Interzone

Cover

Interzone's 2020 cover artist is Warwick Fraser-Coombe

 

Contents

 

Fiction

Cofiwch Aberystwyth by Val Nolan
illustrated by Richard Wagner 

We passed a bloated human corpse as we entered the harbour. It was face down in the water, its clothing a tissue of rags and filth that was as much weeds as fabric. Sigrid went pale when she saw it. Annabel threw up over the side of the dinghy. I only grinned up at the drone which was filming our arrival. I knew my subscribers were going to love this shit.

 

Rocket Man by Louis Evans
illustrated by Dave Senecal 

Each night I dream of Moscow, bombsight nose cone dreams.

These dreams have no plot and no logic. The city is a plum, a windswept field, a stag’s heart. It is an emerald, a green onion, an open mouth.

And me? I am a secant. An abscess. A segment of an orange. Coal-furnace tongs. A flaw.

In the instant before I wake, sweating, heaving, I am the first gasp of the inferno.

 

Organ of Corti by Matt Thompson
illustrated by Martin Hanford 

On our third night out from Madrid we huddled around a sputtering campfire and listened to the desert scream.

We had halted our march in the shadow of one of the lunette dunes that stretched southward from the city limits all the way to the Iberian coast. Around us, rocky outcrops rose, minaret-like, from the desert floor. These wind-scoured edifices sang dissonant harmonies into the small hours, a shrieking series of banshee wails that rose in pitch to fade beyond our perception. Ana, the leader of our little expedition, logged the time and duration of each outbreak. Her sound-level meter tracked their passage into the upper reaches of the frequency band, its readout oscillating wildly as our cochleas ached in protest.

 

Carriers by James Sallis
illustrated by Richard Wagner 

Soldiers came up the gully late that afternoon. Even to the kids who lived there – Kelly was 12 then, Eric was 16 – they looked young. And the word soldiers came to them the way most words did those days, loose and slippery so they didn’t stay around too long. The troop’s uniforms were tatters, pieced together from rags and recommissioned castoffs. The fact that they got around to this stray patch of land at all meant the government must already have won over or rounded up everyone else. In the scheme of things Kelly and Eric didn’t matter. They were stragglers, leftovers, leavings.

 

Black Static #74 Out Now

Black Static is published at the same time, and in the same format, as Interzone. Issue 74 contains new dark fiction by Matt Thompson, Christopher Kenworthy, Ainslie Hogarth, Ray Cluley, Seán Padraic Birnie, and Andrew Reichard. The cover art is by Richard Wagner, and interior illustrations are by Richard Wagner, Joachim Luetke, and others. Regular features: Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker; Into the Woods by Ralph Robert Moore; Case Notes book reviews by Mike O'Driscoll, Laura Mauro, David Surface, Philip Fracassi, Daniel Carpenter, and Andy Hedgecock who also interviews Tim Lebbon; Blood Spectrum film reviews by Gary Couzens. To take out a subscription to Black Static, or Black Static + Interzone combined, please click on the Shop link above or below.

 

Interface

Guest Editorial
Val Nolan

 

Future Interrupted: The Eternal Act of Creation (Why We Can't Leave the Arts to Algorithms)
Andy Hedgecock

 

Climbing Stories: Shiny Surprise Goodness
Aliya Whiteley

Ansible Link
David Langford

 

Reviews

Book Zone

Jack Deighton: Re-Coil by J.T. Nicholas, Sixteenth Watch by Myke Cole • Juliet E. McKenna: The True Queen by Zen Cho, author interview • Val Nolan: Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds • Stephen Theaker: New Horizons edited by Tarun K. Saint, Sea Change by Nancy Kress • Duncan Lawie: Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer • Maureen Kincaid Speller: Trail of Lighting + Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse

 

Mutant Popcorn
Nick Lowe

Films reviewed include Little Joe, Vivarium, Satr Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, Underwater, Spies in Disguise, Dolittle, Sonic the Hedgehog

 

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 elsewhere. If your local store (in any country) doesn't stock the magazine they should easily 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, Barnes & Noble, etc.

The best thing though is to click on the Shop button above or the link below and buy this new issue or 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. No postage charge is added to UK orders, and overseas orders are sent via airmail for just £1 per item.

 

Please Help Spread the Word

Magazines like Interzone cannot survive without subscriptions, and we always need more. If you enjoy the magazine please blog about it, review it, or simply recommend it to your friends. Thank you!