Interzone #271 (July-August 2017)

By TTA Press

The July–August issue of Britain's longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine contains new stories by Julie C. Day, Tim Casson, Michael Reid, Eliot Fintushel, Chris Barnham, and Andy Dudak. The cover artist for 2017 is Dave Senecal, and interior colour illustrations are by Jim Burns, Richard Wagner, and Martin Hanford. Features: Ansible Link by David Langford (news and obits); Mutant Popcorn by Nick Lowe (film reviews); Book Zone (book reviews, including an interviews with Nina Allan conducted by Maureen Kincaid Speller, and Emily B. Cataneo conducted by Peter Tennant); Jonathan McCalmont's Future Interrupted (comment); Nina Allan's Time Pieces (comment).

Cover Art: 417h3r105 v4 by 2017 cover artist Dave Senecal

Fiction:

The Rocket Farmer by Julie C. Day
illustrated by Richard Wagner

Gods in the Blood (of those who rise) by Tim Casson
illustrated by Martin Hanford

If Your Powers Fail You in a City Under Tin by Michael Reid
illustrated by Jim Burns

Chubba Luna by Eliot Fintushel

When I Close My Eyes by Chris Barnham
illustrated by Richard Wagner

Cryptic Female Choice by Andy Dudak
illustrated by Richard Wagner

Interface:

Future Interrupted: From Beneath You, It Transforms - Jonathan McCalmont

Time Pieces: Broken River: The Conversation and The Discourse - Nina Allan

Ansible Link - David Langford

Editorial - Roy Gray

Reviews:

Book Zone
Books reviewed include THE RIFT by Nina Allan (plus author interview conducted by Maureen Kincaid Speller), THE STARGAZER’S EMBASSY by Eleanor Lerman, THE SWITCH by Justina Robson, EX LIBRIS edited by Paula Guran, THE HOUSE OF BINDING THORNS by Aliette de Bodard, ORBITAL CLOUD by Taiyo Fujii, SPEAKING TO SKULL KINGS AND OTHER STORIES by Emily B. Cataneo (plus author interview conducted by Peter Tennant)

Mutant Popcorn - Nick Lowe
Films reviewed include WONDER WOMAN, TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT, KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD, THE MUMMY, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: SALAZAR’S REVENGE, ALIEN: COVENANT, A DOG’S PURPOSE, THE RED TURTLE, OKJA, COLOSSAL, MARJORIE PRIME

• Language: English
• Publisher: TTA Press
• Release date: Jul 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370453665

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

interzone_0_20_89_0.ai

ISSUE #271

JULY-AUGUST 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

[e-mail]

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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INTERZONE 271 JULY-AUGUST 2017

TTA PRESS

COPYRIGHT TTA PRESS AND CONTRIBUTORS 2017

PUBLISHED BY TTA PRESS AT SMASHWORDS

CONTENTS

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417h3r105 v4 by 2017 COVER ARTIST DAVE SENECAL

senecal.deviantart.com

INTERFACE

EDITORIAL

ROY GRAY

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FUTURE INTERRUPTED

JONATHAN McCALMONT

broken-river.tif

TIME PIECES

NINA ALLAN

ANSIBLE LINK

DAVID LANGFORD

FICTION

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THE ROCKET FARMER

JULIE C. DAY

story illustrated by Richard Wagner

[e-mail] (email)

Gods In The Blood Fin.tif

GODS IN THE BLOOD (OF THOSE WHO RISE)

TIM CASSON

story illustrated by Martin Hanford

martinhanford1974.deviantart.com

City Under Tin (Resized) .tif

IF YOUR POWERS FAIL YOU IN A CITY UNDER TIN

MICHAEL REID

story illustrated by Jim Burns

www.alisoneldred.com/artistJimBurns.html

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CHUBBA LUNA

ELIOT FINTUSHEL

story

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WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES

CHRIS BARNHAM

story illustrated by Richard Wagner

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CRYPTIC FEMALE CHOICE

ANDY DUDAK

story illustrated by Richard Wagner

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NINA ALLAN

interviewed by Maureen Kincaid Speller

REVIEWS

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BOOK ZONE

books, including interviews with Nina Allan and Emily B. Cataneo

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MUTANT POPCORN

NICK LOWE

films

EDITORIAL

ROY GRAY

While in London to fly the flag for TTA at the BSFA Minicon, Saturday 17 June, I used the trip to visit the Barbican’s Into the Unknown: A Journey Through Science Fiction exhibition on the Friday.

Many visitors are expected so to avoid crowding the website sells timed entry tickets. I bought mine on arrival and walked straight in without waiting. It’s a big venue, and the exhibition is scattered around, from a Black Mirror video installation by the Silk Street entrance to a robot mixed-media sculpture in the lakeside basement. Three of the eight sections are ticket entry, with no return – officially. The rest are free. So any day you can spend as much time as you like in the video game section. There are about twenty games to choose from. I tried Asteroids and soon gave up in disgust at my feeble performance.

Section 1, the start, is the area to spend most of your time. Books, art, film, TV, comics, toys, adverts, ‘magic lantern’ slides, a host of movie props, and eventually SF magazines are all displayed here. Art includes Dinotopia and Ray Harryhausen originals (plus Virgil Finlay, Alex Schomburg, Frank R. Paul, with no source credit other than Paul G. Allen’s collection) but foreign language SF is not forgotten. There is also a ten-minute AI scripted film to watch, which was interesting only for that reason.

Entry to Sections 5 – a thirty-minute film (be early if you want a seat) – and 6 require the ticket but take up much less time. There are also ‘Sci Fi Sunday’ film shows along with talks and book clubs on specific dates.

The genre-defining exhibition of art, design, film and literature is the Barbican blurb. Several videos are running at once in Section 1. The books are behind glass but you can investigate their history and read – or listen to – extracts as you go, or any time, by smartphone via the ‘explore’ section of the exhibition website.

Andy Weir and Ridley Scott’s film The Martian gets a large display. It’s SF, but is it canonical? Does it belong here? I’d say no.

Possibly I’m wrong and somewhere on the website SF magazines are recognised as the source of lots of the books – Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel Princess of Mars is on display but there’s no mention of its pulp magazine origins – but aside from a rack of American periodicals magazines get short shrift, British magazines in particular: surprisingly there is no sign of New Worlds, and no sign of Interzone.

The exhibition runs until 1 September. www.barbican.org.uk/intotheunknown/

FUTURE INTERRUPTED

JONATHAN McCALMONT

From Beneath You, It Transforms

october.tif

Like many of science fiction’s most prominent leftists, China Miéville has a tendency to downplay his own politics when going about the business of writing novels. It (almost) goes without saying that leftist imagery abounds in his work and that those of us who are already sympathetic to leftist views are always going to leap at the chance to detect a resonant theme, but it would be nice to read the work of a committed socialist and not wind up feeling as though you’re being asked to squint and fill in the blanks for yourself. Imagine if The City & the City had been less devoutly abstract and Miéville had taken all of that well-oiled metaphorical machinery and applied it directly to an analysis of the real world. Imagine if Iron Council had strayed beyond the merely symbolic and engaged with the real politics of revolutionary struggle. Well… Imagine no longer as despite being a work of non-fiction, Miéville’s latest book gives us an opportunity to discover what he is capable of achieving when he allows his writing to be politically engaged. In truth, October is not just one of the very best things that China Miéville has ever written, it is a book that contains more blue-sky utopian speculative writing than most conventional science fiction novels.

This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the Russian revolution. In recognition of this historic milestone, Miéville has taken it upon himself to sift through hundreds of historical works and provide us with a survey that is both accessible to lay readers and inspirational to anyone who has ever hoped for the foundation of a better world.

The book is split into chronological chapters that outline everything that happened in a particular month. However, while the action only really starts in February 1917, October’s opening chapter paints a striking portrait of an empire in terminal decline. Technologically backward, economically crippled, bureaucratically stunted, and constitutionally incapable of achieving meaningful reform, the Tsarist regime nearly collapsed under the weight of its own incompetence in 1905 and spent its final years grinding through a succession of half-arsed experiments in democratic participation. On a good day, the Tsar was open to power-sharing and structural reforms. On a bad day, his critics were sent to Siberia.

No less striking than this image of institutional paralysis is Miéville’s depiction of Russia’s revolutionary vanguard as a selection of isolated cranks and weirdos. Harassed by police, forced into exile, and continuously at each other’s throats over questions of theoretical doctrine that make very little sense even in hindsight, most of Russia’s revolutionaries seemed to prefer churning out think-pieces to actually trying to take control. In fact, one of October’s recurring motifs is the near-universal reluctance of anyone to actually step up and assume the responsibilities of leadership.

Though never anything less than transparently clear and brilliantly paced, Miéville’s writing feels rather more sombre and restrained than that deployed in his fictional works. This is partly a result of his laudable desire to keep the book accessible and partly a result of the fact that the Russian revolution had hundreds of intricate moving parts and just keeping track of a few dozen active participants with their own political agendas demands considerable descriptive precision. However, while the Russian revolution seems to have involved a lot of people forming committees and having meetings, there are also these moments of dazzling hyper-reality when the political consensus is shattered by moral truth. It is in these moments that Miéville unleashes the weird and that is when you realise that October was the book that Miéville was born to write.

Miéville presents political change as a great locomotive: Every historic injustice and act of repression adds fuel to the revolutionary fires and while these fires can be quenched by a violent reaction, most political classes choose to rule by making minor concessions designed to dampen down the flames and bring the revolution to a halt. Early in the book, the Tsar tries to reform his own government without surrendering any powers but he leaves it far too late and so his attempts at constitutional tinkering serve only to enrage an already angry population. Even when the Tsar steps down and hands power to a group of middle-class politicians, their attempts to rule from the political centre-ground fail to slow things down. Again and again, it is not the politicians who demand revolution but ordinary workers and peasants who have suffered far too much for far too long. As one husky worker put it when confronting a reluctant revolutionary leader: Take power, you son of a bitch, when they give it to you!

Aside from being beautifully written and utterly compelling, Miéville’s history of the Russian revolution is also profoundly inspiring as he goes to great length to remind us that the revolution was not simply a question of doughy white men having meetings. The Russian empire subjugated people of all races and genders and so all races and genders worked together to bring it down. In fact, another of the book’s most striking images is that of the crowds who gathered at railway stations to hear the voice of a woman who had been sent to Siberia for her crimes. Along with a load of other female revolutionaries, Maria Spiridonova was sent to Siberia for killing a brutal security chief. She was sent to Siberia where she was beaten, broken, and abused but she was primarily sent there in the hope that she would be forgotten. They gathered to hear her speak because they wanted to remember. They gathered to hear her speak because they knew she acted for them.

I am writing this on the day after the General Election and Miéville’s understanding of politics seems absolutely on point. The global financial crisis of 2008 destroyed the political settlement achieved by Blair and Clinton. Rather than turning a blind-eye to structural inequality in return for a small increase in redistributive taxation, the British government began allowing the rich to enrich themselves while expecting the poorest to pick up the bill. Austerity was nothing less than a war waged against the British people by its representatives in Westminster and that model of governance was simply too repugnant to last for ever.

Brexit can be understood as a growl of xenophobic spite but it was also a terrifying scream of metal-on-metal issued by a revolutionary engine that had suddenly sprung to life. The Conservative party stoked those fires because they believed they could control them but the revolution does not follow political rules. Labour did well in 2017 because Corbyn provided a more positive outlet for that revolutionary fire. This election has reminded us that politics are mutable and that the world can be remade by those who know how to listen in silence and when to start furiously shovelling coal.

October is a book that is as much about breaking with the past as it is about constructing a future. Complex, intricate, but never anything less than spellbinding, China Miéville’s latest book is an important reminder of how tangible the future can become.

TIME PIECES

NINA ALLAN

Broken River: The Conversation and the Discourse

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In a blog post supplemental to his Future Interrupted column, Jonathan McCalmont paused to reflect upon my own piece about the mainstreaming of science fiction, and noted how personally divided he felt on this issue: I must admit to being somewhat torn on this particular issue as I think that, historically at least, science fiction is a literature with its own unique cultural history… I’m torn because while I like the idea of science fiction being its own distinct thing, I’m not actually all that interested by what that thing is currently producing. Gernsbackian fiction may have been radical back in the day but decades of creative stasis make science fiction’s claims to uniqueness feel like nothing more than cultural conservatism. As the Shadow Clarke has moved from personal shortlists to the official shortlist, I am horrified by how much better science fiction seems to become the second it is published by anyone other than a genre publisher.

I read this with sympathy because, whilst standing by my assertion that the industry’s drive towards extruded genre product is forcing radical science fiction into the mainstream and towards its own literary endgame, I too wish it wasn’t so. The constantly ongoing debate around science fiction’s cultural and philosophical progress – what fans will often refer to as the conversation – has from the start been one of the genre’s most defining attributes and has in its turn helped to define the genre. Knowing the literature from the inside out and being familiar – often from an early age – with the genre’s assumptions, mannerisms, arguments and backstory has put SF fans, readers, writers and critics in a unique position to discuss what it is we do when we read and write science fiction, not to mention the ever-shifting goalposts of what science fiction actually is.

Lately though I’ve been asking myself if the conversation – as the fruitful, informed and discursive thing it used to be – still exists. Asking my fellow shadow jurors about this as a prelude to writing this essay, I was struck again by a remark of Jonathan’s, that it is important to remember that the conversation is actually different from the discourse. The conversation, according to Jonathan, is something that happens between science fiction authors through the printed pages of the books they write, that process of influence and forward momentum that will continue to evolve for as long as books are written. The discourse – readers, fans and critics talking and writing about ‘the genre’ – is something else again.

This certainly struck a depressing chord with me. Depressing because, whilst the conversations I often have with other writers and critics are characterised by an undiminished, shining enthusiasm for the politics and practicalities of language and form, the one subject I rarely see discussed out there in ‘the discourse’ is the importance of aesthetics – good writing – in the effective expression and dissemination of radical ideas. Everywhere and almost without exception, genre commentators seem content to let a book’s intentions – its subject matter, what it is ‘about’ – stand in for its quality as an achieved work of fiction and by extension its overall importance within contemporary discourse. This does not just depress me, it pisses me off. Perhaps it’s me that’s changed – how would I know? One thing I do know is that to discuss broad-brush, oversimplified allegories as if they’re trailblazing works of social commentary is to ignore at least one half of what makes decent criticism, and therefore much of the current discourse within genre circles is bunk.

Taking a mini-break from my Sharke reading earlier this month, I dived thankfully into J. Robert Lennon’s new novel Broken River. Lennon’s previous outing, Familiar – submitted for and ignored by the Clarke Award in 2014 – was a brilliant evocation of alternate realities, an illumination of personal crisis through the medium of science fiction (or was it the other way around?) and I had long been looking forward to his next work of fiction.

In his new book, it is the thriller genre Lennon sets about subverting. In Scott Derrickson’s 2012 movie Sinister, a true crime writer (Ethan Hawke) struggling to produce a follow-up to his phenomenally successful debut decides to move his family into a house that was previously the scene of a multiple hanging. Of course, he somehow neglects to tell his wife about the murders. Or about the weird box of old cine-film he finds up in the attic. I