Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Oct/Nov 2009

If the cover picture of this edition looks particularly retro that’s because it is. By some arcane calculation the publishers reckon that this is the issue that marks the actual sixtieth anniversary (if you feel this is overly cynical, note that the magazine started out as a quarterly, spent most of its time at ten issues a year and has now been forced to six issues a year). In recognition of this fact, there’s no Classic Reprint (unfortunate, mostly) but each author is invited to pen a couple of paragraphs on their first encounter with the magazine, which came as quite a surprise to me as to how aged some of these authors were :-).

Anyway, to the meat of the magazine; the stories.

With this issue, we run the whole gamut of novella, novelettes, short stories and factual pieces.

The novella is from Lucius Shepard (a regular contributor to the magazine’s book review pages). ‘Halloween Town’, which tells the tale of Clyde Ormoloo, the willow wan and the eponymous town at the bottom of the narrow Shilkonic Gorge. Now, our Clyde had suffered an injury that’d left him with a strange complaint - whenever he looked at anyone in the light, he could see the state of their soul. The darkness engendered by Halloween’s less than prime location made it appear ideal to Clyde. But even in a town that appears to have been bypassed by the changes in the surrounding society, Clyde finds things that are dark and dangerous.
As with the recent issue of Interzone, I found this length of story a rather uncomfortable fit but the tale itself was suitably gruesome for it’s titular holiday event and a good reminder that the Fantasy element of the title came first :-)

The novelettes are as follows:

‘The Far Shore’ by Elizabeth Hand. In this story we follow Philip who had been a competent if not outstanding member of the corp de ballet who’d been content with his lot, first as a dancer, then as a trainer after a bad landing had smashed a foot. Feeling rather directionless, he’d taken an old friend up on the offer to housesit their camping lodge over the winter while she and her husband went south to Florida for the winter. While snowed in, Philip finds himself attracted to the Far Shore of the local lake, which had an ill-founded reputation locally but his gammy foot and the weather precluded much exploration. Whilst wandering in the forest (important safety tip - don’t forget your hi-viz jacket if you do this!)., Philip finds an injured youth who’s in a bad way. Finding an unexpected spark of desire, thought long dead after the death of his own lover, Philip takes in the youngster and nurses him back to health. In recompense, the being he has tended offers a choice (once its clear Philip is going to care for the boy whatever he may want) - Philip can continue with his lonesome life, or he can follow the youngster to the Far Shore and whatever may happen there.
Although this was, at times, a bit confusing, it is at heart a love story (so no prizes for guessing Philip’s choice) and what effects choices have on people. This was a thought provoking story from a veteran of the field.

‘Bandits of the Trace’ from Albert E. Cowdrey is a rarity in my experience - a fantasy set in the Old Time West, when men were men and bandit queens were bloody minded (and handed) murderers. Although it’s told from the point of view of a modern day treasure hunter trying to find the bandits’ lost hoard the story itself is presented as an extract from the book he’s writing on our bandit queen and her band of desperadoes.
In the main, this is the least openly fantastical of the stories in this issue of the magazine but the final few paragraphs make up for this even if they aren’t strictly necessary to make the story chilling…

‘The Way They Wove Spells in Sippulgar’ from the pen of the veteran Robert Silverberg takes us back to the author’s stupendous planet of Majipoor for this tale of a missing brother-in-law and the search for him in the eponymous city. Stories set on Majipoor should technically be science fiction; they’re on another planet in our future and there are alien races. But most of these races map fairly easily onto standard fantasy types and though the people of Majipoor sort of vaguely know they’re from off-world, there is little interaction with off-worlders and the place feels low-tech despite the existence of high-tech. the problem is that the planet is vast, seriously huge and travel times are in the ‘lifetime’ range. Anyway, back to our protagonist, who’s a merchant that doesn’t believe in anything much apart from his merchandise and the resultant credit balances. In a time when Majipoor is undergoing an explosive religious expansion, it seems that Sippulgar is one of the centres of these cults and that brother-in-law had become involved - no surprise to our merchant, who’d had to bale him out of other, less esoteric, businesses in the past. But this time, it looked as if brother-in-law had hit on something rather better than his usual fly-by-night scams. However, he and his partner in crime, also mysteriously vanished, had made a mistake in hiring a priest who genuinely believed in the message they offered and was a genuine saint according to our merchant. Now, it’s not impossible that the priest did away with his bosses in order to rid the church of their taint - holiness is no bar to doing evil. It may even be possible, however unlikely, that the communicant who’d wanted his wife raising from the dead had done away with them when they’d said no. But that demons had done away with them? Stuff and nonsense! However, by the end of the tale, our merchant is left more sceptical of his scepticism…
As stated above, Robert Silverberg has been writing Majipoor stories for the best part of thirty years and while some are… less than good shall we say, this definitely counts amongst the best of the bunch.

‘I Waltzed With a Zombie’ by Ron Goulart is, despite the subject a rather light hearted story about what happens when a leading man quite literally dies partway through filming. It really put a crimp in his style and his leading lady wanted to know why so she hired a private eye to find out.
This was mainly a fun story and I’m almost sure has been influenced by the smash hit mash-up between ‘Pride & Prejudice’ and zombie novels.

‘Another Life’ by Charles Oberndorf. In going to the stars, humanity has not left the squabbling behind. What they fight over might have changed but the need for bodies to do the fighting has not. However, cloning and the ability to download a mind map into the cloned body means that death isn’t final - there are one or two minor downsides, granted - everything after that mind map was made was lost and the cost was darn near prohibitive. But the military would pick up the tab for that first rebirth and any rebirths while in service, and you only had to die five times for you to serve out your term.
This story is told from the perspective of a man looking back to his first hitch and its consequences which was a relatively interesting way of prompting along the story but the close similarities with John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War’ series were enough to spoil it for me.

Next up are the short stories:

‘Logicist’ by Carol Emshwiller is a rather strange tale of a teacher (or logicist as Ms Emshwiller calls him). In his efforts to teach his charges, he takes them to a nearby fight between his people and the enemy which his people lose. In the aftermath, his children are lost and the logicist flees only to find himself deep in enemy territory where he’s taken in by a simple peasant family and he falls for the woman of the house until he finds plans for the enemy advances which force him to face the choice between returning to his own people or remaining where he is.
Ms Emschwiller gets our logicist to favour country and honour over love, which felt against the flow of the story to that point.

‘Blocked’ from Geoff Ryman is a really weird tales set just pre-catastrophe as the peoples of the planet have been persuaded that a major impactor is about to wipe out the population so deep shelters have been dug and gigantic storage units to hold the uploaded consciousnesses of those with the wealth to escape the up-coming catastrophe. But even if you have the money, you might lack the will to lock yourself away in such a fashion…

‘Mermaid’ from Robert Reed is a rarity in his recent work in that it doesn’t focus on Africa. Instead we are in suburban America where a man tries to hide the strange nature of his girlfriend from his neighbours.

‘Never Blood Enough’ by Joe Haldeman is set on a planet in the early days of colonisation with insufficient resources and personnel to do justice to the necessary research to make a safe colony. In this story, the colony’s administrator is confounded by a series of deaths that have left their victims short on blood supply but without any wounds that might explain the condition.
This was a neat (I’d say ‘nice’ but that implies something it wasn’t :-)) little tale of detective work even if there is a slight air deus-ex-machina about the ending.

‘The President’s Book Tour’ by M. Richert is basically a post-apocalyptic Romeo and Juliet tale that was deeply unpleasant in almost every way. In my opinion.

‘Through Time and Space With Ferdinand Feghoot LXXI’ by Ron Partridge. It’s a Feghoot - what can you expect? Practice your groans and enjoy. You may find you have to speak the final couple of lines to ‘get it’ though whether you think it was worth it is another matter, though it’s not the worst even in my fairly limited experience.

‘Shadows on the Wall of the Cave’ from Kate Wilhelm. After the disappearance of her youngest cousin, Ashley had stopped visiting her grandparent’s farm but now with the death of her grandmother, it was time to face up to that past and the recriminations of her family. Persuaded to visit the cave where the disappearance had occurred by her older cousin not even he can get her inside but it’s what he finds there that destroys the family.
Despite the apparently negative comments above, this story actually managed to end on an upbeat note.

As all the stories were written by people with literally decades of writing experience the general quality of the stories was excellent with only a couple of the short stories rated as low as 5/10, with the majority hitting 7/10 and Silverberg’s Majipoor story rating an 8/10.

The non-fiction areas saw Lucius Shepard appear once more, this time in his role as film reviewer where he goes onto bash the latest round of genre movies though he heaps relatively loads of praise on ‘Moon’ .

The science piece from Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty ‘Science: Seeing Red’ was a fun piece on how we see colour and rather than ‘red’ being an absolute description, it’s merely a perception of a particular band of wavelengths.

Interzone Sept-Oct 2009

This edition of the magazine has one of the coolest covers I’ve seen in the magazine’s history again from the regular cover artist Adam Tredowski. Unfortunately there didn’t appear to be a story to match it in content though there were a couple of good stories plot wise.

Rather unusually, the lead story is defined as a novella from the pen of Jason Sandford. ‘Sublimation Angels’ is set far into the future where humans are effectively in a symbiotic relationship with their artificial intelligences (A.I.s). However, the focus of the story is on a planet following an extreme orbit around the home world of the Aurals. Desperate to find out more about these very alien beings, the Terrans send an expedition to this planet shorn of much of its high tech and the AI systems that ran it. The story tells the tale of Chicka and his voyage of discovery as he travels through the various levels of society and the revelation of the true purpose behind this overextended scientific experiment.
Unfortunately, the story itself is also rather longer than the premise could support in my opinion, though novella length stories are a difficult length to write to - they can’t be as taut as a short story, nor yet do they provide sufficient space to provide a fully detailed background such as would be expected in a full length novel. The story did pick up a bit of pace by the end and a resolution of sorts was provided. This story was illustrated by Paul Drummond.

‘No Longer You’ by Katherine Sparrow and Rachel Swirsky left me very confused I fear - I can’t really say much about it as I’m not sure what was going on. Probably something rather deep and meaningful about female/male interrelatedness and deep Jewish lore. Then again, possibly not… this was the least comprehensible and therefore unenjoyable story in this edition. This story was illustrated by Mark Pexton.

‘Shucked’ by Adrian Joyce is only a little more comprehensible than ‘No Longer You’ but it starts from a familiar premise; the ever rising tide of spam messages taking over the world’s e-mail boxes. In this story, the spambots escape the confines of the e-mail systems and infect all aspects of the world’s interconnected electronic systems and narco-hypnotising us meat-beings into assimilating it. It’s a bit more dressed up than that and though I can’t say it was an enjoyable read it was, um, interesting. This story was illustrated by Dave Senecal.

‘The Godfall’s Chemsong’ from Jeremiah Tolbert was the best story (IMHO) in this edition set on an unnamed planet an unknown number of years in the future, the focus of the story is Muskblue a near outcast of her pod, still officially part of the group but only fed from the scraps of the godfall finding its way to the benthic depths in which the pod exists. Despite the artist’s depictions in the story, Muskblue and her people came over as more squid like than humaniform but they have quite a sophisticated civilisation all things considered. Finally working up the courage to break from the pod, Muskblue commits the ultimate sin when she finds some godfall and fails to report it back to Mother and she’s exiled when her crime is found out. Although she’s now alone, Muskblue is impregnated by a random male but their future is still doubtful as she searches desperately for food before she’s overwhelmed by hunger and inimical species of the deeps. The ending is an almost literal deus-ex-machina as a war in heaven allows Muskblue and her future progeny to survive and presumably prosper. Despite this rather cop out ending, this story was fun to read and introduced a genuinely innovative alien culture - one could almost wish this had been the novella rather than 'Sublimation Angels’. This story was illustrated by Martin Bland.

Chris Butler’s ‘The Festival at Tethselem’ also proved to be intriguing and if the initial plot setup is not particularly innovative Mr Butler ends up taking the story in a fairly unexpected direction. At first, we are led to believe that our point-of-view character and his companion are on their way to the insular city of Tethselem in order to steal a fabled artwork and they gain entry to the city during one of its four yearly art festivals in the company of one of the artists and his wife. It’s not too clear what sort of technology is around or whether this is set in outer space or a purely fantasy world; some things are made clear during the story - our protagonist and his companion were on the losing side in a war and its this that’s led them into a life of crime. There’s a myth that if the statue is stolen, then the city will be destroyed, or maybe the whole of creation. Nobody’s sure and the city council discourages experimentation. Until the end of the story where the truth behind the statue and the myth is revealed to be much stranger than the myth! For such a relatively short story this packs quite a great deal into it and manages to explore the motivations of the various parties quite well. This story was illustrated by Martin Bland.

The main highlight of the non-fiction sections of the magazine was the Author Interview with Robert Holdstock celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the start of the Mythago Wood saga and a look at the latest entry in the sequence. if you aren’t familiar with this then Mythago Wood is where the various mythical nature spirits take on an objective reality in a realisation of the collective unconsciousness. Not really something I’ve a great deal of sympathy with though there are other aspects of these books to appreciate. The movie reviews included the most sympathetic review I’ve seen of ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’, which I’ve read as part of my SF reading group - a surprisingly good, for an officially non-genre novel, read and whilst the reviewer didn’t go into paroxysms of praise over the latest Harry Potter, he was reasonably complementary over the way the script had hacked away at the overblown source materiel - even when there is such a degree of bloat that had come to affect the final three or four books, deciding what makes a good movie whilst retaining enough of the original so as not to cause problems in the final couple of films must be a bit of a black art. However, if the film reviewers were feeling generous, this spirit of generosity did not extend to their colleague reviewing the season five Stargate: Atlantis DVDs, not that I can disagree with the basic thrust of the argument that this aspect of the franchise had long outstayed its welcome - something I felt after watching the first four episodes of the first season despite occasional cravings to watch more…

Fantasy and Science Fiction - Aug/Sept 2009

In this edition of the magazine, they have seven novelettes and three short stories along with a poem, not often seen in F&SF. There are the two classic reprints for the continuing celebration of the magazine’s 60th anniversary.

The novelettes are:

‘The Art of the Dragon’ by Sean McMullen. This is rather an odd story from a writer, and therefore someone who could be considered creative. In it, a mysterious huge dragon appears and immediately starts gobbling up the artistic treasures of the world; the world’s architectural masterpieces; the world’s art galleries, anything and everything that mankind had spent time creating over his millennia on the planet. Art critics became an endangered job category almost overnight as the Cult of the Dragon rejected all of mankind’s advances of those millennia, including clothing in the more extreme factions…
But there was still no communication with the dragon, now resting in the Australian deserts as bewildered investigators came, attempted to find out more about it, failed and left, or joined the Cult camps set up around the dragon. Our narrator is the world’s last remaining art student (mainly thanks to the, ah, accidents suffered by the rest) and a member of the British investigating team and it‘s he who comes up with the rather startling premise as to what the dragon wants. Mankind had become so pre-occupied with its feats of art that it had lost sight of its abilities to advance and it was caught up in teenage type activities. But now it was time to grow up, or else!

Next up is ‘A Token of a Better Age’ from Melinda M. Snodgrass, which is a retelling of the classic Saint George and the Dragon myth as told by the saint himself from his cell on his return from his mighty deed. It would appear that George is one of the few people who can wield the vorpal blade against the Transdimensional beings that bring misery into the world. Despite being a rather well travelled tale, Ms Snodgrass manages a fairly fresh take on the myth and doesn’t blacken George’s reputation as sometimes seems to be the case in other authors’ cases.

‘The Bones of Giants’ from Yoon Ha Lee is, as far as I know, pure fantasy though it does have an interesting setting. The sorcerer had been increasing his rule on the lands surrounding the Pit for as long as Tamim could remember and with his parents destroyed by the sorcerer’s revenant forces he’s about to blow his brains out so he won’t join those forces when the bones of the giant that he’s sheltering under start to move. An apparently youthful girl seems to be the cause of this miracle and it seems that she has her own bones to pick with the sorcerer. Along the way, Tamim gets an education in the art of the manipulation of skeletons and in the final confrontation, he gets to make a life-or-death choice that isn’t as obvious as it may seem!

Lawrence C. Connolly’s ‘The Others’ is a story about an exploration party made up of a clone-group which ends up being rather confused in its motives (both the group and the story I fear). Although a clone-group and, therefore supposedly identical, the members of the party all see the world through slightly different eyes with at least two of the ground party showing signs of megalomania as their contacts with the natives descend into a rather chaotic mess. Connolly seems to lose control of the story and I never really fought myself back to any sense of stability with it.

‘Three Leaves of Aloe’ by Rand B. Lee is set in a somewhat future India where a single mother’s daughter is being threatened in the implantation of a chip to control her violent tendencies. The mother is not too happy about this but she sees the exclusive school her daughter is at as the best way forward for the youngster, especially after reminding herself and her daughter what the alternatives could be. But she comes to see that some solutions come with far too high a price tag after a talk with her sister-in-law. Lee manages to give a good sense of the story’s setting and the mother’s attempts to do the best for her daughter comes through quite strongly.

Albert E. Cowdrey’s ‘The Private Eye’ is set in Louisiana, one of the many places I don’t know anything about so I don’t know how well he’s done on scene or characterisation but this is one of the more fun stories in this edition although it probably won’t seem that way at first as a twelve year old girl is abducted. JJ has the ability to see things that others would prefer to remain hidden, like the value of the next card to be dealt at the local casino, that didn’t always endear him to those in charge (especially the casino’s owners…) but it led to the retrieval of the twelve year old and the uncovering of local corruption. JJ reckoned he’d have been better off if he’d been a tad less diligent himself when it’s made clear that the youngster’s got a way of making things turn out the way she wants and that her latest want was JJ…

The final novelette is Bruce Sterling’s ‘Esoteric City’ and here I apologise to Mr Connolly for saying his story was confusing. Like much of his recent work, this set well away from his cyber-punk roots. In as much as the term has any meaning, this is a contemporary fable as an Italian ‘biznissman’ having made the traditional pact with Dark Forces and now it’s time to meet his hellish sponsor so we get a whirlwind, overly wordy tour of the nether regions leaving one to wonder just what the point was.

There are also three short stories:

‘You Are Such a One’ from the long standing fantasy author Nancy Springer that tells the tale of a mousy housewife who ends up going far beyond the bounds of mousy into invisibility.

Matthew Hughes’ ‘Hunchster’ tells the sad tale of a dying community where the local jail is the only remaining employer so when an idiot-savant tells his poker partners that he’s come up with a device that would enable crimes to be stopped before they happen, he meets an unhappy fate. This had the benefit of being a sharp and to the point story as well as being short.

‘Icarus Saved From the Skies’ from Georges-Olivier Chateaureyand tells the tale of an unfortunate gentleman who had the misfortune to start growing wings from his shoulder blades. Unfortunate for because not only don’t they develop enough to let him fly, the unsightly sprouts made him appear to have a hunchback but Maude persuaded him that he was special and for quite a while they were fine together. However the stresses involved in hiding the growths grew too much and our character demands that his wife (a surgeon) remove them but she’s eager to see him fly - not something he’s keen on even if the wings would let him. A point amply demonstrated when, on a walking holiday in the Alps, she shoves him off the edge… This was a bit of a shocker in the way it ends and Georges-Olivier doesn’t appear to have had a ‘message’ in writing it - and this ain’t necessarily a bad thing.

There’s a moderately OK poem ‘Obsolete Theories’ from Sophie M. White taking an amusing look at the potential downsides if a couple of old theories about our universe should be true…

And finally, the two classic reprints for the magazine’s 60th anniversary celebrations are:
‘The Goddamned Tooth Fairy’ by Tina Kuzminski. This has the honour of being Our Editor’s personal pick of the classic reprints and while nothing unusual appears to be happening for the first few pages except for a deft description of small-town Americana, it becomes a story about learning to follow your heart and not surrendering to fears. And the tooth fairy makes an appearance too - he’s a bit of a grouch though (and no, that’s not a typo).
The other classic reprint is ‘Snowfall’ by Jessie Thompson, which is introduced by Harlan Ellison in a piece that’s almost longer than the actual story. Looking out at the snowy scene a young girl finds the possibilities out there more enticing than in the apparent warmth and safety inside, especially the foxes just visible in the undergrowth at the edges of the clearing. I have to say that I find this sort of story rather depressing if not out right sad and the better written they are the more intense the feeling. Like the Nancy Springer story, this is dealing with alienation from the surroundings and I don’t think its just the youth of this character that was so affecting but the loss of potential. With the Springer story, the housewife has failed to make the most of her chances but with this one, the girl doesn’t get them…

Interzone 223

This Interzone was a Dominic Green special with three stories, an editorial and an author interview with him. All-together these stories and the remaining two stories were excellent.

The Domonic Green stories kicked off with 'Butterfly Bomb' which is set in a far future where humanity has spread out through the galaxy. Although this future does not have FTL travel, the various civilisations that exist out there can make reasonable travel plans due to the ancient gateways seeded throughout the galaxy that act as a short-circuit to various destinations. Krishnan is alone on his planet - almost. A war machine, capable of mimicing any form of life, then neutralising it ha destroyed the rest of his colony and Krishnan dreaded the day that a slaver ship would find him and his secret...

Next up was 'Coat of Many Colours', this one resolutely set in a relatively near-future Brazil suffering from ecological collapse. A rogue gene lab had created a new lifeform and its directors, in an effort to avoid jail time, have come up with a plan to exploit it for its chromo active skin (it can change colour at will, okay?). However, it seems that there are doubts over the creature's iuntelligence levels. Can it be saved from exploitation by the world's fashionistas?

Domonic Green's final story, 'Gilster' is set in the same far-future setting as 'Butterfly Bomb' though with a completely different set of characters. A bunch of rogues have found themselves on the high density planet of Midas desperately attempting to obtain the gold that would get them off the planet and back to somewhere more civilised. Not that gold was rare - just the opposite - it was in the make up of every native creature on the planet. It's just that most of those creatures would kill you if you made just the slightest mistake. And don't even mention the inflation...

All the stories have been illustrated by Daniel Bristow-Bailey.

'The Transmigration of Aishwarya Desai' initially looked like it was a moderately straightforward space exploration story, and it is sort of. Except that the exploration is across alternate universes where people are looking for a reality that contains intelligence.

This story was illustrated by Arthur Wang.

'Silence and Roses' by Suzanne Palmer is another post apocalyptic future where a group of people have cut themselves off from the surrounding world where they lived with their robotic carers who failed to understand basic facts about the aging process.

This story was illustrated by LeMat.

Fantasy and Science Fiction June/July

This edition's selection of stories proved to be very interesting and all barring one story, very good.

We got a single novella this month: Albert E. Cowdrey's 'Paradiso Lost', which deals with the first adventure of his recurring character Robert Kohn. In this story, Robert and his fellow newly minted lieutenant Jesús Morales are sent out with their platoons to bring back a bunch of colonists who had strayed into space that Earth no longer controlled. Along the way they had to deal with a psychopathic commanding officer and Kohn is taught the Ways of Love by an Older Woman. The colonel is murdered and Kohn begins to find out that there's more to the world than his relative innocence allowed.

'Firehorn' from Robert Reed tells the tale of a childhood joke that had taken on a life of its own and half a century later the two originators return to their childhood haunts to find the mythical beast to explain the mysterious death of a trio of robot intelligences. As well as a plea for toleration of differences, this story was a nice look back at childhood.

'Adaptogenia' from Wayne Wightman is a rather scary 'end-of-the-world' story. Apparently insects started evolving amazingly fast to duplicate other things so they could get at any source of food without being detected. Nothing can stop this plague and the creatures prove fiendishly adaptive! Not an easy read but it is a strong story.

'Economancer' by Carolyn Ives Gilman tells the true story of the Credit Crunch and why the Anglo-American banking system went so spectacularly head over heals.... This story has fun with the collapsing system with plenty of puns. The story is told in the form of e-mail messages from the main protagonist to his girlfriend.

'The Spaceman' from Mike O'Driscoll is a tale of a boy and his friends as they are contacted by the ghostly form of the commander of the Apollo 20 Orbiter in order to help him find his missing colleagues. But can you take it seriously when you know the moon missions came to an end with Apollo 17? Freddie found it impossible right up until his friends disappeared in a rocket and his world closed in around him. This almost felt like this should have been written in the first person, but was written in the third person.

'The Motorman's Coat' is written by John Kessel in an indefinite future and is set in the Czech capital of Praha. Frantisek runs a sort of antiques shop and is given the eponymous coat by an admirer and plans on using it as the central piece in an attempt to boost his shop's flagging prospects but things go rather less than well... I found this rather confused

'Corona Centurion™ FAQ' from Terry Bisson is the FAQ sheet for this amazing blood replacement product detailing its benefits and potential advantages. This was a hoot.

The two classic reprints in this edition are:

'Retrograde Summer' from John Varley set on a colonised Mercury and also deals in the loss of childhood innocence though, this being Varley, there are a number of interesting twists to the story. This was one of the best stories in this edition.

'Sooner or Later or Never Never' from Gary Jenning was the first in a collection of stories about the luckless Crispin Mobey and his attempts to proselytes to the outback Aborigines. Although written for comic effect and Jennings satirises everyone, including poor old Mobey, some of the attitudes in the story can seem a little extreme by today's standards.

Interzone June 2009

The 222nd edition of Interzone was a strong showing of short stories.

First up was Johnny and Emmie-Lou Get Married by Kim Lakin-Smith, which is set in a post apocalyptic world, where cars are steam driven and electronics-riddled and the streets are ruled by the gangs (for an hour in the mornings anyway...). Johnny and Emmie-Lou belong to rival gangs but they were certain they were made for each other and a certain indiscretion made it desirable to put their union on a regular basis. However, the other members of the two gangs were real down on the marriage. Johnny's Flys just took away his wings and banished him from their company but the Rocketeers were groundbased and Johnny had to win the race that he found himself in with Emmy-Lou's former beau. Yeah, sure it's basically Romeo and Juliet via West Side Story, but it's got a verve and joy all of its own. This story was illustrated by Warwick Fraser-Coombe.

Unexpected Outcomes by Tim Pratt appears to be set in the real world, but just as the planes were about to crash into the World Trade Center, everything came to a stop. And I mean everything... except the messenger appearing in the sky and in everyone's home telling them that the world is just a computer simulation that had run its course. However, due to ethical concerns, the sim couldn't just be switched off. But all the things that basically made life fun would be as they cost too much in computer processing terms - no more changes in the weather, no more babies, no more hunger (you don't need to eat any more). What would humanity make of this situation?!

In Lady of the White-Spired City by Sarah L. Edwards we find ourselves in the far future of interstellar governments but the ships that bind these governments together are relativistic sub light star ships and there's no way of communicating faster than light so the Regency spent out ambassadors to reminds its worlds of their allegiances. But those ambassadors left behind all their ties as they flew between the worlds. Evriel had come back to the world of Kander many generations after leaving to find out what was known of the daughter she had left behind only to find her time there had been immortalised in an anonymously authored song. Who was responsible for this saga? This story is illustrated by Martin Bland.

Microcosmos by Nina Allan is set in an America affected by climate change and infrastructure collapse but it tells the tale of Melodie's visit to her uncle. There's a definite air of menace about this story even if you are never quite sure why...

Ys, by Aliette de Bodard tells the story of Françoise Martin and the shadowy goddess of the drowned city of Ys. Ys suffered the fate of all these cities that had fallen to depravity and had been sunken under the sea many years ago. Now, the goddess had chosen Françoise to bear the son that would return Ys to the mortal lands. With the aid of Gaëtan, an old friend, Françoise attempts to overturn the goddess's schemes. I found this a bit confusing but reads all right with a bit of effort. This story was illustrated by Mark Pexton.

The final story is a rather interesting story, Mother of Champions by Sean McMullen, which tells the story of a group of cheetahs that are out to revenge the polluting of their gene pool in the wild. This basically imagines that Cheetahs have been guiding humanity for 5 million years with the collusion of domestic cats. The cheetahs see themselves as the pinnacle of evolution and anything that interferes with this is to be dealt with... This was illustrated by Anne Stone-Coyote.

There were also a series of interesting reviews, including a look at the tortured history of the Watchmen film story. Paul Di Filippo and Jim Woodring on their collaborative work Cosmocopia.

Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2009

For me the most interesting piece in this month's magazine was actually the factual piece by Michael Carroll, 'Futuropolis: How NASA Plans To Create A Permanent Presence on the Moon' in which he details the various plans that NASA is experimenting with to provide livable habitats on our satellite - it's not just buildings that are required, it's the supporting technology and transport technologies, from space ships to ground vehicles, often not expounded on by the private finance lobby.

The Big Name in the fiction section of the magazine was Harry Turtledove's 'But It Does Move', an alternate history novella looking at the effects on Galileo Galilei of a new innovation in the Inquisition's armoury; psychoanalysis a couple of centuries before its time. The Viennese cardinal's talk may be defending the Church, but Freud would have been proud of his work on Galileo. Like Turtledove's more recent books, the speech patterns of the protagonists felt somewhat immature and old fashioned at the same time time, though the story itself was interesting.

'Solace', the short story by James Van Pelt was another interesting story, telling the tale of Meghan and her crew mates as they travel through the early parts of their four millennia journey to their destination, and the various failure points they have to overcome.

Donald Moffitt's 'The Affair of the Phlegmish Master' is a rather interesting mixture of Time Travel and Alternate History. The time travel in this story doesn't actually take you back to your own past, but puts you in an alternate history. Peter Van Graas has been contracted to act as translator and general hand holder to Harry Brock and his wife Kimberly as they travel back to Delft to commission Vermeer to paint a picture of his wife. The Art Establishment is not keen on such a stunt,. however, and extreme measures are to be undertaken in order to make sure things go their way!

'The Cold Star Sky' by Craig DeLancey sees an Earthman and a Greete in a joint mission in an attempt to rescue a Greete ship that had got stuck in the depths of a gas giant as they tried investigating what the humans were looking for in the planet's deeper layers. Humans in this universe are the uncouth newcomers with little credit on the galactic stage and if Tarkos was unhappy to be cooped up with the Greete gasbag known as Gurk, Gurk itself was put out to be sharing Tarkos' deep diving ship. Again, this was a good story.

'Attack of the Grub-Eaters' by Richard A. Lovett is the tale of an alien invasion as reported on the Lawns and Gardens forum. We never see the aliens or the person directly confronting them, but just see the various posts from those offering advice. I can't say I've seen anything quite like this on the real UseNet - perhaps the closest thing was the sweep of posts after 09/11 as the news of the attacks swept across the States as people woke up.

Two novelettes remain:

'Chain' from Stephen L. Burns looks at a fairly near future US where Artificial Beings have been given the right to gain their freedom from their owners. A young woman is part of a group of people who have decided that these artificial people are treated as if they were still in chains. This was a rather heavy handed 'message' story that seems rather out of place these days.

'Monuments of Unageing Intellect' from Howard V. Hendrix is set in a future where nanobots had been released into the general population. Programmed to keep humans alive, these nannites effectively stopped their development just post-puberty and made having babies extremely difficult - fortunately, given the virtually impossibility of dying - you could destroy yourself fast and completely enough so you couldn't be recreated, but it would take some doing.