Runalong The Short Shelves - Interzone 304
publisher - Interzone
Price - £6.50
Available via https://www.patreon.com/posts/interzone-304-151961642?source=storefront
This edition of Interzone is a mixed but creative bag of tales
Climbing Stories by Aliya Whiteley - normally a fully non fiction section this time we have a weaving tale of transience and how time after time we can feel the world is ending. Worth a read.
Mutant Popcorn again weaves through the movie releases of the past few months. Thoughts move from the latest Tron to the latest Frankenstein. I nee to get out to the cinema more!
County Colours by Val Nolan - an incredibly intricate yet fractured piece of fiction where for reasons unknown we find Ireland was broken up and each county transferred to a different part do the glove. Suitably Nolan fractured the story so we jump through time back and forth to before and after the incident. That keeps the reader on their toes as they live the pieces together and it comes to wonderfully strange and unsettling revelation that the offers a moral choice. Thoroughly recommend this one.
Reboot The Sky by Dominic Green - sadly did not work for me it’s trying to do a lot with people meeting their gods, finding they’re on a spaceship and then that that ship is in danger. It feels a curiously old fashioned tale with no real freshness to it nor is particularly pacy.
The Island Without Spice by Jennifer Jeanne McArdle - a touch of historical horror as a remote island after the massacre by Europeans of the Banda islands. Our narrator hides on a small island settlement when a new group of strange and injured Europeans arrive for a mysterious purpose. Overall I enjoyed this as it hides the type of story it is in layers of other mysteries and plotlines but the ending does feel a little rushed.
NKATA by Simon Guerrier - an increasingly unnerving horror story about when you move to a new place and get a final demand letter for the previous occupant. Guerrier neatly dials up the sense of the sinister company behind this and we find out how this story’s world deals with unpaid debt. The ending goes much darker than I was expecting but makes a point about the casual cruelty of companies extracting their needs from the customers they entice.
Cops and Robbers #1 The Bridge by Rachael Cupp - a fascinating inventive story told in the form of a comic book script describing the artwork and structure of the page plus the characters and their action. slowly we get the sense events here were real and this story morphs from Noir to something unexpected. Very much recommended!
Dancing In The Library by Una McCormack - this time we get insights on Always Coming Home by Ursula K Le Guin and the level of detail of fictional people this book holds - I do love being tempted!
Book Zone - speaking of Booktempting this time Kelly Jennnings, Paul Kincaid, Paul McAuley and Val Nolan discuss recent releases and I do recommend the review of The Misheard World by Aliya Whiteley
The A to Z of Zelazny by Alexander Glass takes the subjects of Kings in Zelazny’s work
Folded Spaces by Val Nolan - the final entry looks at a mysterious sky ship reported in 740s AD Ireland and spin off into a fascinating discussion of when a tale can become SF
Overall a throughly enjoyable and fascinating edition to recommend!
