Interzone #286 (March-April 2020)

By TTA Press

The March-April issue contains new cutting edge science fiction and fantasy novelettes by James Sallis, Val Nolan, Matt Thompson, and Louis Evans. The 2020 cover artist is Warwick Fraser-Coombe, 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 including Zen Cho interviewed by Juliet E. McKenna, and Maureen Kincaid Speller on Rebecca Roanhorse); Andy Hedgecock's Future Interrupted (comment); Aliya Whiteley's Climbing Stories (comment); guest editorial by Val Nolan.

Fiction:

Cofiwch Aberystwyth by Val Nolan
illustrated by Richard Wagner

Rocket Man by Louis Evans
illustrated by Dave Senecal

Organ of Corti by Matt Thompson
illustrated by Martin Hanford

Carriers by James Sallis
illustrated by Richard Wagner

Features:

Guest Editorial
Val Nolan

Future Interrupted: The Eternal Act of Creation (Why We Can't Leave the Arts to Algorithms)
Andy Hedgecock

Climbing Stories: Shiny Surprise Goodness
Aliya Whiteley

Ansible Link
David Langford

Reviews:

Book Zone

Book reviews include Re-Coil by J.T. Nicholas, Sixteenth Watch by Myke Cole, The True Queen by Zen Cho (plus author interview), Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds, New Horizons edited by Tarun K. Saint, Sea Change by Nancy Kress, Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer, Trail of Lighting + Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse

Mutant Popcorn
Nick Lowe

Films reviewed include Little Joe, Vivarium, Satr Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, Underwater, Spies in Disguise, Dolittle, Sonic the Hedgehog

• Language: English
• Publisher: TTA Press
• Release date: Mar 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463391488

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 #286

MARCH–APRIL 2020

Publisher

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

w: ttapress.com

e: [e-mail]

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

[e-mail]

Story Proofreader

Peter Tennant

Events

Roy Gray

[e-mail]

© 2020 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 286 MARCH-APRIL 2020

TTA PRESS

COPYRIGHT TTA PRESS AND CONTRIBUTORS 2020

PUBLISHED BY TTA PRESS AT SMASHWORDS

CONTENTS

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OUR 2020 COVER ARTIST IS WARWICK FRASER-COOMBE

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INTERFACE

GUEST EDITORIAL

VAL NOLAN

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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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COFIWCH ABERYSTWYTH

VAL NOLAN

novelette illustrated by Richard Wagner

[e-mail] (email)

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ROCKET MAN

LOUIS EVANS

story illustrated by Dave Senecal

www.deviantart.com/senecal

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ORGAN OF CORTI

MATT THOMPSON

novelette illustrated by Martin Hanford

www.deviantart.com/martinhanford1974

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CARRIERS

JAMES SALLIS

novelette illustrated by Richard Wagner

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ZEN CHO

interviewed by Juliet E. McKenna

REVIEWS

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BOOK ZONE

books

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MUTANT POPCORN

NICK LOWE

films

GUEST EDITORIAL

VAL NOLAN

Seeing as I drop a nuclear weapon on west Wales in my story this issue, I probably ought to explain myself. I have done it before – at least once a year – and I will most likely strike again. It is an exercise I conduct (electronically, of course!) with students in my ‘Writing Science Fiction’ class at Aberystwyth University. Each year we discuss the various ways the world could end. Nuclear war is obviously one of them, but it is an abstract scenario for contemporary twenty-year-olds in Ceredigion. Nothing brings it home like simulating a Tsar Bomba detonation over Cardigan Bay.

Which is to say that teaching Science Fiction and Fantasy is a delicate balance of the local and the universal. I ask my students to study the likes of Alastair Reynolds, a Welshman writing about the universe, and to read The Mabinogion, a centuries old Middle Welsh precursor to modern fantasy. Moreover, while other universities are cutting their literature provisions, here at Aberystwyth we are expanding our definitions to embrace the pedagogical possibilities and delights of SF, Fantasy, comics, TV shows, and more. Modules about manga and graphic novels (I was somehow permitted to call that class ‘Kapow!’) sit on our curriculum alongside expected introductions to Shakespeare and Modernism, but also genre-adjacent offerings on Children’s Fiction, Ghost Stories, and Shaping Plots.

Our students tackle the ‘Literature of Surveillance’ (Bentham’s Panopticon to PKD’s A Scanner Darkly to Moore and Lloyd’s V for Vendetta) as well as conducting ‘Explorations’ (chart the ocean floor with Marie Tharp and visit the moon with Apollo 11). Recently I have even launched ‘To Boldly Go…’, a module utilising the Star Trek franchise to model lit-critical engagement with pop culture and, in the process, introduce first years to concepts such as utopianism and spec-fictional approaches to climate change and the environmental crisis.

Our reading lists are always evolving too, always staying current. They have to if the assertion that SF and Fantasy are genres of the now is to have any truth to it. Students still read Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood and Kim Stanley Robinson, but this past year we have added books by Colson Whitehead and N.K. Jemisin to both core and option modules. Meanwhile, some of the most popular texts among this semester’s Fantasy cohort are Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway and Jeannette Ng’s Under the Pendulum Sun. Before the end of the year, I will also be asking SF students to consider Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s brilliant This Is How You Lose the Time War for our time travel week.

You might think Aberystwyth an unexpected place to teach Science Fiction and Fantasy, but this ‘Athens of Wales’ overlooks a land of dragons and drowned kingdoms. One is as likely to see a model Mars rover in the car park as meet a horse’s skeleton carousing on a dark winter’s night. Working here might be the best job I will ever have. I apologise for the nuclear missile.

FUTURE INTERRUPTED

ANDY HEDGECOCK

The Eternal Act of Creation (Why We Can’t Leave the Arts to Algorithms)

In last year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, Dr Hannah Fry demonstrated an algorithm that churned hundreds of hours of music to create work in the style of specified composers. When a string quartet played a composition by Vivaldi, followed by a Vivaldi-esque counterpart devised by the algorithm, the audience could not reliably identify the ‘authentic’ piece.

One of the musicians taking part revealed the machine-generated piece was technically impressive but flawed: some chord sequences were unplayable because, unlike those actually composed by Antonio Vivaldi, they were not informed by an understanding of the limitations of human hands. This sort of failing may soon be overcome. Sony and Google are investing heavily in intelligent smart tools that generate music autonomously and collaboratively.

Similarly, there are machine-authored poetry collections, including one written by a system called XiaoIce; and a novel produced by a literary program at Future University Hakodate. The poetry is dull and clumsy. The novel’s prose is redolent of a poorly written corporate report. But who knows what the future may hold for these technologies?

Then there’s the quest for an AI Picasso. Imagine an algorithm more fully adept with line, colour and composition than a human artist, and able to avoid a creative impasse by running a subroutine to maximise deviation from established styles. There’s plenty of technically proficient and decorative computer-generated art online but, for me, there’s something missing. It’s as if the lack of shared experience between creator and audience has drained the images of meaning and emotional resonance. If that sounds a glib and romantic statement, have a look at the plethora of examples online.

Elon Musk suggests AI will outperform humans in every sphere, including the arts, by 2030. The biggest challenge will be writing adaptable algorithms that take interesting and worthwhile creative decisions. This won’t be easy, given the lack of agreement about the essential nature of human creativity among psychologists, critics and practitioners. But, even if Musk is jumping the gun with his prediction, it is inevitable that computer scientists will find a way of simulating or reinventing creativity.

The real issue is not whether we can replace human artists with algorithms and immense datasets, but whether it is in any way desirable. The arts have always been defined as quintessentially human activities, and there are very good reasons for this.

Errors equal ideas and boredom is our friend

Writing in 1963, the author and philosopher Colin Wilson said: ‘It is the artist’s belief that both he and his times can be changed. Such an artist would combine the metaphysician with the social reformer.’ In other words, an essential aspect of art is the transformative impact it has on its creator, its audience and the environment in which it is brought into being.

Wilson goes on to characterise the creative imagination as a key feature of human evolution: ‘There can certainly be no doubt that the general notion of evolution is always connected with the imagination … No artist can develop without increasing his self-knowledge, but self-knowledge supposes a certain preoccupation with the meaning of human life and the destiny of man.’

Unlike the sexist language in which it is expressed, Wilson’s notion linking the creative imagination to evolution has stood the test of time. It resurfaces in a more detailed and rigorously evidenced form in Scatterbrain (2019), an exploration of creativity and innovation by the neuroscientist Henning Beck.

Beck draws on evidence from psychobiology and cognitive psychology to show that the type of thinking we deem to be erroneous and inefficient has been vital to the development of the creative imagination. This has, in turn, contributed to the survival of our species.

Our brains have not evolved to memorise swathes of information, make complex calculations and shuffle chunks of data, but to identify and process patterns. The ability to remix and remodel patterns has, argues Beck, enabled us to make sense of the world, develop new ideas and take decisions to secure our survival, He goes on to assert that boredom is the friend of the imagination and its creative impulses: because we are disposed to be bored by the rules and routines of institutions, we crave spontaneity, and it is spontaneity that triggers flights of imagination and novel behaviours.

Beck warns that intelligence is increasing at the expense of creativity, mainly because contemporary institutions ignore the natural functioning of the brain and place a high premium on computer-like information processing – memory recall, task-centred problem solving, organisation and efficiency when it is distraction, error and chaotic cognition that drives progress and makes us adaptable.

Talking of chaos…

On a similar note, Gary Lachman has made a compelling case that the creative imagination – in the form of chaos magick – has played a significant role in the rise of Donald Trump and the New Right (Dark Star Rising, 2018). You don’t need to believe in supernatural powers to accept that occult inspired ‘New Thought’ has been used by right-wing activists to change political reality. After all, there’s a significant overlap between the methods of magicians, gurus and demagogues and those of the psychologists who use cognitive reframing to disrupt maladaptive thoughts.

Lachman highlights similar thinking among noted artists, scientists, philosophers and occultists. Coleridge, Blake, Heisenberg, Husserl, Kant, Swedenborg, Steiner and Crowley all believed the creative imagination could be used to redefine reality. Coleridge, for example, asserted that perception was influenced by imagination, which he defined as a recapitulation of ‘the eternal act of creation’ and, therefore, a phenomenon that adds something original to reality.

For Lachman, the adoption of an ‘anything goes’ philosophy has led to negative applications of the imagination and an upsurge in far right political activity in Europe and the US. There’s something of the black magician about shadowy ‘political advisors’ like Dominic Cummings and Steve Bannon. They have been ‘shifting the boundary of achievable reality’ using memes and slogans, and by willing a new political landscape into existence. Frightening, but as Lachman asserts, there are other narratives to share, and more positive and responsible applications of the power of the creative imagination. There may be ‘clearer skies and brighter stars on the horizon’.

Critical Perspectives on Hollywood Science Fiction (2020) is an accessible, scholarly and persuasive work by writer and academic Stephen Trinder. It’s an extensive reflection on the extent to which adherence to neoliberal ideas limits the imagination of science fiction filmmakers in the Hollywood mainstream. I recently had the opportunity to ask Trinder what it would take for an sf movie to conduct a genuine critique of neoliberalism. He suggested that such a film would need to envision a world without capitalism as the underlying rationale for the way a society works and would need to prompt us to confront our own role in perpetuating exploitative practices. It would show us another way is possible. ‘Funnily enough,’ said Trinder, ‘several sci-fi films and TV series of 1960s and 1970s Hollywood, like Star Trek, did do this quite well. I can’t think of many, if any, that have managed this in recent years.’ This, he suggested, supported US critic Fredric Jameson’s assertion that it is now easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

I’m going to leave the last word on creativity to the poet and musician Patti Smith. In her essay ‘A Dream is Not a Dream’ (in Devotion, 2017) Smith leaves us in no doubt that creativity is a human concern, relating to the human condition and tied to human physicality. She describes the inspirational impact of work by Blake and Camus: ‘That is the decisive power of a singular work: a call to action … my hands vibrated … Infused with confidence I had the urge to bolt, mount the stairs … and begin at my own beginning. An act of guiltless sacrilege.’

Smith goes on to explain the impetus to write and dream: ‘To compose a work that communicates on several levels … to write something fine, that would be better than I am’. She closes the piece by proposing that we write ‘Because we cannot simply live’.

CLIMBING STORIES

ALIYA WHITELEY

Shiny Surprise Goodness

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It’s a treasure hunt: scanning, pausing, treading carefully, with eyes fixed on the blades of grass until – there! A glimpse of gold paper, or silver foil. Bend low, scoop it up, drop it in your basket before the others see. Your reward, to be cherished. An Easter egg. A small gift placed within a big landscape that only sharp, knowledgeable eyes can spot.

I really like chocolate eggs but I also have an interest in cinematic ones. There are lots of websites and articles dedicated to the practice of finding tiny details and moments within films that contain an in-joke or a personal reference, so I’m not going to make a long list of my favourites here, but I will mention the one that I first spotted in the wild, in 1992. It was during my first watching of The Muppet Christmas Carol. In the background of a shot of Disneyfied Muppet London, building up to the big finale, there was a shop sign reading: Micklewhite’s. I was a big Michael Caine fan; I knew it was his original surname. Amazing. It gave me a thrill, this small nod to the star in an unlikely place. Admittedly, it also took me right out of the action and left me distracted for the rest of the film.

That’s the trade-off of the Easter egg: a moment in which we’re removed from the body of the story to take up a loftier perspective. We’re no longer within that universe. We acknowledge the work of the creator within that art form, and we also get to see that creator pay homage to their own influences. Suddenly these