Interzone 246

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Interzone 246 will be published in the next couple of days. If you have a joint subscription then your copy will arrive with Black Static 34. Use the links for further details.

This issue’s Book Zone features the first of Jonathan McCalmont’s “Future Interrupted” columns, which will be a regular feature from now on. We also have reviews of the following books:

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes (reviewed and interviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller)

The Best of all Possible Worlds by Karen Lord (reviewed by Jonathan McCalmont)

Adam Robots by Adam Roberts (reviewed by Paul Graham Raven)

The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination edited by John Joseph Adams (reviewed by Barbara Melville)

Wool by Hugh Howey (reviewed by Ian Sales)

Planesrunner by Ian McDonald (reviewed by Jack Deighton)

Judge Dredd: Day of Chaos; The Fourth Faction by John Wagner, Ben Willsher, Staz Johnson, Colin MacNeil and Henry Flint (reviewed by Ian Hunter)

Herald of the Storm by Richard Ford (reviewed by Peter Loftus)

The Explorer by James Smythe (reviewed by Matthew S. Dent)

Dangerous Gifts by Gaie Sebold (reviewed by Lawrence Osborn)

The Emperor of All Things by Paul Witcover (reviewed by Duncan Lunan)

Osiris by E.J. Swift (reviewed by Simon Marshall Jones)

There is a dedicated forum thread for this issue at Interaction.

2012

Lavie Tidhar’s 2012 highlights.

Interzone 244

Artwork by Jim Burns

The first Interzone of 2013 will be here soon. Inside it you will find fiction from Jim Hawkins, Guy Haley, Helen Jackson, Lavie Tidhar, Tracie Welser and George Zebrowski, the regular nonfiction columns from David Langford, Tony Lee and Nick Lowe, and artwork from Warwick Fraser-Coombe, Richard Wagner, Martin Hanford and Jim Burns. Jim will also be providing all of this year’s covers. Follow the above link for more information and samples.

Any regular visitors to this blog will have noticed that there didn’t appear to be much going on in December. This was because I was literally flat on my back my back with a seasonal plague. Andy Cox had to step in and finish editing the Book Zone for me, for which I am profoundly grateful and not a little embarrassed.

This issue’s Book Zone features reviews of the following titles:

Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed (reviewed and author interviewed by Ian Sales)

Nexus by Ramez Naam (reviewed by Matthew S. Dent)

Bedlam by Christopher Brookmyre (reviewed by Paul F. Cockburn)

Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution edited by Ann VanderMeer (reviewed by Simon Marshall Jones)

Taken by Benedict Jacka (reviewed by Juliet E. McKenna)

Origin by J. T. Brannan (reviewed by Ian Hunter)

Helix Wars by Eric Brown (reviewed by Lawrence Osborn)

In Other Worlds by Margaret Atwood (reviewed by Barbara Melville)

The Corpse-Rat King by Lee Battersby (reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller)

The Creative Fire by Brenda Cooper (reviewed by me)

Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck (reviewed and author interviewed by Stephen Theaker)

It’s a particularly fine-looking issue even if I do say so myself. Hopefully I’ll have stopped coughing like a Romantic poet by the time it arrives.

The Last Osama

For a limited time only, here’s Lavie Tidhar’s story from Interzone 237. And it’s free.

Interzone 242

Artwork by Ben Baldwin

 

Interzone 242 has been out for a wee while. I should have mentioned it sooner but I’m swamped with work at the moment. Which is good. Anyway, follow the link for further details.

This issue’s Bookzone includes:

Existence by David Brin (reviewed and interviewed by me)

Cursed by Benedict Jacka (reviewed by Juliet E. Mckenna)

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (reviewed by Jack Deighton)

Great North Road by Peter F. Hamilton (reviewed by John Howard)

The Devil’s Nebula by Eric Brown (reviewed by Ian Hunter)

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente (reviewed by Stephen Theaker)

Nested Scrolls by Rudy Rucker (reviewed by Nathaniel Tapley)

Railsea by China Miéville (reviewed by Andy Hedgecock)

The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin (reviewed by Peter Loftus)

The Shadowed Sun by N.K. Jemisin (reviewed by Peter Loftus)

The Last Man Standing by Davide Longo (reviewed by Ian Sales)

Wonders of the Invisible World by Patricia A. McKillip (reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller)

The Moon Moth by Jack Vance, adapted by Humayoun Ibrahim (reviewed by Duncan Lunan)

Adrift on the Sea of Rains by Ian Sales (reviewed by Ian Hunter)

Seven Wonders by Adam Christopher (reviewed by Stephen Theaker)

Bluegrass Symphony by Lisa L. Hannett (reviewed by Peter Tennant)

Bread and Circuses by Felicity Dowker (reviewed by Peter Tennant)

 

 

 

Interzone 240

Artwork by Ben Baldwin

This issue’s Bookzone will feature: 

A review of After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress, along with an interview with Nancy by Maureen Kincaid Speller. 

An A to Z of the Fantastic City by Hal Duncan (reviewed by me) 

Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds (reviewed by Paul F. Cockburn) 

The Company of the Dead by David Kowalski (reviewed by John Howard) 

Transmission by Ray Meaney (reviewed by Elaine Gallagher) 

The Heir of Night by Helen Lowe (reviewed by Ian Hunter) 

The Game is Altered by Moz Parker (reviewed by Jack Deighton) 

The Not Yet by Moira Crone (reviewed by Stephen Theaker) 

Jane Carver of Waar by Nathan Long (reviewed by Stephen Theaker) 

You will find the contents for the rest of the issue on Ben Baldwin’s fine cover above. It’s the latest in his tarot sequence. Go here to  order a copy or subscribe (or even just to browse the contents). You can also discuss Interzone 240 on the TTA forum.

Cold War Paranoia

Lavie Tidhar reviews Adrift on the Sea of Rains.

The Indignity of Rain

Lavie Tidhar writes about his upcoming Interzone story.  It’s part of a very intriguing project.

You’ve already read Osama, haven’t you? You know how talented Lavie is?

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.”

 

 

 

 

The Last Osama

Mark Watson reviews Lavie Tidhar’s The Last Osama (Interzone 237).

Interzone 237

Artwork By Richard Wagner

Interzone 237 will be published later this month and contains fiction from Lavie Tidhar, Jim Hawkins, Douglas Lain and Caspian Gray. Richard Wagner, Steve Hambidge and David Gentry provide the artwork while David Langford, Nick Lowe and Tony Lee cover the non-fiction.

 

In this issue’s Bookzone there are reviews of:

 

Johannes Cabel: The Fear Institute by Jonathan L. Howard (reviewed by Sandy Auden)

Dead Water by Simon Ings (reviewed by Paul F. Cockburn)

Final Days by Gary Gibson (reviewed by Peter Loftus)

The Silver Wind by Nina Allan (reviewed by Paul Kincaid)

Naked City edited by Ellen Datlow (reviewed by Lawrence Osborn)

Reamde by Neal Stephenson (reviewed by Paul Graham Raven)

Debris by Jo Anderton (reviewed by Ian Sales)

Roil by Trent Jaimeson (reviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller)

Echo City by Tim Lebbon (reviewed by Ian Hunter)

Wither by Lauren DeStefano (reviewed by Jack Deighton)

The Silent Land by Graham Joyce (reviewed by Peter Tennant)

Vector 268

Artwork by the British Science Fiction Association

Vector 268 has no less than six articles on the late Diana Wynne Jones. There are also regular columns from Stephen Baxter, Paul Kincaid, Andy Sawyer and Terry Martin, and the start of a new series of articles on reproduction in science fiction. You will also find plenty of book reviews, including my review of David Wingrove’s Son Of Heaven. Use the links for further details.

 

This  mailing also has the latest issue of BSFA writer’s magazine, Focus 57, which has articles by Alastair Reynolds, David Rain, Paul Graham Raven, Gary Budgen, Christopher Priest, Keith Brooke, Lavie Tidhar, David L. Clemens and Dev Agarwal.

 

You should be able to buy this issue of Vector on its own but, to be on the safe side, join the BSFA.

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.

Escape Pod 309

Lavie Tidhar’s The Insurance Agent (Interzone 230) is the latest free podcast from Escape Pod. It’s read by Christian Brady.

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.