Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #215
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TTA Press
www.ttapress.com
Copyright ©
First published in 2008
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NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
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INTERZONE
SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
ISSUE 215
MAR—APR 2008
Cover Art
The Endling
By Darren Winter
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ISSN 0264-3596—Published bimonthly by TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs CB6 2LB, UK (t: 01353 777931) Copyright—© 2008 Interzone and its contributors Distribution—UK—Warners (t: 01778 392417)—Central Books (t: 020 8986 4854)—WWMD (t: 0121 7883112)—Australia—Gordon & Gotch (t: 02 9972 8800)—If any shop doesn't stock Interzone please ask them to order it for you, or buy it from one of several online mail order distributors such as BBR, Fantastic Literature ... or better yet subscribe direct with us!
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Editors—Andy Cox, Andrew Hedgecock, Jetse de Vries, David Mathew, Liz Williams (editorial@ttapress.demon.co.uk) Book Reviews Editor—Paul Raven Proofreader—Peter Tennant Advertising and Publicity—Roy Gray (roy@ttapress.demon.co.uk) Typefetish—Andy Cox E-edition (fictionwise)—Pete Bullock Website—ttapress.com Subscriptions—The number on your mailing label refers to the final issue of your subscription. If it is due for renewal you will see a reminder on the centre pages pullout. Please renew promptly. Thanks!
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CONTENTS
INTERFACE (EDITORIAL, NEWS)
EDITORIAL—Books!
ANSIBLE LINK—David Langford's News & Gossip
INTERACTION (ONLINE FORUM)
Feedback & Discussion—ttapress.com/forum
INTERMISSION (STORIES)
THE ENDLING—Jamie Barras
Illustrator: Darren Winter
DRAGONFLY SUMMER—Patrick Samphire
Illustrator: Warwick Fraser-Coombe
CRYSTAL NIGHTS—Greg Egan
Illustrator: Warwick Fraser-Coombe
HOLDING PATTERN—Joy Marchand
Illustrator: Warwick Fraser-Coombe
STREET HERO—Will McIntosh
Illustrator: Chris Nurse
THE IMITATION GAME—Rudy Rucker
INTERVIEW
REVELATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES—Mike Carey Interviewed by Andrew Hedgecock
INTERLOCUTIONS (REVIEWS)
BOOKZONE—Review of 2007
MUTANT POPCORN—Nick Lowe's Regular Review of Film Releases laser fodder—Tony Lee's Regular Review of DVD Releases
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL—Books!
ANSIBLE LINK—David Langford's News & Gossip
REVELATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES—Mike Carey Interviewed by Andrew Hedgecock
THE ENDLING—Jamie Barras
DRAGONFLY SUMMER—Patrick Samphire
CRYSTAL NIGHTS—Greg Egan
HOLDING PATTERN—Joy Marchand
STREET HERO—Will McIntosh
THE IMITATION GAME—Rudy Rucker
BOOKZONE—Review of 2007
MUTANT POPCORN—Nick Lowe's Regular Review of Film Releases
laser fodder—Tony Lee's Regular Review of DVD Releases
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EDITORIAL—Books!
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TTA has only published four books (excluding Crimewave)—the best-of-TTA anthology Last Rites and Resurrections (long out of print); Ray Nayler's American Graveyards; Mat Coward's hilarious, essential writers’ guide Success ... And How To Avoid It; The Planet Suite, which you can now buy for next to nothing—but we'd like to publish more from now on, and more regularly. Many titles will undoubtedly be connected to the magazines in some way—story collections, novellas and novels from popular contributors, for example.
Connected not to Interzone but inextricably with Black Static and Crimewave is Andrew Humphrey, and it's with him that we begin this hopefully moderately successul venture. Alison, his debut novel, is out now. He fills it to the brim with ‘Norwich Noir'—dark secrets coming to light, loss and alienation—and in the process creates a riveting mystery. Cover art is by Black Static's David Gentry.
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Next up is Paul Meloy's collection Islington Crocodiles. The title story appeared here in Interzone, and the book includes other favourites such as ‘Black Static’ and ‘Dying in the Arms of Jean Harlow', as well as the stunning new, unpublished ‘The Vague'. The hardback edition will contain several colour plates of the illustrations Vincent Chong produced for some of the stories.
More details elsewhere in this issue, and you can buy Alison and pre-order Islington Crocodiles using the magazine's insert. You might also want to tell us on the forum what books you'd like us to publish in future, which Interzone authors you'd like to see a collection from, and so on.
This issue we welcome back Greg Egan. Coincidentally Gollancz have just reissued Greg's six novels and two story collections, and are publishing his next novel, Incandescence, in May. Look for a special offer from Gollancz next issue, exclusively for Interzone readers!
J.G. Ballard revealed that, as insiders knew, he'd been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in mid-2006. This spurred him to write his autobiography, Miracles of Life—published in February.
Copyright © 2008
[Back to Table of Contents]
ANSIBLE LINK—David Langford's News & Gossip
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You Read It Here Last. Tolkien's estate is suing New Line Cinema over the Lord of the Rings films. Supposedly the estate should receive 7.5% of the estimated $6 billion gross receipts but, beyond a modest upfront payment of $62,500, has had nothing.
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As Others See Us. Mark Harris on sf cinema: ‘Sci-fi is in trouble, although it's not the kind of trouble that can be measured at the box office, where it looks as healthy and robust as a T-rex must have seemed five minutes before it realized there was nothing left to eat. The genre has been around for as long as the movies themselves, and flourished for the last 30 years. The problem is, none of the ideas are getting any newer. Scratch that: the problem is, there are no ideas.’ (Entertainment Weekly)
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Cory Doctorow announced the birth on 3 February of a daughter proudly named ... Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow.
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Dumbwatch. Booksthatmakeyoudumb. virgil.gr compares the most popular reading at 1,352 US colleges (as revealed by that scientific tool, Facebook) with average SAT/ACT scores, to chart a ‘correlation between books and dumbitude.’ From the Boston Globe coverage: ‘Science fiction, for some reason, appears at both ends of the chart: Near the top [scores], we find Ayn Rand's pro-capitalism dystopia Atlas Shrugged, Kurt Vonnegut's apocalyptic novel Cat's Cradle, and Orson Scott Card's uber-geeky Enders Game, about a kid whose mad video-game skills allow him to save the planet from real space invaders. Near the bottom, we find Ray Bradbury's apocalyptic dystopia Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury's book is a classic work of fiction, never mind the genre; Enders Game is drivel. So ... what does it all mean?'
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Terry Pratchett announced: ‘I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer's...’ H
e's cautiously optimistic but was unready for the response: ‘Not unpleasant, but kind of odd, like being a guest at one's own wake. We couldn't ring out on the phones and the mail boxes just went crazy ... there were around 40,000 contacts all told.'
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Conspiracy Corner. Boris Johnson proposed the best explanation to date of the ‘mystery’ surrounding Princess Diana's death: ‘I will reveal how the Duke of Edinburgh secretly trained the Loch Ness Monster to swim up the Seine until it reached the Pont d'Alma and then I will explain how Philip then gave a kind of ghillie's whistle and Nessie reared out of the water and so startled Henri Paul that he swerved into the path of Elvis Presley in the white Fiat Uno, at which point Prince Charles—hovering overhead in a Luftwaffe helicopter—switched on the supermagnet installed by MI6 in the concrete pillar of the tunnel and sucked the Merc to its doom.’ (Telegraph)
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Ardath Mayhar is this year's SFWA Author Emeritus.
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Publishers and Sinners. Dedalus Books, publishers of important translated work including much fantasy, lost its modest Arts Council funding in January and may well close. The AC has behaved oddly, failing to follow its own ‘disinvestment’ procedure by giving proper notice of and reasons for the decision. * Farthing magazine is on hold since issue 5, owing to editor Wendy Bradley's poor health and lack of funds.
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Brandon Sanderson, US fantasy novelist, was chosen to complete the late Robert Jordan's A Memory of Light, final novel in the stupefyingly popular ‘Wheel of Time’ series.
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Douglas Adams inspired a US fan campaign to rename 42nd Avenue in Portland, Oregon, as Douglas Adams Boulevard.
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Harlan Ellison's wrath—at rumours that the latest Star Trek film will use characters he invented for ‘City at the Edge of Forever'—was misplaced. He's been reassured that the story is false. From our correspondent Una Tribble: ‘My sources tell me the Guardian of Forever prop seen on the Paramount lot is not in fact for the new film but the new Star Trek tour that's recently been press-released over on Startrek.com.'
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THOG'S MASTERCLASS
Philosophy Dept. ‘If the shortest distance between point A and point B is a straight line, how do you go from point A to point B? This sort of debate could take a long time.’ (Colin Kapp, Transfinite Man aka The Dark Mind, 1964)
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Worsening Odds Dept. ‘Outspace there was one chance in infinity squared that he would not die.’ But later: ‘"I don't give you one chance of survival in infinity raised to the infinite power,” said Madden.’ (Ibid)
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Dept of As Others See SF. ‘The sun didn't want to go down that day because it was a sci-fi sun, big and fat and red, and it wanted only to dry out everything in creation.’ (T. Coraghessan Boyle, ‘Ash Monday', New Yorker, 2008)
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Psychosomatic Dept. ‘Sometimes, when he slept, he would awaken screaming and with the feeling of evil scraping at his mind like a cold lump of conviction resting heavily in his stomach.’ (Lee Harding, ‘Dragonfly', New Worlds, 1962)
R.I.P.
Roger Eldridge (1944-2007), UK author and photo-journalist whose sf novels were The Shadow of the Gloom-World (1977) and The Fishers of Darksea (1982), died on 4 November. He was 63. * Frank Hamilton (1918-2008), US artist who worked in a pulp mode—recreating classic Doc Savage and Shadow magazine covers as well as original art—died on 28 January; he was 89. He co-authored Amazing Pulp Heroes (1988) with Link Hullar. * Edward D. Hoch (1930-2008), US author of over 900 stories since his 1955 debut, died on 17 January; he was 77. He's best known for crime fiction, which earned him the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master award. His early ‘Simon Ark’ detections are tinged with fantasy; he also wrote horror and sf, including three 1970s sf/detective novels. * Maila Nurmi (1921-2008), Finnish-born actress who as ‘Vampira’ was the first ever TV horror host (The Vampira Show, 1954) and famously appeared in Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), died on 10 January aged 86. * Derek Pickles (1928-2008), UK fan whose Phantasmagoria (1950-1955) was a notable fanzine of its day, died on 5 January at age 79. Derek was at Britain's first post-war convention in 1948 and renewed his fan contacts in the 1990s. Phantasmagoria contained John Brunner's first published works (verse). * Marion Van Der Voort, who with her husband Richard ran the well-known UK sf bookshop At The Sign of the Dragon for 35 years, died on 26 December following a long bout of pneumonia.
Copyright © 2008
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[Back to Table of Contents]
REVELATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES—Mike Carey Interviewed by Andrew Hedgecock
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Andrew Hedgecock talks to Mike Carey about animism, vertical freedom and the end of all things
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For me Mike Carey is author of the Felix Castor series: tales of a freelance exorcist adrift in a world in which reality is shifting while ghosts, were-beings and demons invade the quotidian world. The Castor books (The Devil You Know, 2006; Vicious Circle, 2006; Dead Men's Boots, 2007) combine bleakly witty and laconic prose, a visionary exposé of the way we live now and relentlessly gripping narrative mired in wonder and terror. For others Carey is one of the best comic book storytellers around—a writer who has contributed to contemporary myths and story cycles such as Hellblazer, the Sandman spinoff Lucifer, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Elektra and Red Sonja.
Mike Carey grew up in Liverpool in the 1960s and, after reading English at Oxford University, worked as a teacher for 15 years. He settled in London, where he lives with his wife and three children. He has lived in the capital so long his north-western accent has all but been erased. You can, however, detect a faint trace in his soft but precise tones if you listen carefully enough. Carey's adopted city is a dominant character in the Castor books, so I begin our interview by asking whether he feels an outsider s perspective is useful in helping writers re-imagine urban landscapes.
It makes you see a city in a different way, particularly one as big as London. The experience I had initially was that I saw the city as a series of unconnected islands, each with a tube station at the centre. Then I began to draw the connections, to see how Kings Cross and Tottenham Court Road are connected, to see how the West End, the City and the East End bang into each other. Its a gradual process, and its one that youre explicitly aware of. If you grow up in a city you absorb its geography at a very early age. So maybe moving here gave me a conscious awareness of structure that a native doesnt have.
But, I suggest, theres something stranger and more significant in his imaginative cartography of the city. Isnt there a sense in which emotion leaks into location, while location determines emotional response?
Place is very important to me. I had to set The Devil You Know in London: the city wears its history very openly and you re constantly reminded it goes back a long way. I wanted to create strong links with the past in the Castor books, but in ways that are provocative and maybe not always expected. Having Castor go to the Dissenters Cemetery was an example of that, and so is the way the East End is used in the books.
Its hard to imagine doing the same thing with another English city. Place does bear on event, and it will to an even greater extent in the next book: I cant say much more about that at the moment, but much of it is set in an estate loosely based on the Aylesbury Estate in South East London—the city in the sky. Its a very disturbing place, suffering from concrete fatigue and damp. A setting like that must condition the way you approach a story. It becomes a stage on which only certain dramas can be played.
This is all to do with emotion and relationship. I m aiming to create a sense of the ending of days in the Castor books. A sense that something apocalyptic is about to happen—a sense that human history is about to end or to be utterly transformed. And I think some of the backdrops I ve used play well to this kind of millenarian or apocalyptic story.
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I ask if Carey's fascination with eschatology is a symbolic reflection of the way he feels about the world and recent historical developments.
Actually, it reflects the way I feel about the world in a very literal sense. I try not to talk about this because I have children, but I honestly believe the world our great grandkids will inherit is not going to be this one. The world-spanning civilisation we have created is about to end. Not by war, but just because we have created forces that feed back on us in destructive ways. And the human population of the Earth can t be sustained for more than another 150 years. Within a few generations civilisation will end and something new will take its place.
So does he see this cataclysm as an inevitable pay off for the way we live? An inevitable consequence of the dire and dysfunctional ways we organise ourselves, abuse the planet and consume its resources?
Yes, and I felt it must inevitably come through in the worldview of the Castor books. It was never going to be an explicit theme, but it does colour the way Felix Castor—and maybe the reader—sees the world.
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The tipping point
I suggest fantasy and science fiction forms are well suited to tackling subject matter of this gravity and dealing with chaotic and unpredictable change. Writers of mainstream literary fiction seem reluctant, or un able, to tackle the very themes that are beginning to dominate public consciousness.
In a mainstream novel youd have to move the situation along twenty or thirty years kind of like Children of Men, I guess? Its strange; I grew up believing in inevitable progress. I was a child of the sixties and there was a time I believed things just had to get better, that political systems had to refine themselves to something that was fairer and more openly democratic.
Carey s reflection elicits a temporary and utterly inappropriate sense of relief that my pessimism about the sweep of history isn't merely a product of personal despondency and paranoia. A trouble shared being a trouble halved, as the cliché tells us. I ask Carey what the tipping point was for him: when did his optimistic worldview collapse?