This story, from Interzone issue 209, has been shortlisted for the 2007 BSFA Award

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The Sledge-maker’s Daughter
by Alastair Reynolds

She stopped in sight of Twenty Arch Bridge, laying down her bags to rest her hands from the weight of two hogs‚Äô heads and forty pence worth of beeswax candles. While she paused, Kathrin adjusted the drawstring on her hat, tilting the brim to shade her forehead from the sun. Though the air was still cool, there was a fierce new quality to the light that brought out her freckles. (more…)

Tags: Alastair Reynolds • Award • BSFA • INTERZONE • Sledge-makers Daughter

Jason Stoddard has made his Winning Mars novel, expanded from his novella first published in Interzone 196, available for free download under a Creative Commons license.

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Tags: INTERZONE • Jason Stoddard • Winning Mars

This story was first published in Interzone 202, illustrated by Rik Rawling, and is now longlisted for a British Fantasy Award.

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I look at my five daughters as I leave the apartment and see only my fear of losing them.

In the hall, I shake the roaches from my shoes and head past the elevator for the stairwell. I tell my wife and children never to ride in that rickety lift, but I suspect they do anyway while I’m at work or asleep.

Outside, the gray snow falls like white noise.

I wonder if today will be the day.

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This story was first published in Interzone 202, illustrated by Vincent Chong. It is currently on the longlist for the British Fantasy Award.

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A lone quad bike rattles across the frozen Martian desert, kicking up dust. Riding with the wind at his back, Kenji Shiraki has been on the move since first light. In his oil-stained, dust-covered white insulation suit he looks strangely out of place, conspicuous. Above his breathing mask, his wary eyes scan the horizon, looking for trouble but finding only emptiness. Apart from the domed town up ahead, a few hills beyond, and the faint glow of the Reef’s skeleton, there’s nothing to disturb the brooding desolation.

He passes through the vehicular airlock into the town’s atmospheric dome, and rolls up Main Street with one hand resting on the handlebars. Most of the shops and stores are boarded up; pet dogs sleep in the shade, chickens fuss in the scrub. Suspicious faces watch him pass; there hasn’t been a visitor here for months. Midway along the street he pulls up and kills the engine in front of the town’s only surviving hotel.

Less than 24 hours, he thinks as he swings his leg off the bike and stiffly climbs the hotel’s wooden steps. The Glocks in his pocket bump against his thigh like animals shifting in their sleep. The feeling’s both familiar and reassuring. He pulls off his mask and takes a sip of warm water from the canteen on his belt, rinses the all-pervading grit from his mouth, and spits into the dust.

“I’m here for Jaclyn Lubanski,” he says.

The desk clerk doesn’t look up. His face is sweaty and soft, like old explosives gone bad. “Room 5,” he says.

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Journey to the Center of the Earth by Edward Morris

As part of Interzone’s 25th anniversary celebrations, we are offering free PDF download of this incredible novella with a cast list including Walter Munk, Howard Hughes, Rod Serling, Isaac Asimov, Ursula Le Guin, Jim Henson and others.

“In the Fifties, the top scientists of the day wanted a clear picture of the structure of the Earth from core to outer crust. They wanted to see the precontinental layer of the planet, upon which the continents slide like chunks of butter across a skillet, and sense for themselves the days when the oceans were still oozing up from the central fire and there were a few more planets in the solar system with no asteroid belt between them.

They wanted to know so much about the origins of earthquakes and storms, how old the planet really is, and how we evolved the way we did. They wanted to track the building and erosion of land, and chart the Earth’s history the way a botanist sees fire and famine and feast spelled out in the rings of ancient redwoods; the rise of mountains, erosion of soil, motion of deep rocks and deposition of the remains.

The idea came together on a sunlit patio over breakfast. It was to be the first of many, and did not presume to answer all its own questions at one go. It was a scientific version of oil wildcatting which became, in effect, a dry hole.

It was a beginning that only got to begin, and never got to be.”

Enjoy the read, then go back and explore the ‘invisible’ links in the text.

Click here!

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