Interzone Issue 209

Interzone’s Silver Anniversary

1982: Margaret Thatcher, her son Mark missing in the desert, Falklands War, a Republican President (Reagan), Isreal invades Lebanon, a princess (Grace) dies in a car accident in France (Monaco), bombings in London, and Interzone is launched. Doesn’t it all seem a lifetime ago?

So Issue 209 (March/April 2007) celebrates the 25th birthday of Britain’s longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine. It still contains superb new SF and fantasy stories.

This issue features M John Harrison, who appeared in Issue 1, Gwyneth Jones, and Alastair Reynolds, who made his reputation in IZ in the 90’s. Additionally rising stars Hal Duncan (also interviewed), Daniel Kaysen, Jamie Barras, Edward Morris (his novella available for free download from the IZ website) and ‘Afterlife’ creator Stephen Volk’s top ten TV programs from the last 25 years make this a bumper package.

Other features include David Langford’s Ansible Link (news & gossip); Nick Lowe’s Mutant Popcorn (film reviews); book reviews; more interviews (Kim Stanley Robinson); views from Arthur C Clarke, Bruce Sterling, Stephen Baxter, Greg Egan and many others on Interzone.

Top it off with an original Jim Burns painting as cover art is and story illustrations by Richard Marchand, Jesse Speak, Stefan Olsen, Pamelina H, Chris Nurse and David Gentry. How can you resist? Subscribe now and, for the 25th anniversary, if you order a two year, 12 issue, subscription you will get fifteen issues. A 25% birthday gift from IZ.

Fiction:

The Whenever at the City’s Heart by Hal Duncan
illustrated by Richard Marchand

Rumpled, stumpy, the old watchman ascends on the clockwork spiral of escalator, steel scales grating underfoot, gyring up into the ticks and talk of turning gears and sproinging springs, the whirl of mirrored cogs and jam of hammer-and-bell that should be knelling, telling time in rhyme and reason, chimes and seasons…but is not. The pendulum that stretches down the whole height of the watchtower, hung on wire as thin as a dimension, snicks and cocks and rocks this way and that still, but it seems it’s marking off one second to midnight, one long second to midnight, one drawn out and stretched second to midnight, time and time again.

So, with his tools ajangle on his belt, the watchman clambles up the ringing rungs of ladders, raises a trap door overhead, and huffs himself up into the Mechanism.

Winter by Jamie Barras
illustrated by Christopher Nurse

Christian’s visitor touched her hand to his cheek. “Khan,” she said, touching off one of the viral packets that she had just transferred. It burst open, spilling its contents into Christian’s brain. He frowned. “What does the Security Service want with me after all these years?”

The Good Detective by M. John Harrison
illustrated by David Gentry

… All she was doing was making a phone call, answering a text. She looks up and he’s gone. He’s taken the children with him.
Where is she supposed to start looking for him? The world’s full of harassed men his age, with two daughters and a suitcase. The trains and buses are full of them.
Eventually someone puts her on to me.

Big Cat by Gwyneth Jones
illustrated by Stefan Olsen

… They had the TV on with the sound turned down. The room was gloomy in lamplight, warmed by the big wood-burning range. A black and white cat called Selby was curled in a tight ball on the rag rug. The other cat, Frost, was up on the kitchen table, settled plumply on a sheaf of farm accounts. The adults were drinking tea, black tea from South Asia: one of those everyday comforts that was getting very hard to find.

The Sledge-maker’s Daughter by Alastair Reynolds
illustrated by Jesse Speak

She stopped in sight of Twenty Arch Bridge, laying down her bags to rest her hands from the weight of two hogs’ heads and forty pence worth of beeswax candles. While she paused, Kathrin adjusted the drawstring on her hat, tilting the brim to shade her forehead from the sun. Though the air was still cool, there was a fierce new quality to the light that brought out her freckles.

Tears for Godzilla by Daniel Kaysen
illustrated by David Gentry

…And I hadn’t been twiddling my thumbs either. Since we’d last seen each other I’d published seven lurid horror novels, available at all good bookshops, and a riskier crossgenre novel which my publishers made me call Tears for Godzilla to try to suck in my fanbase. It didn’t work. Tears got good reviews from the broadsheets, but died on its arse in the shops. Nobody bought it at all. But still, I’d done alright.

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Edward Morris
illustrated by Pamelina H

It was a beginning that only got to begin, and never got to be.

Read it free from www.ttapress.com/Journey.pdf

Features:

Editorial: 25 years of Interzone
25 IZ: reflections on Interzone’s 25 years by Arthur C. Clarke, Greg Egan, Michael Moorcock, Christopher Fowler and many others (with more to come for the rest of the year)
25 TV: Afterlife creator Stephen Volk’s personal top ten TV programs (first of a series of such 25 years in review articles this year)
Ansible Link by David Langford: news and gossip

Mutant Popcorn by Nick Lowe: film reviews
Bookzone: book reviews
Mangazone by Sarah Ash: Sarah looks at manga for grown-ups (Eternal Sabbath and Basilisk)
Interviews
Blood for Ink: Getting Serious With Hal Duncan: interviewed by Neil Williamson
Science in the Capital: Kim Stanley Robinson interviewed by Rick Kleffel
Last but not least: Readers Poll Results and comments for 2006.

25th Anniversary OFFER FOR SCIFI UK REVIEW Readers!

SCIFI UK REVIEW readers can obtain 25% extra issues on a 12-issue subscription but you should include ’scifi.uk’ as your Shopper’s reference so they know to include your extra free issues!

Interzone Shop: http://host2.clickandbuild.com/cnb/shop/ttapress

The Interzone website is http://www.ttapress.com/IZ.html