Runalong The Short Shelves - Interzone #302
Publisher - MYY Press
Price $5.50 via https://shop.interzone.press/b/gSNC7
This week I get up to date with Interzone and the Issue 302 has lots to recommend it including a feast of short fiction plus the usual great non fiction
In this issue’s Climbing Stories Aliya Whiteley talks about the power of anthology horror films and a list of favourite tales within tales are shared without any spoilers! Lots to seek out!
Then Nick Lowe returns in Mutant Popcorn to run through a series of releases over the recent months this week looking from Lilo and Stich, Minecraft and the poor fate of Snow White before being underwhelmed by Thunderbolts* and more
The fiction begins with I Object by Kate Orman where the title links with Asimov with a twist as a devoted robot servant finds he is about to buried with his mistress when she passes away. It’s strange and weird but for me doesn’t quite hit the landing on self awareness quite as well as the build up was leading to but worth a read nonetheless.
I loved How Heroes Are Made by Alexandra Grunberg as it’s quite surprising how this story is constructed. We follow Kaitlynn who we know must become a hero and then we set up all the many many monsters that await her on the Dark Path from the undead to all sorts of strange powerful creatures. The build up and storytelling is perfectly pitched to then surprise us and it all comes together rather beautifully.
There is a great tale in Nyobo by Yukon Ogawa where a monster is bonded to a young magician in training. Everything is told by our monster’s voice and we get all sorts of interesting perspectives from a father pushing his son to the son’s layer wife not happy how much a monster takes up her husband’s time. It’s a take of unequal relationships, trust and a reminder sometimes even with best intentions everything must end. A fascinating tale that pulls into a world we start to understand thanks to the storytelling even with a quite personal tale.
A standout tale for me is delivered by Brazilian author Carlos Norcia with Cordialis Through The Eyes of My Mind - which both explores a powerfully corrupt authoritarian country and also has something to say how news media can use these tales both for commercial business and political agendas too. A news corporation names Joan Dark (think about it) hired a reporter to visit the the country Cordialis and his embedded tech we record her visual recordings and innner thoughts. Our reporter seasoned veteran treads a line between the desire for the truth and what her bosses want but Norcia also makes us look at how such countries operate with strong witness accounts of how women are treated, punished and killed. At the same time we see the growing resistance and groups that rise to take these powers on and there is a haunting sequence of torture and imprisonment. The moral dilemma the book runs through in the finale as a reminder that something a should be more important than commercial objectives. A gorgeous haunting tale that will linger in the mind and remind us how many out there are taking on good fights against the odds.
A fun bit of SF logic awaits in Breach by EF McAdam as a cunning AI is talked to break an old system and finds a battle of wits played out in code language. Very enjoyable to work through how this conversation becomes a kind of friendly rivalry.
Rachael Cupp had another post apocalyptic tale in What I Owe where a man makes up shopping lists with also a letter to a missing shop keeper. There series of notes from a 1982 slowly explain what is going on but the sense of very normal people being hit by events way out of their control and understanding is hugely poignant.
The Cold War and Germany in the setting of a great tale by Steve Toase where we meet Ingrid who is by the East German border and regularly sees the aftermath of those trying to desperately escape. The Cold War tension works well but then we get the mystery of a missing neighbour and the tale goes into some more fantastical directions about the hidden histories and myths of the land and ina. Tale of often bleak realism there is at the end a glimpse of hope and escape in more ways than one. Spooky and uplifting in a single take weirdly works.
There is are three short shape horror tales to finish off with Interlopers by Tamsin Showbrook having an archeological review going very wrong very quickly which neatly lets us as readers into events just a bit ahead of our unlucky main character. The very eerie Vanitas by RL Summerling has an elderly housebound woman watching a man butcher her garden but then various elements not quite ringing true suggest a different type of tale is unfolding and that is told very unsettlingly. Finally in The Toy by Sean Padraic Birnie a woman half asleep gets off at the wrong train station at night and goes on an increasingly spooky walk. Is this dream, nightmare, life or something else - the enigmatic tale leaves no easy answers and that really works to close this story.
Finally Out of Orders by Bogdan Domakha has a kind robot and a grumpy human have a strange interaction. The bigger story going on is kept to the borders but we slowly see the poignancy of this interaction.
In non fiction this time Una McCormack links the personal tale of having an Ai rosy passport, learning a very different culture that is still part of her own heritage and linking this to Le Guin’s Hainish tales and how the various characters find previously hidden histories of their people.
A feast of review away and highlight for me where Kelly Jennings discussing Annalee Newitz’s Automatic Noodle and Paul Kincaid’s look at City of All Seasons. Gidelle Leeb looks at the output of Nightfar press while Val Nolan mixies lot front and poetry and Marian Womack looks at the work of Nicholas Binge.
Alexander Glass reaches the letter I in their A to Z of Zelazny and this yikes looks at various uses of Immortality in their work.
Finally in Folded Spaces Val Nolan walks us through the past affection in SF for PsiFi powers and what that tells us about social history of the times
