Interzone 243

Artwork by Ben Baldwin

This issue should be out very, very soon; we’re talking days now. There will be fiction from Jon Wallace, Chen Qiufan (translated by Ken Liu), Priya Sharma, Jason Sanford and Caroline M. Yoachim; non-fiction columns from David Langford, Tony Lee and Nick Lowe; and artwork from Ben Baldwin, Richard Wagner, Martin Hanford and Warwick Fraser-Coombe. Go here for details and samples.

The Bookzone will feature:

Jack Glass by Adam Roberts (reviewed and interviewed by Paul Kincaid)

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson (reviewed by me)

Blood and Feathers by Lou Morgan (reviewed by Paul F. Cockburn)

Empty Space by M. John Harrison (reviewed by Jack Deighton)

The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks (reviewed by Lara Buckerton)

Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce (reviewed by Elaine Gallagher)

Sorry Please Thank You by Charles Yu (reviewed by me)

The Sphinx of the Ice Realm by Jules Verne (reviewed by Duncan Lunan)

The Fractal Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi (reviewed by Paul F. Cockburn)

The Wurms of Blearmouth by Steven Erikson (reviewed by Stephen Theaker)

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone (reviewed by Ian Sales)

 

 

Mirrorblink

Jason Sanford previews his story for an upcoming issue of Interzone.

There’s also a sample of Warwick Fraser-Coombe’s excellent artwork.

2012 Million Writers Award

Nominations are now open for the 2012 Million Writers Award. This is an award to recognise the best in online fiction.

Editors can find out how to nominate stories here and readers can find out how to nominate here.

Starship Sofa 223

The latest podcast from Tony C. Smith’s award-winning show  is a Jason Sanford special which includes a reading of Into The Depths of Illuminated Seas (first published in Interzone 226).

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.”

 

 

 

 

New Realms of Fantasy and Science Fiction July-August 2011

Jason Sanford’s Ships Like Clouds, Risen By Their Rain, which first appeared in Interzone 217, has been translated into Chinese and can be found in the July/August issue of New Realms of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Or Ship Cloud Rainy, when translated back into English by Google.

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.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction: 28th Annual Collection

Gardner Dozois’ magisterial annual anthology, published as The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24 in the UK, reprints the following stories:

Flying in the Face of God by Nina Allan (Interzone 227)

Again and Again and Again by Rachel Swirsky (Interzone 226)

The Shipmaker by Aliette de Bodard (Interzone 231)

Chimbwi by Jim Hawkins (Interzone 227)

The Honourable Mentions section for 2010 lists:

The Upstairs Window by Nina Allan (Interzone 230)

The Shoe Factory by Matthew Cook (Interzone 231)

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark by Jim Hawkins (Interzone 229)

The History of Poly-V by Jon Ingold (Interzone 227)

Over Water by John Ingold (Interzone 228)

Hibakusha by Tyler Keevil (Interzone 226)

Human Error by Jay Lake (Interzone 226)

Love and War by Tim Lees (Interzone 230)

Dance of the Kawkawroons by Mercurio D. Rivera (Interzone 227)

In the Harsh Glow of its Incandescent Beauty by Mercurio D. Rivera (Interzone 226)

Camelot by Patrick Samphire (Interzone 230)

Memoria by Jason Sanford (Interzone 231)

Plague Birds by Jason Sanford (Interzone 228)

The Insurance Agent by Lavie Tidhar (Interzone 230)

Iron Monk by Melissa Yuan-Innes (Interzone 228)

I hope I haven’t missed anyone out.

As well as praising Interzone in his year’s summation, Dozois also says that Music For Another World was one of several interesting small-press anthologies that came out in 2010.

Interzone 236

Artwork by Richard Wagner

Interzone 236 will be published next week – go here for details and samples.

You can look look forward to fiction from Stephen Kotowytch, Jason Sanford, Fiona Moore, Jon Ingold and Mercurio D. Rivera, and features from David Langford, Nick Lowe and Tony Lee. As well as Richard Wagner, there will be artwork from Jim Burns, Martin Hanford and Ben Baldwin.

The Book Zone will feature:

Osama by Lavie Tidhar (reviewed and interviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller)

The Book of Transformations by Mark Charon Newton (reviewed by Sandy Auden)

Dangerous Waters by Juliet E. McKenna (reviewed by me)

The Urban Fantasy Anthology edited by Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale (reviewed by Lawrence Osborn)

Queen of Kings by Maria Dahvana Headley (reviewed by Jack Deighton)

Future Media edited by Rick Wilber (reviewed by Duncan Lunan)

Robopocalpse by Daniel F. Wilson (reviewed by Ian Sales)

The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers (reviewed by Andy Hedgecock)

Never Never Stories by Jason Sanford (reviewed by me)

It already has its own thread on the Interaction forum. The future is unwritten.

The Year’s Best Fantasy & Science Fiction 2011

Rich Horton says in the introduction to his annual anthology that  ’In the UK, Interzone is featuring very good stuff, with a distinct personality of its own; one perhaps best summarized as being in alignment with a quasi-movement Interzone regular Jason Sanford has dubbed “Sci-fi Strange.”‘

The recommended reading section lists:

Nina Allan - The Upstairs Window (Interzone 230)

Jon Ingold – The History of Poly-V (Interzone 227)

Rochita Loenen-Ruiz – Alternate Girl’s Expatriate Life (Interzone 229)

 

 

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’.

Interzone 234

Relics by Richard Wagner

Interzone 234 is published next week and in the Bookzone you will find:

Son of Heaven by David Wingrove ( reviewed and interviewed by Ian Sales)

Embrace / Faking It / Liberty Spin / Memesis / Segue by Keith Brooke, The Angels of Life and Death / A Writer’s Life by Eric Brown, Take No Prisoners by John Grant, Monterra’s Deliciosa & Other Tales & / Spotted Lily by Anna Tambour, One More Unfortunate by Kaitlin Queen (reviewed by Paul F. Cockburn)

Sleight of Hand by  Peter Beagle (reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller)

Down to the Bone by Justina Robson (reviewed Juliet E. McKenna)

Smallworld by Dominic Green (reviewed by Jack Deighton)

Outpost by Adam Baker (reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont)

After the Golden Age – Carrie Vaughn (reviewed by Ian Hunter)

On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers (reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller)

Equations of Life by Simon Morden (reviewed by me)

The Blue Room

Jason Sanford is holding a competition to win an autographed copy of Interzone 231.

Sublimation Angels

Jason Sanford’s Sublimation Angels (Interzone 224) is available as an ebook.

Functional Nerds 48

Podcast featuring an interview with Jason Sanford.