Interzone #268 (January-February 2017)

By TTA Press

The January–February issue of Britain's longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine contains new stories by Julie C. Day, Val Nolan, Christien Gholson, Mel Kassel, Val Nolan, T.R. Napper, and Michael Reid. Cover art is by Dave Senecal and interior colour illustrations are by Dave Senecal, Richard Wagner, and Martin Hanford. Features: Guest Editorial by 2017 cover artist Dave Senecal; Ansible Link by David Langford (news and obits); Mutant Popcorn by Nick Lowe (film reviews); Laser Fodder by Tony Lee (DVD/Blu-ray reviews); Book Zone (book reviews); Jonathan McCalmont's Future Interrupted (comment); Nina Allan's Time Pieces (comment).

Cover Art:

417h3r105 v1 by Dave Senecal

Fiction:

Everyone Gets A Happy Ending by Julie C. Day
illustrated by Richard Wagner

The Noise & The Silence by Christien Gholson
illustrated by Martin Hanford

The Transmuted Child by Michael Reid
illustrated by Richard Wagner

Weavers in the Cellar by Mel Kassel

Freedom of Navigation by Val Nolan
illustrated by Richard Wagner

The Rhyme of Grievance by T.R. Napper
illustrated by Dave Senecal

Features:

Guest Editorial by 2017 cover artist Dave Senecal

Future Interrupted: The Consequences of the Present
Jonathan McCalmont

Time Pieces: Directions of Travel
Nina Allan

Ansible Link
David Langford

Reviews & Interviews:

Book Zone
Books reviewed include The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo, Invisible Planets edited & translated by Ken Liu, Iraq +100 edited by Hassan Blasim, The Massacre of Mankind by Stephen Baxter, Snakewood by Afrian Selby, and the 2016 Round Up featuring the favourite books of Interzone contributors

Mutant Popcorn
Nick Lowe
Cinema releases reviewed include Arrival, Your Name, Girls Lost, Train to Busan, Moana, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

• Language: English
• Publisher: TTA Press
• Release date: Jan 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370103591

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

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ISSUE #268

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2017

Publisher

TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs CB6 2LB, UK

w: ttapress.com

e: [e-mail]

f: TTAPress

t: @TTApress

Books and films for review are always welcome and should be sent to the above address

Editor

Andy Cox

[e-mail]

Story Proofreader

Peter Tennant

Events

Roy Gray

[e-mail]

© 2017 Interzone & contributors

Submissions

Unsolicited submissions of short stories are always very welcome via our online system – tta.submittable.com/submit – but please be sure to follow the contributors’ guidelines.

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LICENSE NOTE: 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 POSSESS THIS MAGAZINE AND DID NOT PURCHASE IT, OR IT WAS NOT PURCHASED FOR YOUR USE ONLY, THEN PLEASE GO TO SMASHWORDS.COM AND OBTAIN YOUR OWN COPY. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE HARD WORK OF THE CONTRIBUTORS AND EDITORS.

INTERZONE 268 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2017

TTA PRESS

COPYRIGHT TTA PRESS AND CONTRIBUTORS 2017

PUBLISHED BY TTA PRESS AT SMASHWORDS

CONTENTS 

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417h3r105 v1 by 2017 COVER ARTIST DAVE SENECAL

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HASSAN BLASIM

stories from a century after the invasion of Iraq, in the Book Zone

INTERFACE

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EDITORIAL

DAVE SENECAL

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FUTURE INTERRUPTED

JONATHAN McCALMONT

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TIME PIECES

NINA ALLAN

ANSIBLE LINK

DAVID LANGFORD

FICTION

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EVERYONE GETS A HAPPY ENDING

JULIE C. DAY

story illustrated by Richard Wagner

[e-mail] (email)

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THE NOISE & THE SILENCE

CHRISTIEN GHOLSON

story illustrated by Martin Hanford

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THE TRANSMUTED CHILD

MICHAEL REID

story illustrated by Richard Wagner

WEAVERS IN THE CELLAR

MEL KASSEL

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FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION

VAL NOLAN

story illustrated by Richard Wagner

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THE RHYME OF GRIEVANCE

T.R. NAPPER

story illustrated by Dave Senecal

REVIEWS

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BOOK ZONE

books

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MUTANT POPCORN

NICK LOWE

films

GUEST EDITORIAL

2017 COVER ARTIST DAVE SENECAL

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This is such an exciting time to be alive.

Of course, maybe everyone who has ever lived considered their own time to be exciting but nevertheless, never before have we had access to such amazing information; the fruits of centuries of technological development. We, as a species for the first time can view the surface of other planets, the insides of living organisms, deep regions of the ocean, and vast areas of the unexplored universe and distant star systems. We have machines that are actively travelling into and across places that before us every human who ever lived could only imagine.

We can actually see these places and maybe even make plans to someday travel there, walk the surfaces, and even colonise and live there. It’s this awareness of how far we have come as a species that makes me remember the close relationship that fiction and art have with science. They inspire and feed off the energy and accomplishments of each other in a wonderful symbiotic process.

Artists and writers, musicians and poets, along with a host of others, record our collective history and cultural achievements, and define a new mythology in the stories and songs and images that are conjured. Over time, these works inspire others and take on new life, sometimes lasting for generations.

A simple awareness of the unknown, of realising that we don’t know everything and that it’s okay to let that ignorance fuel our curiosity to learn more – this is a powerful force that compels some of us to create and to continue to seek answers to questions that we intuitively know must be answerable, even if we know it’s possible we wont find the answers to all of our questions in our own lifetimes. The important thing is to keep asking, to keep searching, to keep guessing and to stay curious about the worlds around us. As artists, that’s in part what we do.

Our role is to remind you that there is still infinite mystery that moves around us. It’s to increase your awareness of things you’ve never seen, moments you’ve never thought to have. We work to remind you of how it felt when you still knew there was so much you didn’t know because perhaps now, lulled by the patterns of habit that have formed your reality, you can’t remember where or when you lost that sense of curiosity and amazement. In short, we work to make nonsense make sense.

So it’s with this sense of amazement and perpetual curiosity that I’ve approached the work for Interzone, and in fact all of the work I make. I thank you for the opportunity to contribute and hope you will stay curious too!

FUTURE INTERRUPTED

JONATHAN McCALMONT

The Consequences of the Present

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On Tuesday 8th of November 2016, Hilary Clinton failed to beat Donald Trump in the presidential election. As news of Trump’s victory spread fear around the globe, people everywhere looked to the future and asked a question that lies at the heart of all great science fiction: What Next?

Literary science fiction’s reluctance to answer this question is a result of its economic history. When the pulp magazine market began to collapse in the 1950s, genre fiction ended its strategic alliance with popular science. Faced with economic ruin, genre editors and writers began to shift the field’s economic heartlands away from factual content and towards literary fiction. Building on ground broken during Cele Goldsmith’s tenure at Amazing Stories, Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds stressed the literary nature of contemporary genre writing while people like Judith Merril and Harlan Ellison shouted themselves hoarse confronting the entrenched assumptions of the American genre marketplace.

Nowhere is the call for economic reconfiguration more obvious than in J.G. Ballard’s famous essay ‘Which Way to Inner Space?’ First published as an editorial in New Worlds, Ballard calls for science fiction writers to stop producing space exploration stories and begin producing stories that use genre tropes to explore the workings of the human mind. One interesting thing about this oft-cited essay is that Ballard bases his call for aesthetic renewal on economic factors; according to Ballard, America’s real-world space programme was proving to be so apocalyptically tedious that it was going to destroy the market for stories about spaceships. Another interesting thing about this oft-cited essay is that Ballard’s analysis was completely without foundation. Ten years after Ballard wrote the essay, Star Wars turned escapist rocket ship stories into a cultural phenomenon while the New Wave broke and Feminist SF wound up seeking refuge behind the walls of academia.

Genre publishing has spent the last forty years accelerating away from anything that might be described as realism. When the rise of big-budget science fiction movies undermined the market for escapist science fiction stories, genre publishers turned to epic fantasy. When technology finally caught up and multinational corporations started putting huge fantasy worlds both online and onscreen, the market for epic fantasy contracted and so genre publishers shuffled closer to YA, but Young Adult fiction already had its own imprints and so we are left with a hollowed-out literary culture where everything looks and reads like epic fantasy and nobody is allowed to find their own voice.

Given the extent of the commercial and cultural decline experienced by SF since genre publishers bet the farm on escapism, I wonder whether it might not be worth thinking about returning to the future. Not a future in which space admirals unleash righteous slaughter or grizzled psychopaths confront puissant magics in post-apocalyptic landscapes but a future in which we are confronted with the consequences of the present.

A recent example of how to approach the near-future is Carl Neville’s debut novel Resolution Way. Resolution Way is set in a Britain that has been pulverised by wave after wave of punitive austerity. The book begins by introducing us to an ambitious middle-class journalist who stumbles across a beautifully-written piece by an author who disappeared before he was able to get any of his work published. Fuelled by a lethal cocktail of smart drugs and entitlement, the journalist uses social media to piece together the author’s social networks and sets about badgering his surviving friends into handing over what is left of his literary estate. Right from the start, the journalist comes across as a duplicitous predator who wants nothing more than to pass the abandoned work off as his own but before we can settle into a nice comfortable hate-read, Neville switches viewpoints.

Much like Lavie Tidhar’s superlative Central Station, Neville’s book is less a conventional novel than a series of interlinking short stories designed to show us a particular time and place from a variety of different perspectives. The journalist character provides us with a path into the Britain of tomorrow but most of the book’s speculative heavy-lifting is done in images taken from the lives of ordinary people who are struggling to get by. Having begun the novel from the perspective of the ‘haves’, Neville proceeds to shuffle us back and forth between the perspectives of different ‘have-nots’ including single mothers who are hounded by loan shark-like council officers, aspiring musicians who are forced into indentured servitude when they fail to pay back their student loans, and local shopkeepers who are trapped on abandoned high streets by negative equity mortgages. Each of these futures is rendered in an affectless and under-punctuated prose that perfectly conveys Neville’s vision of a socially and economically desolate future. The lives of the characters intersect at acute angles but so do the oppression and exploitation that is forced upon them by the system.

One of the really remarkable things about Resolution Way is the way that it shows the systemic nature of capitalist oppression. Neville crawls inside each character’s skin and unveils the source of their pain and misery but every time we think the source of the oppression can be traced to a particular agency or person, Neville catapults us into the mind of that potential oppressor and forces us to empathise. In one vignette, we are asked to understand a council worker who smashes families and hurls people into prison because the only other option would be to lose their job and risk it being taken by someone who actually enjoys the power. In another scene, we are confronted by people working for a private letting company tasked with turning run-down Victorian seaside towns into venues for expensive steampunk-themed staycations. They understand that jacking up rents and forcing poor people out of town centres only serves to create social and economic problems but nobody cares and nobody listens.

Another remarkable thing about this novel is the way that Neville pushes the limits of empathy beyond those who are merely complicit in the exploitation of others. Indeed, having ignored the ambitious journalist for over a hundred pages, the book deposits us in the life of his equally ambitious middle-class wife. The journalist’s wife paints a picture of a man who invested all of his being into the dream of becoming a successful novelist; well-schooled, well-connected, and well-disciplined, the man did everything that society asks of its cultural entrepreneurs only for his dreams to be smashed by accusations of plagiarism. Like many middle-class people, the journalist followed the rules and sacrificed his humanity but still this was not enough to save him from a system that treats everyone like fodder. Even the billionaire funding the journalist’s quest turns out to be trapped on a treadmill, forced to run ever-faster lest he fall off the back and wind up being sucked down into penury. Some may benefit more from the system than others but its grinding inhumanity ultimately consumes us all.

Neville’s vision of the future owes an acknowledged debt to that elaborated in Mark Fisher’s superb essay Capitalist Realism: tomorrow’s Britain does not so much produce new things as slowly dismember and digest the remnants of the past as tycoons compete for ownership of teenaged mix-tapes and unpublished novels using money made from turning the welfare state into a torture chamber.

For decades now, science fiction has devoted itself to the task of providing people with a means of escape from their day-to-day lives. Fictional universes built in accordance with transparent moral imperatives and simple narrative logics might have turned some writers into household names but the genre as a whole is less wealthy and less visible than ever before. It is time for a change of direction…rather than helping us to escape the world, science fiction should start preparing us for whatever is coming next. Someone needs to.

TIME PIECES

NINA ALLAN

Direction of Travel

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I find non-fiction writing difficult. Not the execution, necessarily – as long as I allocate sufficient time to the task in hand I can usually bring some words to order without undue hand-wringing. The problem is more ideological than that, more a question of why than how. On one level the answer is simple: I devote a proportion of my writing time to non-fiction because I enjoy and have always enjoyed that kind of intellectual engagement with an idea. I derive satisfaction from the working out of an argument in written form. At a deeper level though I find the writing of non-fiction to be problematic, stressful even, because there are ways in which it seems actively to interfere with and be in opposition to my work as a fiction writer. In a recent interview at Strange Horizons, the science fiction writer and mediaeval scholar Sarah Tolmie expressed this dilemma perfectly:

Error has an important role in both academic discourse and fiction. If you are doing research, especially primary research, of course you contend with error all the time: your own, and others’. It is your job to winnow it out to the furthest extent you can. If there is a moment at which fiction writing and academic writing converge, it is here, in the primary processes as you struggle to cope with the confusions of reality. The moment at which something is creative is the moment at which you don’t know. The moment that you do know, you are doing something else: preaching, teaching, editorializing, persuading, whatever. This is the place academic writers aspire to get to and that creative writers should avoid. In my opinion, academic and creative writing are precisely inverse to one another. It is possible to be good at both, but they are different tasks entirely.

It is precisely this – the vertiginous sense of not-knowing that is the driving engine behind most fiction and certainly my fiction – that I struggle with in writing non-fiction. Even as I make the final corrections to an essay or book review, I feel uneasily aware of the fact that my convictions might have shifted during the writing of the piece, during the edits even, that the work I mean to publish is in effect a confection, an approximation, a collation of views or ideas that might make sense on a line-by-line basis, but that suffer overall from being a shallow, one-time-only consideration of the subject matter. Not it, in other words, whatever it might be.

This is never the case when I’m writing fiction. Even when a story does not entirely match my original vision for it, the deal is that it never can, that that is the point in some sense, that everything I write is preordained to be an honourable failure, because I accept from the outset that I don’t really know what I’m doing, and that I never will.

These matters have been on my mind more or less constantly since June 24th of last year, the day following the EU referendum, the easily definable point at which it became simultaneously necessary for writers to say something, and nearly impossible to articulate anything with the passion and gravitas that seemed sufficient to the situation. As 2016 progressed, these pressures only increased, with the pressure on fiction writers in particular feeling disorientating, uncomfortable and decidedly peculiar.

With racism in England’s streets and front living rooms worse than in the 1970s and the US government-in-waiting defined by a brand of aggressive, retrograde