Interzone 238 Jan: Feb 2012

By TTA Press

Interzone was founded in 1982 by David Pringle, John Clute, Alan Dorey, Malcolm Edwards, Colin Greenland, Graham Jones, Roz Kaveney and Simon Ounsley.
Founding editor David Pringle stepped down in 2004 and the magazine has been published by TTA Press since then, from issue 194 onwards. Interzone celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2007 and is still going strong on a bimonthly schedule.
Some graphics and advertisements were omitted from this issue to speed our updating of e editions as we are several issues behind and trying to catch up. Interzone 239 is still the current edition as this is uploaded. Also please tell us if you notice any formatting or layout errors. Post comments on the TTA website forum or TTA's Facebook page (TTA Press) or Twitter. (TTApress) or E mail. - roy (at) ttapress (dot) com
The magazine is regularly shortlisted for prestigious awards, and is a winner of the Hugo and British Fantasy Awards. Many of its stories have also won awards and/or reprints in various Year’s Best anthologies.
Interzone has helped launch the careers of many important science fiction and fantasy authors, and continues to publish some of the world's best known writers. Amongst those to have graced its pages are Brian Aldiss, Sarah Ash, Michael Moorcock, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, M. John Harrison, Stephen Baxter, Iain M. Banks, J.G. Ballard, Kim Newman, Alastair Reynolds, Harlan Ellison, Greg Egan, Gwyneth Jones, Jonathan Lethem, Geoff Ryman, Rachel Pollack, Charles Stross, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, John Brunner, Paul McAuley, Ian R. MacLeod, Christopher Priest, Thomas M. Disch, Ian Watson, John Sladek, Paul Di Filippo, Rudy Rucker, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Eric Brown, Chris Beckett, Dominic Green, Jay Lake, Chris Roberson, Elizabeth Bear, Hal Duncan, Steve Rasnic Tem...
We’re still discovering more than our fair share of exciting new talents and publishing some of the brightest new stars around: Aliette de Bodard, Tim Akers, Will McIntosh, Jason Stoddard, Jason Sanford, Hannu Rajaniemi, Leah Bobet, Kim Lakin-Smith, Tim Lees, Karen Fishler, Nina Allan, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Gareth L. Powell, Mercurio D. Rivera, Jamie Barras, Suzanne Palmer, Carlos Hernandez, Daniel Kaysen, Grace Dugan, Rachel Swirsky, Benjamin Rosenbaum, M.K. Hobson, Gord Sellar, Al Robertson, Neil Williamson, Tim Pratt, Matthew Kressel, Sara King and many others.
The majority of stories are illustrated by artists such as Jim Burns, Ben Baldwin, Vincent Chong, David Gentry, Warwick Fraser-Coombe, Christopher Nurse, Richard Marchand, Lisa Konrad, Dave Senecal, Geoffrey Grisso, Kenn Brown, Daniel Bristow-Bailey...
Interzone is also the home for a number of popular regular columns such as David Langford’s Ansible Link (news and gossip) and Nick Lowe’s Mutant Popcorn (film reviews). More recently we’ve added Tony Lee’s Laser Fodder (DVD reviews). Every issue contains several pages of book reviews and in-depth interviews. Once a year readers vote for their favourite stories and illustrations. Occasionally we dedicate an issue to a specific theme (eg Mundane-SF, issue 216, the fiction of which was guest edited by Geoff Ryman, Julian Todd and Trent Walters) or a specific author (eg Brian Aldiss in issue 38, Chris Beckett in issue 218).
There’s still so much more to Interzone, even though it’s been around for years now, it’s still breaking new ground, still causing controversy— in print (subscribe direct with us), e-book and podcast (Transmissions From Beyond).

• Language: English
• Publisher: TTA Press
• Release date: Apr 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476398914

TTA Press

TTA Press is the publisher of the magazines Interzone (science fiction/fantasy) and Black Static (horror/dark fantasy), the Crimewave anthology series, TTA Novellas, plus the occasional story collection and novel.

Book preview

238

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INTERZONE

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

ISSUE #238

JAN - FEB 2012

Cover Art

The Moon by Ben Baldwin

PUBLISHED BY:

TTA Press on Smashwords ISBN: 9781476398914

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v2 Roy Gray

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ISSN (Print edition) 0264-3596 > Published bimonthly by TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs CB6 2LB, UK (t: 01353 777931) Copyright › © 2011 Interzone and its contributors Worldwide Distribution › Pineapple Media (t: 02392 787970) › Central Books (t: 020 8986 4854) › WWMD (t: 0121 7883112)

› If you want the print edition and Interzone is not stocked by your local bookshop, newsagent or newstand please ask them to order it for you, or buy it from one of several online mail order distributors...or better yet subscribe direct with us!

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Fiction Editors › Andy Cox, Andy Hedgecock ([e-mail]) Book Reviews Editor › Jim Steel ([e-mail]) Story Proofreader › Peter Tennant ([e-mail]) E-edition + Publicity › Roy Gray ([e-mail]) Podcast › Pete Bullock ([e-mail]) Twitter + Facebook › Marc-Anthony Taylor Website › ttapress.com Email [e-mail] Forum › ttapress.com/forum Subscriptions › Not available on Smashwords. Submissions › Unsolicited submissions of short stories are always welcome. Please follow the contributors’ guidelines on the website.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This emagazine is licensed for your personal use/enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this magazine with others please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this magazine and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please go to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the contributors and editors

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Note we have omitted most images from this edition but those you can see are also in colour at http://ttapress.com/1226/interzone-238/

Note live links are repeated in the ENDNOTES

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CONTENTS

INTERFACE

EDITORIAL & NOTES – Ben Baldwin

ANSIBLE LINK > David Langford's News, Gossip & obituaries

ENDNOTES > Links etc. > last 'pages'.

FICTION

FATA MORGANA by Ray Cluley

...illustrated by Richard Wagner > email: [e-mail]

FEARFUL SYMMETRY by Tyler Keevil

...illustrated by Mark Pexton > markofthedead.deviantart.com

GOD OF THE GAPS by Carole Johnstone

...illustrated by David Gentry > sixshards.co.uk

THE COMPLEX by E.J. Swift

REVIEW SECTION

BOOK ZONE edited by Jim Steel

books: The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin, Lemistry edited by Ra Page & Magda Raczyńska, White Tiger by Kylie Chan, Daylight on Iron Mountain by David Wingrove, The Cold Commands by Richard Morgan, Kafkaesque edited by John Kessel & James Patrick Kelly, The Islanders by Christopher Priest, Manhattan in Reverse by Peter F. Hamilton, In the Lion's Mouth by Michael Flynn, Songs of the Dying Earth edited by George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, The Joy of Technology by Roy Gray.

MUTANT POPCORN by Nick Lowe

films: Hugo, Puss in Boots, Another Earth, The Future, The Awakening, The Thing, Arthur Christmas, Breaking Dawn Part 1, Immortals.

LASER FODDER by Tony Lee

discs: Brazil, Captain America, Apollo 18, Camp Hell, First Squad, Legend of the Millennium Dragon, The Skin I Live In, Arena, Faces in the Crowd, Melancholia, Tomie: Unlimited, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Repo Man, The Science of Sleep.

READERS' POLL – Readers' opportunity to vote on 2011 stories and art.

BACK PAGE

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EDITORIAL NOTES

Ben Baldwin; The series of covers that I’m looking forward to producing for this year’s issues will be focused around the imagery and symbolism of some of the Major Arcana of the tarot deck, although I’ll be using these images as a source of inspiration and ideas rather than producing completely accurate representations of the cards involved. I find them quite fascinating with their cryptic but archetypal imagery, but they also encourage a creative interpretation; each card has the ability to tell a story, and a sequence of them could have a lot of narrative potential depending on how they are viewed. So to produce a series of these images for the covers of a magazine of speculative fiction such as Interzone seems to me like an interesting concept.

I’ve chosen the Moon as the first card in the sequence for a number of reasons but mostly because of its links to crossing a threshold and to imagination, dreams and fiction. However, to keep in the spirit of using tarot cards, and to make it a bit more of a game, I’m not going to plan in advance which cards will be in the rest of the sequence. Instead I’ll wait until each individual cover has been completed before going back to the tarot deck and drawing another trump card at random. This way there’ll be a small element of mystery for us all in how the covers will play out and whether they lead to an easily interpreted story or not. It is my aim that the covers can be looked at in a fairly straightforward way without too much recourse to occult theory and symbolism; that by just seeing what the picture represents it can then be related it to the covers that came before.

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It’s been many years since the last Interzone price rise, during which time everything else has gone up considerably, so the cost of single print issues and subscriptions will rise slightly at some stage, but the latter will be heavily discounted. And don’t forget that there is now also the option of a lifetime subscription!

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E Book pricing: TTA Press ebooks are also sold on Fictionwise who insist that we cannot sell ebook versions of our magazines elsewhere at a lower price than that on their site so Smashwords prices at $4.99 reflect this as we have a contract with Fictonwise. However F'wise discount prices in the first on sale week and also for 'club' members so this inclines us to reduce Smashwords prices to match F'wise club and launch discounts and see what happens. That means selling issues at $3.60 on Smashwords until 1 week after F'wise go live with a new issue and then $4.24 once Fictionwise reduce their first week discount. Will that make a difference? Let us know your thoughts.

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E-Edition (An Apology): Normally a version of each new issue of Interzone (and sister magazine Black Static) could be downloaded from Smashwords. Unfortunately we have failed to keep this process up to date. But we are now, after our recent efforts, one issue behind. If this has affected you please accept our apologies and reassurances that we are trying to fix the problem. Keep checking the Fictionwise or Smashwords for new issues. Thanks for your patience! Issue 239 (MAR - APR 2012) is out as this issue is readied for uploading.

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ANSIBLE LINK - David Langford's News & Gossip

As Others See Us. Spot the Omission Dept: The December Good Housekeeping announced a £25,000 ‘Best Novel from a New Author’ competition in collaboration with Orion Books. Entries can be in ‘any grown up genre – whether it’s historical romance, whodunit, comedy or international spy thriller.’

Harlan Ellison’s plagiarism lawsuit against the In Time film-makers was voluntarily dropped after Ellison actually saw the movie: ‘It’s conceivable that he wasn’t very impressed.’ (Hollywood Reporter) Meanwhile three more people are separately suing James Cameron and Fox for stealing their uniquely original scenarios for Avatar, while the Cowboys and Aliens makers are under attack by a litigant who invented the concept in 1994 – unaware, perhaps, of Howard Waldrop’s 1987 ‘Night of the Cooters’ and various storylines in the 1950s Space Western Comics…

Awards. Gaylactic Spectrum (gay and lesbian sf/fantasy): Kathe Koja, Under the Poppy. • UK New Year Honours: Penelope Lively, author of Astercote (1970) and several more fine children’s fantasies as well as adult literary novels – one of which won the Booker – was made a Dame. Maggie Gee, who has written some sf and fantasy, received the OBE. George R.R. Martin wasn’t eligible but contented himself with being USA Today’s 2011 Author of the Year.

We Are Everywhere. Realising that it’s time we catalogued the Big Dumb Objects strewn through interstellar space by enigmatic Forerunners, the Australian National University advertised for two Research Fellows in Galactic Archaeology.

Stephen Baxter learned that his former fan site baxterium.org.uk is now devoted to the sf dream of cosmetic dentistry: ‘Good God!’

Bea Ballard, J.G. Ballard’s daughter, broke silence in a newspaper interview about the John Baxter biography of her father that – as summarised by the subeditor – ‘brands him as racist, sexist and a stranger to truth.’ (Telegraph) ‘I do feel some of the things presented as fact in this book sully important aspects of my father’s and our lives.’ She has ‘compiled a six-page list of the most obvious factual errors in the biography.’

Theology Corner. Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s former chief exorcist, pinpointed two manifestations of hell while introducing The Rite – another movie about exorcism – at an Umbrian film festival: ‘Practising yoga is Satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter.’ (Telegraph)

Another Lawsuit. Jeff Kinney’s ‘Wimpy Kid, Inc’ company – whose bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series has been spoofed as Diary of a Zombie Kid (2011) by Fred Perry & David Hutchinson – is suing the latter’s publisher Antarctic Press for copyright and trademark infringement. (PW) A previous lampoon, Tales from the Crypt: Diary of a Stinky Dead Kid (2009), was labelled PARODY in big letters and escaped legal reprisals. US protection of parodic works may yet save the not-so-labelled Zombie Kid.

Peter James, thriller author, has been promoting Perfect People, about a geneticist offering a designer baby service selecting for traits like empathy, or the ability to survive on very few hours’ sleep per night. The Radio 5 Live host asked him if this could be sf: ‘No, it’s about the science of the near future.’

Magazine Scene. Realms of Fantasy and Zahir: A Journal of Speculative Fiction have ceased publication. John Joseph Adams’s Lightspeed and Fantasy have merged.

J.K. Rowling gave evidence at the Leveson phone-hacking enquiry in November, and Sky producer James Old commented: ‘Needless to say the public seating area of the room is full. A sane and sensible looking lot. No crazed Potter fans in here.’

Thog’s Masterclass. Neat Tricks Dept. ‘She reached into her pocket and pulled out her fist.’ (Kiki Hamilton, The Faerie Ring, 2011) ‘My hands are already dirty just from setting foot on this planet.’ (Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, Hellhole, 2011) • Dept of Fractal Geometry. ‘Lily glanced into courtyards as they passed and saw the children coming out of tiny doors in their school uniforms…’ (M.T. Anderson, Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware, 2009) • Woodshed of Gross Anatomy Dept. ‘[I] shuddered as the denatured alcohol corroded its way through my GI tract, not stopping until it reached the basement, where my tailbone and testicles resided like an old croquet set.’ (Joseph Gangemi, Inamorata, 2004)

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R.I.P.

Gilbert Adair (1944–2011) Scots critic, translator and author whose two genre novels are sequels to famous children’s fantasies – Alice Through the Needle’s Eye (1984) and Peter Pan and the Only Children (1987) – died on 8 December. He was 66.

Mick Anglo (1916–2011), UK comics writer and novelist who created the British superhero Marvelman (much later renamed Miracleman) in 1954 and wrote over 730 issues of this and related comics, died on 31 October aged 95.

T.J. Bass (Thomas J. Bassler, 1932–2011), US author whose linked novels Half Past Human (1971) and The Godwhale (1974) were highly regarded (but not, alas, followed up), died on 13 December. He was 79.

David Bedford (1937–2011), UK composer fond of fantasy, sf and astronomical themes, died on 1 October aged 74. Explicitly sf work includes the 1989 concept album Rigel 9 with Ursula K. Le Guin, and a 2001 cantata adaptation of The City and the Stars with Arthur C. Clarke narrating between movements.

Cheetah-Mike, a chimpanzee claimed to have played Cheeta/Cheetah in 1930s Tarzan films, died on 24 December at a supposed age of 80. Many chimps (more than one per film) appeared in the role; whether any from the 1930s really survived to 2011 has been questioned. A debunked rival claimant, Cheeta, died on 3 January.

Les Daniels (1943–2011), US author of the ‘Don Sebastian de Villanueva’ historical vampire novels beginning with The Black Castle (1978), died in early November.

Václav Havel (1936–2011), Czech playwright, poet, dissident, politician and former President of the Czech Republic, died on 18 December aged 75. His plays satirised Soviet bureaucracy through such sf-flavoured devices as absurd artificial languages in The Memorandum (1965) and a demented computer in The Increased Difficulty of Concentration (1968).

Russell Hoban (1925–2011), American but long UK-resident writer best known for the remarkable children’s fantasy The Mouse and His Child (1967) and the sf narrative tour-de-force Riddley Walker (1980), died after long illness on 14 December; he was 85. Many of his other novels, such as Pilgermann (1983) and The Medusa Frequency (1987), were threaded with fantastic themes.

Glenn Lord (1931–2011), US agent for the Robert E. Howard estate, editor of Howard collections and author of The Last Celt: A Bio-Bibliography of Robert Ervin Howard (1976), died on 31 December; he was 80.

Anne McCaffrey (1926–2011), Irish-resident American who as the much-loved author of Dragonflight (1968) and many related books needs no introduction, died from a sudden stroke on 21 November. She was 85. Another popular work with several sequels was The Ship Who Sang (1969). Her honours include the Hugo (she was the first woman to win one for fiction) and the Nebula (she and Kate Wilhelm were the first female winners) for Dragonflight’s component stories ‘Weyr Search’ and ‘Dragonrider’; the SFWA Grand Master Award in 2005; and entry to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2006.

Ken Russell (1927–2011), UK film director whose work ranged from the bizarrely to the brilliantly eccentric, died on 27 November; he was 84. Films of genre interest include Billion Dollar Brain (1967), Tommy (1975), Altered States (1980), Faust (1985), Gothic (1986), The Lair of the White Worm (1988) and the Poe remix The Fall of the Louse of Usher (2002).

Ronald Searle (1920–2011), celebrated UK cartoonist perhaps best known for St Trinian’s and Nigel Molesworth, died on 30 December aged 91. Genre-related work includes sf daydream sequences in the Molesworth books written by Geoffrey Willans, spoof mythology in his solo Zoodiac (1977) and story character crossovers such as Kakfa/Lewis Carroll in Marquis de Sade Meets Goody Two-Shoes (1994). His style was inimitable, his range extraordinary.

Darrell K. Sweet (1934–2011), noted US sf/fantasy cover artist since 1975, died on 5 December aged 77. His distinctive work appeared on several popular series including Piers Anthony’s Xanth books, Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, L.E. Modesitt’s Recluce and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time.

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Copyright © 2012 David Langford

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FATA MORGANA

by Ray Cluley

Illustrations for Fata Morgana by Richard Wagner

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FATA MORGANA

They say that out beyond where the sea meets the sky there’s a city built on sand. It does not rise from the waters as our city does, enduring the tidal torture of slow erosion, but stands on land that curves up like an oyster shell. They still have trees there. They do not catch their water when it falls but pull it up from the ground in buckets. I think of this place every day that I’m fresh-lining, but I no longer look for it.

This city, my city, rises up from the waters as if pushed from an ocean that no longer wants it, and I hate it with equal force; a colossal cairn of crumbling concrete, vomited from the depths. At the water, tarred timbers reach out like rigid straight-edged tentacles to form docks and jetties and wharfs and piers. All the same thing, really, but words are all I have in abundance. I’m an upman. Watersiders and lowfolk, they’re the ones rich enough to have everything else, living in the cool shadows of the city. It stands tall at its centre but leans like a listing vessel at the edges, age-old buildings worn weary by passing tides. Climbing walkways and perimeter decks and bridges connect them and on the tops of these buildings, solar panels flash and dazzle as rain-funnels shine dry, sprouting from collection barrels like metal nests mimicking those of the gulls. The seabirds nestle in all the remaining space so that all I see of my city is smeared with shit.

You heat-soaked? Sun baked your brains, boy?

Jared is not my father. It is the only good thing about him.

If people don’t get their water it’ll be us they blame. Come on, flood the lines.

He doesn’t wait to see if I obey. He knows I will. When his red face has disappeared below and I’m sure the trapdoor is closed, I call him a sifter.

Turning the tap, I feel the pipe fill and hear the water’s journey as it rushes through the fresh-lines across the roof and over the edges. Following the sound with my eyes is how I spot the leak. I’m only a few seconds into my count so it’s worth fixing now before too much water is wasted. I take the cup and catch the dribble, grabbing a handful of putty from its spot beneath the tank,