Interzone #276 (July-August 2018)

By TTA Press

The July–August issue of Britain's longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine contains new stories by Ryan Row, Rachael Cupp, Darby Harn, James Warner, Tim Major, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, and Paul Crenshaw. The cover art is by Vince Haig, and interior colour illustrations are by Richard Wagner, Martin Hanford, and Dave Senecal. Features: Ansible Link by David Langford (news and obits); Mutant Popcorn by Nick Lowe (film reviews); Book Zone (book reviews); Andy Hedgecock's Future Interrupted (comment); Nina Allan's Time Pieces (comment); 'Braving the Post-Apocalyptic Landscape' by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam.

Cover Art: Abductees 3 by 2018 cover artist Vince Haig

Fiction:

Grey Halls by Rachael Cupp
illustrated by Richard Wagner

Superbright by Ryan Row
illustrated by Martin Hanford

Tumblebush by Darby Harn
illustrated by Dave Senecal

P.Q. by James Warner

Throw Caution by Tim Major

So Easy by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

Eyes by Paul Crenshaw
illustrated by Richard Wagner

Features:

Guest Editorial: Braving the Post-Apocalyptic Landscape
Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

Future Interrupted: Technological Marvels, Hideous Situations and the Collective Unconscious
Andy Hedgecock

Time Pieces: The Long and the Short of it: Marian Womack’s Lost Objects
Nina Allan

Ansible Link
David Langford

Reviews:

Book Zone

Books reviewed include Nebula Awards Showcase 2018 edited by Jane Yolen, Close Your Eyes by Paul Jessup, Adrift by Rob Boffard, Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee, Shattermoon by Dominic Dulley, The Adventures of the Ingenious Alfanhui by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Apocalypse Nix by Kameron Hurley, The Green Man's Heir by Juliet McKenna

Mutant Popcorn
Nick Lowe

Films reviewed include Solo: A Star Wars Story, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Deadpool 2, The Cured, Hereditary, The Endless, How to Talk to Girls at Parties, Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, The Little Vampire

• Language: English
• Publisher: TTA Press
• Release date: Jul 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463437223

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 #276

JULY–AUGUST 2018

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]

© 2018 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 276 JULY-AUGUST 2018

TTA PRESS

COPYRIGHT TTA PRESS AND CONTRIBUTORS 2018

PUBLISHED BY TTA PRESS AT SMASHWORDS

CONTENTS

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ABDUCTEES 3 by 2018 COVER ARTIST VINCE HAIG

www.barquing.com

INTERFACE

EDITORIAL

BONNIE JO STUFFLEBEAM

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FUTURE INTERRUPTED

ANDY HEDGECOCK

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TIME PIECES

NINA ALLAN

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ANSIBLE LINK

DAVID LANGFORD

FICTION

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GREY HALLS

RACHAEL CUPP

story illustrated by Richard Wagner

[e-mail] (email)

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SUPERBRIGHT

RYAN ROW

story illustrated by Martin Hanford

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TUMBLEBUSH

DARBY HARN

story illustrated by Dave Senecal

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P.Q.

JAMES WARNER

story

THROW CAUTION

TIM MAJOR

story

SO EASY

BONNIE JO STUFFLEBEAM

story

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EYES

PAUL CRENSHAW

story illustrated by Richard Wagner

REVIEWS

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BOOK ZONE

books

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MUTANT POPCORN

NICK LOWE

films

EDITORIAL

BONNIE JO STUFFLEBEAM

Braving the Post-Apocalyptic Landscape

For me, adolescence was like journeying through a post-apocalyptic landscape.

I realized I was queer in middle school, when a beautiful girl in my home economics class clasped a leather bracelet onto my wrist, and I felt the flutters in my stomach I had long expected to feel for boys. Then, four years later, I felt those same flutters for a bearded male barista. I came out to a home that was at first unwelcoming then quietly accepting of my queerness, then unwelcoming once more when I announced that I wasn’t exclusively interested in women after all.

The conservative Texas town where I went to school found me fascinating at first – for one week’s time, I was approached at the beginning of every class and hounded with questions – then easy to ignore. The gay male students, on the other hand, were often the subject of harassment. Our school principal denied us a Gay-Straight Alliance, choosing to cancel every non-academic club rather than give us a safe space; on the newspaper staff, she nixed any editorial topics that may have encouraged discourse of any kind. My alcoholic father passed out on the couch every night, a Cerberus guarding the door I crept through after spending evenings with my high school sweetheart in the garage apartment she lived in, at seventeen, by herself. She was escaping her own problematic household. I never knew which of my father’s three heads might wake and call me out: the joker, the apathetic guard, or the hothead.

Thus I realized early that adults weren’t the wizened authorities we are led in childhood to believe they are, that these people who were supposed to be running the world were fumbling almost as blindly as my fellow teenagers toward whatever end they thought they’d reach.

I struggled with this transition. To realize that the world was a ferry driven by no one. By the time I left my parents’ house, I was buried beneath layers of fear that I have only now begun to shed. Music has long been a balm: in middle school, angsty goth ballads; in high school, Ani Difranco’s moaning meditations on love gone wrong; in college, Leonard Cohen’s depressive revelations. As I let the fear that started in adolescence run amok, I gained phobia after phobia – planes, driving, heights – until I was claustrophobic in the small dystopia I’d made for myself.

Only recently, after rounds and rounds of exposure therapy, have I begun to emerge from the aftermath of emotional apocalypse. On planes, I queue up My Brightest Diamond’s song ‘Be Brave’ and remind myself to heed her words.

‘So Easy’ is another My Brightest Diamond song, and part of the inspiration for the story included in this issue. ‘So Easy’ is about coming of age. It’s about coming to realize that the people who love you are too often, in times of crises, blinded by their own desires. It’s about realizing that if we let fear, both other people’s and our own, drive us, we will succumb to drowning.

FUTURE INTERRUPTED

ANDY HEDGECOCK

Technological Marvels, Hideous Situations and the Collective Unconscious

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A few months ago I attended an appalling ‘programme of continuing professional development’ that contained a single absorbing element. Participants interviewed each other in pairs and produced a timeline of stories that fired our imaginations as children and young adults. We weren’t allowed to nominate TV programmes, films or books on the basis of a vague nostalgic glow, we had to justify their inclusion by vividly describing a specific scene or plot element.

That ruled out Gerry Anderson’s Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. I recalled montages of explosions, with stirring music, but Anderson’s ‘Supermarionation’ series failed the specific memory test. The fabulously chaotic final episode of The Prisoner was also excluded because I’ve watched it many times as an adult.

By the end of the session, we had all dredged a set of narratives from the Mariana Trench of childhood memory. Here are the five I came up with.

The first is from Irwin Allen’s TV series, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Episodes tended in involve a surfeit of titled camera shots, with the cast staggered backwards and forwards on the cramped set to simulate the nuclear submarine Seaview under attack. They featured sea monsters, aliens and even a mermaid. But, best of all, one episode involved the body-snatching, protean ghost of a WW1 U-boat Commander. The seemingly indestructible, leather-jacketed ghost looked positively cool, was capable of mind control and brazenly insisted on possessing the body of one of the officers. It was bizarre and terrifying. I’ve found and watched the episode (‘The Phantom Strikes’, 1966): it’s a cut above the rest of the series. Kruger, the ghost, is brilliantly played by an actor called Alfred Ryder, and the script draws on the gothic tradition. That didn’t happen often in 1960s and when Alien was released thirteen years later this collision of genres was still seen as a bold departure. This story was my earliest brush with the idea that identity could be contingent, a notion also explored in darker and more dangerous stories, such as Performance, the film by Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell, and ‘William Wilson’, an underrated story by Poe.

About a year later I was terrified by the Cybernauts, villains from the knowingly ludicrous action series The Avengers. These programmed humanoid assassins pre-date the Cybermen from Doctor Who by a year. I remember the story as both chilling and risible: one of the assassinations leaves a man-shaped hole in an office wall. But the opening scene of ‘Return of the Cybernauts’ is terrifying. A huge figure in black coat, hat and gloves approaches the front door of an isolated house – there may have been a dab of shadow and smidgen of expressionist camera tilting, but that may be a false memory. A terrified man is relentlessly pursued and karate chopped. As the assassin turns we see an almost featureless metal face, with eyes masked by sunglasses. The motif of deadly and relentless pursuit was something I later enjoyed in the stories of M.R. James. And I’ve continued to be drawn to the notion of killer robots such as Paul McAuley’s ‘Little Lost Robot’ and Philip K. Dick’s novella ‘Second Variety’.

Shifting to printed word and image, my next recollection was the illustrated story ‘Rupert and Raggety’, from a late 1960s edition of The Daily Express Rupert Annual. Raggety is a malevolent nature spirit resembling a tangle of thorny branches, who brings chaos to well-ordered lives in the village of Nutwood. He shrieks venomously, springs into the air and flings household objects. Written and illustrated by Alfred Bestall, the images resembled Arthur Rackham’s illustrations of Grimms’ Fairy Tales. It’s not a horror story but, for a child, it was an unsettling departure in a usually cosy series. It will seem unlikely, but there are motifs in this story echoed in two modern gothic tales, John Connolly’s ‘The Erlking’ and Angela Carter’s ‘The Erl-King’, and the motif of chaos breaking through the placid surface of life has correspondences in Blue Velvet. Bestall’s vision is less gruesome and threatening than David Lynch’s, and isn’t at all sexually charged, but the trace is there, however faintly.

Fast-forward a couple of years to Thames TV’s Ace of Wands, a children’s series about a stage magician with telepathic powers. The best episode, ‘Seven Serpents, Sulphur and Salt’, involves a shape-shifting black magician, a cobweb cocooned corpse, a shadowy ‘brotherhood’ and multiple references to alchemy and its practitioners. Much of this went over my head at the time, but I was transfixed by the pallid and menacing magician, Mr Stabs, who cast curses with weird hand gestures and dressed like a cross between a 1920s gangster and contemporary undertaker. I can’t tell you whether ‘Seven Serpents’ was as good as I remember it being – Thames TV wiped it after transmission. Episodes from a later series of Ace of Wands suggest the acting was ropey and special effects limited. Locations were always a stone’s throw from Teddington Studios. The programme relied on scripts that mined the strange and supernatural from the quotidian. Surviving episodes are steeped in seventies pop culture and supernatural gothic, with a dash of mythology and sf. Ace of Wands inspired me to seek out work offering glimpses of the numinous behind the curtain of everyday perception – the books of Graham Joyce, Peter Ackroyd’s First Light and classic TV plays by David Rudkin, such as Penda’s Fen and Artemis 81.

I borrowed Michael Moorcock’s The Final Programme from Doncaster library as a pre-teen, using my dad’s library ticket. I only took it out because the cover illustration featured a hero, Jerry Cornelius, who looked a bit like Tarot from Ace of Wands. It’s an episodic tale about the race to develop a supercomputer, with Bond-like action, lots of sex, incest, high tech weapons, exotic locations, drug dependency, societal breakdown, a dysfunctional family and a layer of allusive wit. As a twelve-year-old there were lots of elements I didn’t get, but I recall the book’s ending very clearly – a computer programme transforms Jerry and his rival Miss Brunner into a hermaphroditic super-creature, a dark messiah before whom humanity trembles. The Final Programme led me to the rest of Moorcock’s oeuvre, including experimental work such as The Condition of Muzak and subtler, more allusive work such as Mother London and the Colonel Pyat Quartet. Jerry Cornelius also nudged me towards the politically charged, encyclopaedic and parodic Illuminatus! Books by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

The stories that grabbed me fifty years ago played fast and loose with genre, threatening technologies, ominous forces, ambivalent identities and characters shaken out of cosy complacency by nasty but fascinating people and events.

Similarly, the fiction I enjoy in middle age adopts an ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ approach to themes, genres and motifs.

Will Wiles’ The Way Inn blends sf, supernatural gothic and surreal comedy to produce a biting satire on consumerism, branding and pre-packaged experience.

Sean O’Brien’s new story collection, Quartier Perdu, includes supernatural horror, metafictional experiment and traditional gothic. Its murky broth of themes includes art, imagination, grief, identity, morality, attachment and ethics.

And Kirsty Logan’s The Gloaming (reviewed in Interzone #275) is a multilayered novel, splicing folklore, poetic imagery and gritty realism to produce a powerful reflection on nature, family ties and the stories we tell ourselves.

The Guyanese novelist and poet Wilson Harris, who died in March, saw fantastic and experimental fiction as a response to the uncertainties of contemporary life. One lives in a world which has so many things that appear on the surface to be marvellous, technological marvels, yet at the same time we are steeped in such hideous situations, polarisations…

I believe a taste for the literature of shadows, ambiguities and strange possibilities begins before we are aware of the vicissitudes and uncertainties of the world outside our window, and it cuts across boundaries of class, gender and geography. Perhaps Jung was right when he said myths and stories were projections of the ‘collective unconscious’.

TIME PIECES

NINA ALLAN

The Long and the Short of it: Marian Womack’s Lost Objects

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Nina went back into the house, and started packing straight away. The next morning a taxi pulled up at her door, and she left her house forever. It was the right thing to do. (From ‘A Place for Wild Beasts’ by Marian Womack)

Short stories are the devil’s business. An extreme statement, no doubt, but this is genuinely how I have come to feel, as a writer, about a medium that increasingly brings me nothing but grief. It’s not that I don’t care for short fiction [she added, hastily], it’s that I don’t seem to know how to write it any more. Perhaps I never did. Certainly it seems to me now that most of my early stories were not so much stories as attempts to get to grips with the art of long-form narrative, ambiguous statements that eventually coalesced into medium-length runs of stories on particular themes and based around the same set of characters – mosaic novels, in other words, still a favourite form of mine and one I fall into instinctively: two of the very few stories I have managed to write in the past couple of years hark back to characters I first wrote about a decade ago.

One of the ways science fiction is unusual as a mode of literature is that so many of its writers have in the past and still continue to enter the field through the medium of the short story; getting published in magazines like this one, gradually amassing a readership and developing their craft. For me, and in spite of my personal struggles with the form, this still seems like an ideal way to become a writer. The mainstream literary market is geared increasingly towards launching big debuts, often by young writers who have little experience of the industry and who are therefore especially vulnerable to disappointment. I don’t have any figures for how many new authors are dropped by their publishers