British Fantasy Awards 2012 Longlists

You’ve seen the shortlists. Now read the longlists. It’s a bit like time travel with the possibility of alternate universes thrown into the mix. A little bit.

Al Robertson’s Of Dawn was in Interzone 235 and Mercurio D. Rivera’s Tethered was in Interzone 236.

Vector 270

Artwork by Mega11

The Late Spring issue of Vector has summations of 2011 from Graham Andrews, Lynne Bispham, Nic Clarke, Mark Connorton, Gary Dalkin, Alan Fraser, Naill Harrison, David Hebblethwaite, Tony Keen, Paul Kincaid, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Martin McGrath, Kev McVeigh, Anthony Nanson, Paul Graham Raven, Partick Mahon, Ian Sales, Andy Sawyer, Donna Scott, Sue Thomson, Sandra Unerman, Jonathan McCalmont, Alison Page and me. The rest of the contents (including articles from Shana Worthen, Victor Grech, Clare Thake-Vassallo, Ivan Callus, Melanie Keene, Terry Martin, Stephen Baxter and others) can be found here. Book reviews editor Martin Lewis’s editorial can be found here along with a list of the books reviewed in this issue.

This British Science Fiction Association mailing also comes with the latest issue of the BSFA writers magazine, Focus 58. Again, follow the link to discover the contents.

There is also an anthology,  BSFA Awards 2011, which reprints all of the shortlisted stories, giving us Nina Allan’s The Silver Wind (Interzone 233) and Al Robertson’s Of Dawn (Interzone 235) as well as stories from Paul Cornell, Kameron Hurley and China Miéville.

The Silver Wind of Dawn

Nina Allan’s The Silver Wind (Interzone 233) and Al Robertson’s Of Dawn (Interzone 235) can be downloaded for free. This is because they’ve both been shortlisted for the BSFA Awards, but read them even if you’re not entitled to vote. Both are excellent stories. It’s also great to see SF Mistressworks on the shortlists.

If you’re not voting for the BSFA Awards, you might consider voting for the best stories and artwork in the annual Interzone Readers’ Poll.

Of course, some people are voting on both sets of awards. It’s not an either/or situation.

Locus 612

The January Locus sees Gardner Dozois reviewing no less than  three issues of Interzone.

“The strongest story in the July-August Interzone#235 is Mercurio D. Rivera’s For Love’s Delirium Haunts the Fractured Mind, another in the series that Rivera has been writing about the Wergen, aliens who have become obsessed with the ‘‘beauty’’ of humans [...]The only thing I didn’t like about the story was that the first-person narrator dies at the end of the story [...] Matthew Cook’s Insha’Allah [contains] some nice characterization, but could have been set in modern-day Iraq or Afghanistan with almost no changes necessary.  Al Robertson’ s Of Dawn is a moody and evocative fantasy about a grieving woman who encounters a Pan-like mythic figure in the remote English backcountry. [...]

“Another Wergen story by Rivera, Tethered,  features in the September/October Interzone, #236. This one examines the peculiar mating dynamics of the Wergen through the lens of a friendship between a young Wergen girl and a young human girl, a friendship doomed when the Wergen girl comes of age, and it manages to generate a strong emotional charge by the end. Jason Sanford’s The Ever-Dreaming Verdict of Plagues is another of his ‘‘plague birds’’ stories, set in a strange post-apocalyptic world; entertaining, but the backstory may be getting a little hard to follow by now for those unfamiliar with the earlier stories. [...] Stephen Kotowych’s A Time For Raven is a well-crafted near-fantasy with an almost subliminal fantasy element.

“The November/December Interzone, #237, is a strong issue after a couple of relatively weak ones. The best story here, and one of the strongest stories Interzone has published all year, is Digital Rites by Jim Hawkins, another story like All About Emily and Real Artists, about how human creativity is being supplanted, or at least intensively and intrusively ‘‘supplemented,’’ by artificial means, in this case a massive computer system that allows filmmakers to more or less experience a performance through the eyes of the actors, and subjectively control it. This is a vividly written and strongly characterized story, with a tense murder/espionage plot running through it: highly entertaining. I’d like to believe in the hopeful conclusion about human nature and the viewing audience that Hawkins comes to at the end, but, alas, I’m not sure that I do. Lavie Tidhar’s The Last Osama is also vividly written,  almost lurid, in fact, but somehow Tidhar is skilled enough to make the story work, although it takes us on a melodramatic journey into the Heart of Darkness through a world mystically transformed by the death of Osama Bin Laden into something like a weird Spaghetti Western. This is much too surreal to be considered legitimate science fiction, but, whatever it is, it’s a lot of fun, and will stick with you after you turn the last page.”

 

 

 

 

Of Dawn

Al Robertson provides a musical soundtrack for Of Dawn (Interzone 235).

There’s also a review of the story over at Best SF.

Interzone 235

artwork by Richard Wagner

In this month’s Book Zone you will find:

The Uncertain Places by Lisa Goldstein (reviewed and interviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller)

Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku (reviewed by Tony Lee)

Embassytown by China Mieville (reviewed by Paul Kincaid)

Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper (reviewed by Ian Hunter)

Cloud Roads by Martha Wells (reviewed by Juliet E. McKenna)

Fenrir by M.D. Lachlan (reviewed by Lawrence Osborn)

This Shared Earth by Kathleen Ann Goonan (reviewed by Peter Loftus)

The Steampunk Bible by Jeff VanderMeer with S.J. Chambers (reviewed by me) 

Out soon, so order your copy here.

Vector 259

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Vector 259 has been published this week and it features a summation of science fiction in 2008. Its reviewers (including me, you won’t be surprised to read) have written about their five favourite books, from which Kari Sperring has produced a poll. Congatulations to the winners – but you’re going to have to buy a copy to find out who they are. There are also round-ups of film and television in 2008, Stephen Baxter’s column, articles from Andy Sawyer and Graham Sleight, an interview with Bryan Talbot, and piles of reviews. It costs £4 and is available from the British Science Fiction Association.

But wait! There’s more. If you join the BSFA, you’ll also get a Focus fiction special in this mailing. It’s got the winner and runner-ups from the BSFA short story contest, so it contains stories from Roderick Gladwish, Nina Allan, James Bloomer, Nigel Envarli Crowe, Gary Spencer, and Andrew West.

But wait! There is also a ballot paper for the annual BSFA awards, and it is inside an anthology of the stories short-listed for the Best Short Fiction Award. You’ll get to read the Greg Egan and Paul McAuley stories that were first published in Interzone, as well as the stories by Ted Chiang and M. Rickert. The five pieces of artwork on the Best Artwork shortlist are also reproduced.

But wait! There’s still more! This mailing also comes with a special BSFA members sampler edition of Postscripts which reprints some of the fiction that has appeared in it over the last few years. You’ll get stories from Stephen Baxter, Ray Bradbury, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Hamilton, Joe Hill, Stephen King, Paul McAuley, Lisa Tuttle, Gene Wolfe, and Al Robertson.

How many short stories is that altogether? I’ve lost count.

Interzone 221

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artwork by Adam Tredowski.

Interzone 221 will be out by the 12th of March, and has stories from Bruce Sterling, Al Robertson, Matthew Kressel, Will McIntosh, Alaya Dawn Johnson, and Paul Berger. In the Bookzone this time we have:

The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling (review and interview by Ian Sales)

Escape From Hell by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle, and Escape From Hell! by Hal Duncan (reviewed by Paul Cockburn)

The Best of Gene Wolfe (reviewed by Paul Kincaid)

The Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint (reviewed by Lawrence Osbourn)

One Second After by William Forschen (reviewed by John Howard)

Seeds of Earth by Michael Cobley (reviewed by Peter Loftus)

Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts (reviewed by Kevin Stone)

Journey Into Space by Toby Litt (reviewed by Paul Kincaid)

UFO in Her Eyes by Xiaolu Guo (reviewed by Rick Kleffel)

1942 by James Conroy (reviewed by me)

That’s another remarkable cover, isn’t it?

Changling

Black Static 9 is packed with dark, elegant stories, but I’m going to single out Al Robertson’s Changling for mention. It arrives in a rush of suppressed emotion that clings to the narrator all the way through as it drops the trauma of the Gulf War into Mythago Wood (one could say), and it is one of the top stories in a strong issue. In case you don’t read contributor notes (or even Black Static, come to that), it should be pointed out that you’ll find another one of Robertson’s stories, Fishermen, in Interzone 221 which will be out in March.

Meanwhile, the GSFWC is meeting tonight and I’m suffocating beneath deadlines. Must… not… go… to… pub… after… meeting…