Interzone #283 (September-October 2019)

By TTA Press

The September-October 2019 issue contains new cutting edge science fiction and fantasy by John Kessel, Robert Minto, Lucy Harlow, Fiona Moore, David Cleden, and James White Award winner Dustin Blair Steinacker. The 2019 cover artist is Richard Wagner, and interior colour illustrations are by Richard Wagner, Martin Hanford and others. 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); Aliya Whiteley's Climbing Stories (comment); guest editorial by John Kessel.

Interzone's 2019 cover artist is Richard Wagner

Fiction:

The Winds and Persecutions of the Sky by Robert Minto
illustrated by Martin Hanford

Of the Green Spires by Lucy Harlow

Jolene by Fiona Moore
illustrated by Richard Wagner

The Palimpsest Trigger by David Cleden

Fix That House! by John Kessel

James White Award Winner:
Two Worlds Apart by Dustin Blair Steinacker

Features:

Guest Editorial
John Kessel

Future Interrupted: Irrationality, Forgetfulness and a Load of Goebbels
Andy Hedgecock

Climbing Stories: From One to the Next
Aliya Whiteley

Ansible Link
David Langford

Reviews:

Book Zone

Books reviewed include A Year Without A Winter edited by Dehlia Hannah, This is How YOu LOse the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, Palestine +100 edited by Basma Ghalayini, Menace of the Machine edited by Mike Ashley, The End of the World and Other Catastrophes edited by Mike Ashley, A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay, Learning Monkey and Crocodile by Nick Wood, Driving Ambition by Fiona Moore, Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes, The Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith, The Complex by Michael Walters, Ivory Apples by Lisa Goldstein

Mutant Popcorn
Nick Lowe

Films reviewed include Aniara, Spider-Man: Far From Home, The Angry Birds Movie 2, UglyDolls, Playmobil: The Movie, Yesterday, In Fabric

• Language: English
• Publisher: TTA Press
• Release date: Sep 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463078532

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 #283

SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2019

Publisher

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

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f: TTAPress

t: @TTApress

shop: shop.ttapress.com

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

Editor

Andy Cox

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Story Proofreader

Peter Tennant

Events

Roy Gray

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© 2019 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 283 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019

TTA PRESS

COPYRIGHT TTA PRESS AND CONTRIBUTORS 2019

PUBLISHED BY TTA PRESS AT SMASHWORDS

CONTENTS

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INTERZONE’S 2019 COVER ARTIST IS RICHARD WAGNER

[e-mail] (email)

INTERFACE

EDITORIAL

JOHN KESSEL

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FUTURE INTERRUPTED

ANDY HEDGECOCK

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CLIMBING STORIES

ALIYA WHITELEY

ANSIBLE LINK

DAVID LANGFORD

FICTION

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THE WINDS AND PERSECUTIONS OF THE SKY

ROBERT MINTO

story illustrated by Martin Hanford

www.deviantart.com/martinhanford1974

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OF THE GREEN SPIRES

LUCY HARLOW

story

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JOLENE

FIONA MOORE

story illustrated by Richard Wagner

[e-mail] (email)

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THE PALIMPSEST TRIGGER

DAVID CLEDEN

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FIX THAT HOUSE!

JOHN KESSEL

story

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JAMES WHITE AWARD WINNER

TWO WORLDS APART

DUSTIN BLAIR STEINACKER

REVIEWS

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BOOK ZONE

books

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MUTANT POPCORN

NICK LOWE

films

EDITORIAL

JOHN KESSEL

It’s ironic that I’ve been asked to write an editorial at this moment in my life. People who know me or who have read my fiction can testify that I have always been political, always had plenty of opinions about the world, and never hesitated to express them in unequivocal terms.

But in recent days I’ve come to question whether I have any grasp on truth, or right to expound on those truths I still hold. My experience is only my experience and my angle of vision on things is not that of others, or at least I’ve come to see that I cannot assume that what I see is what others do or ought to see, no matter how passionately it may seem to me that matters of right or wrong, or fundamental justice, ought to be self-evident. I’ve become suspicious of my desire to propound, to say in unequivocal terms that this or that is the way things are or ought to be.

But the heart still speaks.

The world, Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe said, is not well-arranged. It is not well-arranged, and therefore there is no way we can be happy with it – no way, even as writers. Storytelling, Achebe says, is a threat. Because a storyteller has a different agenda from the Emperor.

The novelist John Gardner gave us the flip-side of Achebe’s observation, asserting, Nothing in the world has greater power to enslave than does fiction. What happens when the storyteller becomes the Emperor? It seems to me that the United States (and, if I might say so, the UK) is in a bad place today because too many citizens have come to believe the powerful, destructive stories politicians have been telling them about the present, past, and future.

Speculative fiction is all about the past, present, and future. We aren’t supposed to worry too much about reality. So, caught between uncertainty that what I say is true and the need to speak regardless, I write what I write.

FUTURE INTERRUPTED

ANDY HEDGECOCK

Irrationality, Forgetfulness and a Load of Goebbels

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Let’s be clear, I present evidence, you spew slogans. I’m smart and rational, but you are a member of the poorly informed masses, susceptible to the ‘alternative facts’ pushed by the mainstream media.

It’s not entirely your fault that we live in a post-truth era. We’re also at the mercy of the powerful algorithms and massive datasets of social media billionaires, search engine magnates and party-political sultans of spin.

There are kernels of truth in the assertions set out above, but the first is complacent and the second absurdly fatalistic. This kind of thinking is all too common. It’s dangerous to democracy and plays into the hands of people with power.

In 2013 Bobby Duffy of Ipsos MORI studied voters’ self-perceptions and their perceptions of others. Participants were likely to say their own political decisions were based on evidence or a combination of evidence and instinct. But they were more likely to attribute the voting behaviour of others to ‘gut feeling’.

Not only do we dismiss our fellow citizens as irrational, we grossly overestimate the extent of political disengagement in society. In 2003, political scientist Mark Franklin demonstrated that voters all over the world underestimate the likely turnout out at elections (by an average of 17% in the UK). Before breaking out the bubbly to celebrate our being less apathetic than we believed, let’s consider the possibility that the perception of passivity might cause passivity: writing in Quartz in 2017, Dan Kopf noted a significant dip in global voter turnout in recent years.

Let’s consider our despair in relation to the question of technology and social control. In his book Are Filter Bubbles Real? (2019) Axel Bruns suggests we are too quick to blame computer algorithms for social fragmentation and the rise of ‘extremism’. There is a popular belief that online special interest groups with strictly defined beliefs become filter bubbles (with preferred sets of ideas) or echo chambers (with a membership limited to people who are ‘on message’). Bruns suggests we need to shift our focus away from the tools and techniques of Facebook and Google and do two things. Firstly, ask these corporate behemoths some difficult questions about the ownership, access and control of information. Secondly, give more consideration to the psychology of online communication, stressing our active roles as users of systems rather than seeing us as merely as victims of technoshock.

In classic dystopian sf, dictatorships ensure their survival through technological intrusions into the lives of their citizens. Consider the telescreens and hidden microphones of Orwell’s 1984, the bioengineering of Bokanovsky’s Process in Huxley’s Brave New World and the achievement of ‘reliability’ through psychosurgery in Zamyatin’s We. Things have moved on. In the twenty-first century governments and corporations have found more parsimonious and elegant forms of social control – based on DIY principles.

Aspects of this are considered in Andreas Bernard’s The Triumph of Profiling (2019). Bernard highlights a toxic psychological shift that has its roots in technologies forged in the digital counterculture of 1990s California. For example, users of cell phones and fitness monitoring bracelets allow hundreds of ‘friends’ to assess their locations and physical movements, twenty-four hours per day. Paradoxically, the earlier introduction of GPS-based tags as an alternative to short prison sentences led to protracted legal wrangling about the human rights implications of tracking convicted offenders.

Bernard reflects on the idea of the ‘quantified self’ and describes the growth of the self-tracking industry. We record our sleep, mood, food, exercise and sex, and share the data with friends, strangers and corporations. They then use it to sell us more carefully targeted products, challenge our insurance claims and, ultimately, control our behaviour.

This control is achieved by reconfiguring our data into a vast, digitised ‘census’, in which every aspect of our lives is recorded in the name of career development, access to services and connection to communities of interest. The notion of community is critical here: Bernard suggests our collusion in this process is driven by our need for a sense of connection and belonging. That’s why we are more than pleased to fork out for the technologies that struck fear into the heart of Winston Smith in 1984. One example of this is Alexa, the Amazon ‘assistant’ that people willingly allow to breach their domestic security in the name of convenience. Those in power no longer use technology to batter us into a state of virtue, they simply get us to buy voice-activated gadgets to increase our sense of self-determination and individuality. These technological cuckoos then become the channel through which other products are marketed.

Human beings have a propensity to lie, and a remarkable inability to spot a liar: ‘We send the EU £350 million a week – let’s fund our NHS instead.’ Once we’ve accepted an untruth it takes a lot to change our minds. In the course of writing this piece I searched for Joseph Goebbels’ famous quote about lying: ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.’ I’ve seen it cited by politicians, journalists and an online holocaust memorial page but it’s a hoax. Goebbels never said it, and why would he? It’s hardly likely that Hitler’s Propaganda Minister would highlight his own bullshit. I’ve believed it for years, only checking its provenance when I came perilously close to putting it in print. It does sound like the kind of thing a cold-blooded bastard like Goebbels would say.

And that’s what we do, we shape things to fit our established beliefs. Try this:

Linda is 34 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She took a degree in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice. She also took part in the anti-Iraq war demonstrations of 1991.

Put the statements in order of probability:

(a) Linda is a university lecturer.

(b) Linda works in a call centre selling insurance.

(c) Linda works in a bookshop and takes yoga classes.

(d) Linda is a Labour Party activist.

(e) Linda works in a call centre selling insurance and is a Labour Party activist.

(f) Linda works in a bank.

If you said (e) is more likely than (b) you’ve made a common error. For (e) to be true, (b) would have to be true and so would(d). The probably of two events occurring together is always less than or equal to the probability of either one occurring alone. This is known as the ‘conjunction fallacy’ (adapted from Tversky and Kahneman, 1982). We get it wrong because we apply a mental short cut called the Representativeness Heuristic. Being a Labour activist ‘fits’ the rest of Linda’s story better than Linda working in a call centre so we try to include it, even though it’s mathematically less likely.

In 1984 George Orwell wrote: ‘Who controls the past … controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.’ Memory is malleable, and human beings are defined by their memories, which is why Alzheimer’s is such a terrifying condition.

Sir Frederic Bartlett’s book Remembering (1932) drew attention to the creative and contingent nature of memory. One of Bartlett’s experiments involved English participants trying to recall a native Canadian folktale. They remembered only those parts of the story that had a good fit with European storytelling and distorted the elements that seemed off and unfamiliar.

I think there’s a shortage of sf stories dealing with flaws in human cognition and our tendency to collude with people who oppress us. One exception is the new translation of Yoko Ogawa’s terrifying, surreal and profoundly moving novel The Memory Police. It’s a tale of vanishing species, collapsing ecosystems, provisional notions of the truth, disappearing people and forgotten objects. The titular Memory Police are a uniformed group who enforce forgetting and erase images, artefacts and ways of life.

Another book that reflects on thought and reminiscence is Palestine + 100 (edited by Basma Ghalayini, 2019). Several of its stories use ambiguous and manipulated memories to reflect on the collective sense of displacement and loss experienced by the Palestinian people.

CLIMBING STORIES

ALIYA WHITELEY

From One to the Next

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I’m not sure if this counts as an unexplained personality change in reading terms, but the way that I read a short story anthology has – for no reason I can put my finger on – evolved, and now I’m no longer the person who opens the book at random, or picks the title that appeals on a particular evening. Now I take my time, moving from one story to the next in turn. It’s a seismic shift, I know.

The upside of this is a fresh appreciation of the role of anthology editor. I’m more aware of the difficulty of curating a collection. It’s not only the job of choosing the stories themselves. It’s the skill of arranging the stories over the pages for the best result: creating a rhythm, reflecting on different aspects of a subject, grabbing and holding a reader through challenging and pleasing pieces. I know, I know: I should have realised all this years ago, and had a little more faith. I blame the anthologies I loved when I was younger, put together by skilled people such as Mary Danby, who made it look so easy that it was easy to ignore her role altogether. Recently I picked up a copy of the 1981 St Michael anthology that she edited, 65 Great Tales of Horror, and really enjoyed stories I hadn’t come across before such as Patricia Highsmith’s slimy and richly detailed ‘The Snail-Watcher’. But the order of authors in that book is straightforwardly alphabetical, making for some strange changes in mood that