this. I’ll be alone, in the white, with my memories of the world.

But for now…

People shouldn’t have to be this strong.

10…

 

A Strange Kind of Beauty by Christien Gholson
illustrated by Martin Hanford 

The desert carrion bird has many names. Its common name is scoryax. There are some in the Kahtt who call the bird water prophet because it leads us from water source to water source. Most call it shit beak because it is a scavenger of the dead and smells like shit. I sometimes call it ghost seer because its eyes seem to penetrate all surfaces, see the hidden dark beneath. No one walks away from an encounter with a scoryax unscathed. Its black eyes were forged in the underworld.

 

The Common Sea by Steve Rasnic Tem

His oldest memories were peeks into another world, its cities crumbling into an alien sea, strange plants dying under intense heat, entire animal species going extinct. He never could decide if these revelations were current, or delayed because of transmission time. Either way, what was he to do about it? There was nothing he could do.

 

Black Static 57 Out Now:

Black Static is published at the same time as Interzone. Issue 57 contains new long stories by Ralph Robert Moore, Simon Avery, Mike O'Driscoll, and Aliya Whiteley. Cover art is by Ben Baldwin and interior illustrations are by Richard Wagner, Ben Baldwin, and Joachim Luetke. Features and reviews are supplied by Ralph Robert Moore, Lynda E. Rucker, Gary Couzens (films) and Peter Tennant (books, plus an in-depth interview with Andrew Hook). To take out a discounted subscription to Black Static, or Black Static + Interzone combined, please visit this website's shop.

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 "BS57 FREE" as their Shopper's Reference during checkout. The same offer applies to Interzone and a dual subscription to both magazines: use "IZ269 FREE" or "BS57/IZ269 FREE" as your Shopper Reference.

 

Interface:

Guest Editorial by Steve Rasnic Tem

Future Interrupted: #Resistance
Jonathan McCalmont

History marches on and the road to Hell grows shorter with every step. At home, a generation of public school tyrants are drawing up plans to turn Britain into Europe’s answer to Singapore: arm sales and numbered accounts for the wealthy, zero-hour contracts for everyone else! Abroad, Trump’s presidency began with a series of executive orders that tore families asunder and debunked the carefully nurtured myth that the American political system was caught in a state of institutional deadlock. When Democrats take power, they wring their little hands and talk about the importance of working with the opposition in order to deliver incremental reforms. When Republicans take power, they start putting their enemies in camps.

 

Time Pieces: The Voyage Home
Nina Allan

My sense of place didn’t become fully alerted until I started writing.

Not that being a writer is in any way necessary to having a strong sense of place. Place is fundamental to identity, the where of recollection more intrinsic to its potency even than the when. We swap memories of place all the time. Whole eras of our lives become defined by the house or street or country we happened to occupy while that life was going on. My own earliest memories are themselves indivisible from place: the backyard of our terraced house in Nottingham, the infinite laby­rinth of the London Underground, the creosote-smelling loggia of my grandmother’s seaside bungalow in Worthing. When dwelled upon for more than a moment, any of these thumbnail-sized memory-boxes can be made to telescope outwards and encompass a world.

 

Ansible Link
David Langford

News, obituaries.

 

Reviews:

Book Zone
Peter Tennant, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Jonathan McCalmont, Stephen Theaker, Elaine Gallagher, Duncan Lunan, Jack Deighton, John Howard, Lawrence Osborn

Books reviewed include Ubo by Steve Rasnic (plus an interview with the author conducted by Peter Tennant); Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel by Jospeh Fink & Jeffrey Cranor; Bethany by Adam Roberts; The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories edited by Mahvesh Murad & Jared Shurin; The Promise of the Child and The Weight of the World by Tom Toner; The Mountains of Parnassus by CzesÅ‚aw MiÅ‚osz; Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav KalfaÅ™; The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi; Empire Games by Charles Stross

 

Mutant Popcorn
Nick Lowe

Films reviewed include The Lego Batman Movie, A Monster Calls, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Assassin's Creed, The White King, The Great Wall, Monster Trucks, Split, A Cure for Wellness, Passengers, The Space Between Us, Collateral Beauty, Underworld: Blood Wars

 

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 (scroll down to the bottom of the Shop), or better still take out a subscription (at the top of the Shop), 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.

SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers can get this issue free by using "IZ269 FREE" as their Shopper's Reference during checkout.

 

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