Shoreline of Infinity has been published out of Scotland since 2015 and is available as an impressive print edition or as a digital magazine. Subscriptions are very affordable and each issue has fiction, features and interviews, and reviews.
Some good stories in Shoreline this time round, and well worth the purchase price or subscription, although overall a bit of a mixed bag for me.
The first that stood out was Vikram Ramakrishnan’s ‘Generative Leaf-Mould Transformer’. Protagonist Gautam is torn. He wants to be a great writer like his idol, and plans to do it without artificial help… but! This is a story about an AI story using AI, which is none-the-less not an AI story; but it opens up an emotional debate about the effects of AI, which are shown as being potentially good and bad. In the end the reader is left to decide on the efficacy of computer-aided literature. It’s a bit confusing at times, but in a time when many writers are covering this topic, this is one of the better ones for sure. A fun and also important read.
I was also struck by ‘A Blood of Silver Stars’ by Raymond W Gallacher. A fast-paced sci-fi thriller about Linda, an illegal dealer in blood plasma – but she’s no vampire. Blood is simply the business she’s in, and the rich will pay plenty for its regenerative properties. Only, Linda now wants out for good, and must figure out how to cut ties with her paymasters and remain alive. Some very interesting ideas here, but it’s also highly readable due to the author’s clear and flowing style.
I really enjoyed ‘Engine Room’ by Alice Gauntley, in which criminals are used as human neural-conduits for navigating through spacetime. Apart from the thought-provoking moral debate this tale raises, the characterisation was very good and I felt drawn into the psyches of the main players. Achieving this in such a short story is impressive and made me want to find other stories by this writer. It was helped by good and believable dialogue. An absorbing tale, it has a moral and a message, but is done subtly. It had an early-Moorcock feel about it to me, which can never be a bad thing.
Of the flash fiction chosen for their writing competition, the runner up story ‘Social Climber’ by Anna Ziemons-McLean was the standout for me (although the winning story, ‘Fragments Against the Fire’ by Andrew Knighton, was a nice read). It describes a smuggler attempting to scale a cliff through its elevator rail system. It’s short, but vivid and visceral, bringing to life the character and world. A difficult thing to do in such a short piece of writing.
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