Interzone #299 is full of ambitious and quality stories. Not all of them worked for me, but each has something worth noting. It’s good to see Interzone back on a more regular schedule, with their landmark 300th issue arriving very soon. I’m going to go through this issue story by story, so let’s get on with it!
‘Sibilance’ by E.G. Condé
It’s an apex predator,’ I blurt out in my delirium. ‘A god.
‘Sibilance’ by E.G. Condé has a great initial setup – both classic and modern at the same time, and it inspired the superb cover artwork by Carly A-F reproduced above. Ahim is a scientist sent from Earth to investigate problems with a fuel mining operation on Jupiter (said fuel has solved Earth’s energy needs, in a callback to classic SF tropes). The supply of the wonder-fuel is apparently running out, despite its evident abundance in surveys, so Ahim is dispatched to investigate.
The ‘Sibilance’ of the title is a syndrome affecting the other embodied people (there are AI representations of people as well as those physically present) on the station, who Ahim is not allowed to interact with, for reasons that he later discovers.
Ahim’s narrative is framed as a series of personal log entries, the date of each counting down to an “incident.” As a narrator, Ahim is academically loquacious, and as we approach the “incident” the narration has to move from reflective to immediate, and the transition is uneven. And yet the central idea, the big reveal at the heart of the story is so stupendously good that it makes up for any flaws. It relates back to the quote I opened this review with. The terrifying implications of that line when it comes, with the surrounding context, make the whole story worthwhile.
‘Warmth’ by Seán Padraic Birnie
There was a long awful moment of silence, a moment that Lisa thought, while immersed in it, might never end.
‘Warmth’ by Seán Padraic Birnie is a vignette of pure dread that starts with a woman in bed watching a shadow on the other side of the room. I can’t say too much about this one as you just have to read it. Birnie is a strong stylist, here using occasional rhythmic repetition, alternating the length of clauses, sentences, and paragraphs to elongate that feeling of terror.
‘Drafting’ by Rachel Capp
I try not to think about it too much, their bodies, and as long as I’m not picturing that, I’m fine. Seriously, when I cry, (which I try not to do too much because right now I’m still wearing the last mascara I will probably ever apply) I think I’m crying for you. Even if you did steal my boyfriend.
Rachael Cupp’s ‘Drafting’ is part of a series that has run through Interzone for the last few months. After a nuclear conflict a stroppy teenager writes letters from the bunker she now resies in. She re-fights old battles, rights perceived wrongs, and tells the truth as she sees it. With lots of strikethrough crossings-out, in every story we see in the end a heart of gold, and a genuine sadness for what has been lost. I’m not sure that “Drafting” adds anything we haven’t seen and felt in previous instalments, but hopefully Cupp is building to something in future instalments.
‘The Spirit Machines’ by Prashanth Srivatsa
It was clear from his demeanour that he did not intend to steal Buddha’s tooth. Instead, he sat cross-legged in front of the door of the tomb, and meditated, while the spirit machines watched him from their shadowy stations, their swords aloft, the metalwork within creaking in suspicion.
‘The Spirit Machines’ by Prashanth Srivatsa takes a mythological and spiritual conflict from Indian mythology and propels it into the future. From the fifth century BCE to the 26th century AD, two robots – “spirit machines”- defend a Buddhist relic every ninety-nine years from the descendants of an ancient emperor.
If you are at all familiar with Indian and Buddhist mythology then I suspect this story will fill you with joy. Srivatsa weaves the narrative together, explaining why there are mechanical beings in the past, telling old stories with charm and a modern spin. The dense and deep mythology is fairly relentless, though, and it took me two reads to really appreciate the story.
Blending SF and mythology is necessarily tentative and difficult, and this stories makes it work. We see the robots’ journey to sentience and enlightenment, sometimes through hardware upgrades, sometimes through encounters with spiritual and magical figures. It is well told, and the conclusion raises a wry smile.
‘When I Was the Red Baron’ by Matt Hollingsworth
I plopped down next to him, rolled my crayon in the pretty red liquid, and made up stories to tell his half-gone head. The crayon glowed. It got so hot I dropped it, then it lay on the floor and whispered scary things to me until Mommy got home. She screamed a lot.
‘When I Was the Red Baron’ by Matt Hollingsworth feels like a Stephen King story. It has a strong narrative voice, a good sense of narrative time, easily skipping between past and present without losing the reader, and it ends with a narrative punch that is satisfyingly horrific. It also refers to that classic childhood staple of Snoopy and Charlie Brown. The central conceit of a child artist whose magic crayon can do terrible things to the people he draws, also feels like classic King.
‘Carrigan’ by R. Wren
In some ways, the old barb is true. My feet were never fixed to this soil. I don’t have the instinct; I could never take a handful of peat, breathe its bruised vegetable scent, and know, like a parent or a lover, what it lacked.
R. Wren’s ‘Carrigan’ is a modern folktale based in Irish mythology – sort of. There’s a hint at a kind of leprechaun – it’s what the locals are expecting, and at least there’s a connection with boots and shoes, but also bogs and clay.. The titular Carrigan has a present day encounter with “fairies”, only they are (as always) ancient and earthy, much more troubling than the old stories would have us believe. It’s a six day wonder in the community, and ultimately there’s a price to be paid.
There are some interesting points about identity and place – Carrigan is the narrator’s chosen name, but they are known to the community by a former name of Liam, and generally embraced as an insider upon their return from America. Yet a Polish immigrant who has lived and worked in the community for far longer is not. The story asks do we retain our link to the land and the people when we choose to leave? A story of acceptance, bargains and payment. Intriguing.
‘The Clockwork Heart of Heaven’ by Roby Davies
By now you know the story of the Penitent Chimps and how they saved the world; at the least, you must be familiar with the movie version. I have lied about it a few times to the dancers on Bourbon Street, seeking pity and favors, but I have never yet told the truth about how we first met, the chimps and I.
‘The Clockwork Heart of Heaven’ by Roby Davies is bonkers, a mash-up of so many different things that it shouldn’t work, but somehow does. It has time travel, alternate universes, sentient uplifted apes, mecha and kanji battles, and weirdest of all, artists… Davies crashes a pulpish zaniness into the fabulism of Garcia Marquez, and maybe a touch of Atwood. Each scene seems to drag the story in a different direction, eventually looping back to where the story opened.
The Device, with its control of time, has edited history itself. The world into which I was born is not this world. It changes the past to birth its future.
There’s too much, of course. The fragments don’t always hold together in any real narrative sense – the antagonist in the first half of the story has vanished by the end, and the intermittent pieces of art criticism promise thematic resonance but don’t always succeed. But the story is long and Davies keeps throwing more and more in – a dark future dominated by big pharma megachurches for example,- but this actually works in it’s favour and gives it a chance to breathe and the reader to have fun. But if it wasn’t so relentlessly charming and gloriously silly it would collapse. It definitely made me want more.
The issue also features regular columns and reviews. I still miss the print edition, particularly the book-sized final issues, but Interzone remains as strong and vital as ever.
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