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.

SF Crowsnest 220

Tomas L. Martin reviews Interzone 235 and Interzone 236.

Starship Sofa 225

The previous week’s podcast had a Gareth L. Powell story. This time it was Eleven Minutes from Interzone 235.

I have a habit of listening to things in a random order, in case you hadn’t noticed.

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.”

 

 

 

 

Interzone 235 on Fictionwise

Interzone 235 is now a Fictionwise ebook.

It’s at #7 in the Fictionwise SF chart, pop-pickers.

Interzone 235 eBook

Thanks to the industrious Roy Gray, Interzone 235 is now available as an ebook from Smashwords.

Locus 609

The October Locus has Gardner Dozois reviewing Interzone 233 (he says that Nina Allan’s The Silver Wind is ‘brilliantly crafted and sensitively characterised’) and Interzone 234: ‘The best story here is Lavie Tidhar’s In the Season of the Mango Rains, which acts as a sort of a sampler of recent themes and locales from Tidhar’s work while also managing to deliver a strong autumnal kick without being, well, bleak.’ He also says that Jason Sanford’s Her Scientifiction, Far Future, Medieval Fantasy  ‘works some nice changes on the theme here, and the story is fun to read’.

Rich Horton reviews Interzone 235 and lists Mercurio D. Rivera’s For Love’s Delirium Haunts the Fractured Mind in his recommended stories. He also reviews Jason Sanford’s collection, Never Never Stories, and picks When Thorns are the Tips of Trees (first published in Interzone 219) and The Ships, Like Clouds, Risen by  Their Rain (first published in Interzone 217) as highlights.

SF Revu

Sam Tomaino reviews Interzone 235.

Best SF

Mark Watson reviews Interzone 235.

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.

Locus Online, Early August

Lois Tilton reviews Interzone 235.

Locus 607

August’s Locus sees Rich Horton reviewing Interzone 234. He says Jon Ingold’s Sleepers is ‘solid’ and ‘I also enjoyed Jason Sanford’s story, wild as usual’.

July’s Reading

Neil Williamson reports on what he read last month.

Another Review

Rob McCow reviews Interzone 235.