Interzone #266 - September-October 2016

by Andy Cox [Ed. ]

  If ghosts, fairies, occult spirits and creatures of the night are plentiful in twentieth-century British classical music, when it comes to the folk revival and the psych-folk movements of the sixties and seventies, they become too numerous to mention. Some of folk’s most era-defining, revolutionary works – I’m thinking of songs such as the Incredible String Band’s ‘Witches Hat’, Lal and Mike Waterson’s ‘The Scarecrow’, Fairport Convention’s revolutionary iteration of ‘Tam Lin’, Trees’s ‘The Great Silkie’, Sandy Denny’s ‘The North Star Grassman and the Ravens’, Nick Drake’s ‘River Man’ (as I say, there are so many) – are intimately bound up with themes that would have to be called uncanny if not actively supernatural. In the new era of twenty-first century alt-folk, bands such as Tunng, Trembling Bells, The Unthanks, Eliza Carthy and Kate Rusby have picked up this tradition and run with it. Their music – colourfully innovative and entirely of now – wears its weird credentials with knowledge and pride.

  For me, the rhythms and iconography of folk music are intimately bound up with the literature of strangeness that haunted my childhood and that laid much of the groundwork for my own rapidly growing obsession with magical landscapes and the blurred, often invisible line between the real and the closely imagined. Writers such as Peter Dickinson, Alan Garner, Susan Cooper and Penelope Farmer frequently described scenarios in which the modern world, with its monstrous machines, accelerated communications strategies and commercial imperatives was stripped away, leaving their protagonists to explore a deeper, science fictional reality that was often dangerous yet spine-tinglingly attractive. I later discovered the fictions of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, chimeras born of dreams and landscape, the literary music of an alternative England, steeped in an arcane symbolism that finds strength in witchy mutability as well as tradition. As the stories and lyrics of our own time amply demonstrate, this is a music with an uncanny ability to go underground and then burst forth again as the occasion demands.

  When I first encountered the novels of Alan Garner and Peter Dickinson as a young teenager, I found them mesmerising: their strange and heightened visions of external disaster and inner turmoil frighteningly real, their portrayal of landscapes I had not yet visited yet recognised instinctively so compelling they seemed a pre-existing part of me, twisted into my DNA like a strand of barbed wire or toad spawn, a kind of binary code for who I was and where I came from. I didn’t properly understand what I was responding to but I responded anyway.

  When I started listening to the music of Sandy Denny almost two decades later, the effect was similar. I somehow grasped what she was talking about and why her work was important without having to be told. Her songs, which startle and delight us with their odd, semi-magical, radiant imagery, their disjointed syntax, their determined delivery, are a road map to a nation and to an era. They are wired in the weird, a witch’s brew. Without ever being entirely specific, they are nonetheless Everysummer: a dusty lane, fringed with nettles and yarrow, a white sun overhead, a journey to be undertaken, a song to be sung of rebels, of phantoms, of a fox who is really a woman, of the endurance of hope in the face of oppression, of our own strange dreams, both tragically lost and – if we listen carefully – eventually to be stumbled upon again when we least expect it.

  ANSIBLE® LINK

  DAVID LANGFORD

  Ansible®! My application to register Ansible as a UK trademark was approved on 8 July, so watch it.

  Hugo Awards. Novel: N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season. Novella: Nnedi Okorafor, Binti. Novelette: Hao Jingfang trans Ken Liu, ‘Folding Beijing’ (1/15 Uncanny). Short: Naomi Kritzer, ‘Cat Pictures Please’ (1/15 Clarkesworld). Related Work: No Award. Graphic: Neil Gaiman and J.H. Williams III, The Sandman: Overture. Dramatic, Long: The Martian. Dramatic, Short: Jessica Jones: ‘AKA Smile’. Editor, Short: Ellen Datlow. Editor, Long: Sheila E. Gilbert. Pro Artist: Abigail Larson. Semiprozine: Uncanny Magazine. Fanzine: File 770. Fancast: No Award. Fan Writer: Mike Glyer. Fan Artist: Steve Stiles. • Retro Hugos for 1940 work were also presented: the Best Novel winner was the magazine version of A.E. van Vogt’s Slan.

  Futurology. ‘At last, in 2010, social unrest and climate collapse forced Britain out of the European Union, and the United Kingdom fell apart, Scotland going its own separate way. […] Then in 2019, England, with Wales, ceded Northern Ireland to Eire, packed off the Royals to Australia – where they were still welcome – and had become the fifty-second state of the United States of America.’ (Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, The Light of Other Days, 2000)

  Neil Gaiman wasn’t at the Worldcon, but his Hugo acceptance speech (for a graphic novel placed against his wishes on the ‘Rabid Puppies’ bloc-voting slate) was read out: ‘It meant a lot to see Sandman: Overture nominated for a Hugo Award, and was disappointing to see that it had been dragged into the unfortunate mess that the pitiable people who call themselves Puppy had attempted to inflict on Worldcon and its awards. I would have withdrawn it from consideration, but even that seemed like it would have been giving these sad losers too much acknowledgement.’

  More Awards. Arthur C. Clarke: Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time. Ebooks and self-published novels are to be eligible for future Clarke awards. • John W. Campbell (new writer): Andy Weir. • John W. Campbell Memorial: Eleanor Lerman, Radiomen. • Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery: Judith Merril. • Locus novel categories. SF: Ann Leckie, Ancillary Mercy. Fantasy: Naomi Novik, Uprooted. YA: Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd’s Crown. Debut: Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings. • Munsey (pulp community): Laurie Powers. • Man Booker Prize: the 13-book longlist includes one sf novel, David Means’s alternate-1970s Hystopia. • Mythopoeic. Adult Fantasy: Naomi Novik, Uprooted. Children’s: Ursula Vernon, Castle Hangnail. Scholarship/Inklings: Grevel Lindop, Charles Williams: The Third Inkling. Scholarship/Other: Jamie Williamson, The Evolution of Modern Fantasy. • Prometheus (libertarian). Novel: Neal Stephenson, Seveneves. Life Achievement: L. Neil Smith. • Scribe (tie-in) genre novel winners. Original/Speculative: Dayton Ward, Star Trek The Next Generation: Armageddon’s Arrow. Adapted: Stephen D. Sullivan, Manos – The Hands of Fate. • Seiun for Japanese translation. Novel: Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice trans Hideko Akao. Short: Ken Liu, ‘Good Hunting’ trans Yoshimichi Furusawa. • Shirley Jackson Award (suspense etc) novel winner: Gemma Files, Experimental Film. • Sidewise (alt-history). Short: Bill Crider, ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’ (Tales from the Otherverse). Long: Julie Mayhew, The Big Lie. • Sturgeon (short story): Kelly Link, ‘The Game of Smash and Recovery’ (10/15 Strange Horizons) • World Fantasy Award for life achievement: David G. Hartwell and Andrzej Sapkowski.

  As Others See Us. Here’s the latest future-fiction category that’s untainted by sf. ‘This future is only 13 years away, as Lionel Shriver depicts it in “The Mandibles: A Family 2029–2047,” her searing exemplar of a disquieting new genre – call it dystopian finance fiction.’ (NY Times)

  George Lucas’s plan for a vast Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on the Chicago lake front was abandoned after the ‘Friends of the Parks’ group – very unreasonably, the city mayor conveyed – defended the 1836 regulation that forbids such lakeside development. A federal judge agreed; the Chicago Tribune coverage began ‘Lucas reaps bitter fruits of arrogance…’; the museum is now to be in California.

  The Weakest Link. Q: ‘What is the name given to the series of conflicts fought in mediaeval England between the houses of Lancaster and York?’ A: ‘Game of Thrones.’ (Channel 4, The Question Jury)

  Luc Besson was found guilty by an appeals court of plagiarising John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981) in his film Lockout (2012), and ordered to pay €450,000 damages. (IndieWire)

  Publishers and Sinners. Ian Whates’s NewCon Press celebrated ten years of publishing at a July pub party. Books were released; birthday cake was eaten; toasts and certain of the guests were drunk. In August, alas, Alex Davis announced the closure of his small UK press Boo Books.

  Barry N. Malzberg remembered Judith Me
rril’s 1960s sf New Wave promotion: ‘She had been on an increasingly evident, now unapologetic campaign to destroy science fiction.’ (Galaxy’s Edge)

  Robert J. Sawyer was ‘Absolutely thrilled today [30 June] to be named a member of the Order of Canada, the highest civilian honour bestowed by the Government of Canada.’ – for his sf and futurology.

  Odd Volumes. Transvestite Vampire Biker Nuns from Outer Space, trying a little too hard as a genre contender for the 2016 Diagram Prize for oddest book title, was beaten into third place by Too Naked for the Nazis (the winner) and Reading from Behind: A Cultural History of the Anus.

  We Are Everywhere. The company that makes the uninvitingly sf-titled drink Soylent has followed up with a coffee-like derivative called Coffiest – which in Frederik Pohl’s and C.M. Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants was laced with an addictive alkaloid. Expect Can-D, Chew-Z and thionite products any day now. (Arstechnica.com)

  A.B. Yehoshua, eminent Israeli novelist, explains: ‘I deeply respect literature and expect to gain insight from a book and to identify emotionally with its characters. I therefore avoid reading suspense novels or science fiction.’ (NY Times)

  Stephen King is to be honoured by the US Library of Congress for ‘his lifelong work promoting literacy.’

  Show Me the Money. Forbes magazine guessed at the earnings of 14 top authors, most with genre links: James Patterson $95 million, Jeff Kinney $19.5m, J.K. Rowling $19m, John Grisham $18m, Stephen King $15m, Danielle Steel $15m, Nora Roberts $15m, E.L. James $14m, Veronica Roth $10m, John Green $10m, Paula Hawkins $10m, George R.R. Martin $9.5m, Rick Riordan $9.5m and Dan Brown $9.5m.

  Jim Butcher is being honoured by Hull City Council! A new street on Alexandra Dock will be named Jim Butcher Way; sadly for Dresden Files fans, this Jim Butcher was a pioneering trade unionist.

  Thog’s Masterclass. Neat Tricks Dept. ‘One of the sailors, who must have been about forty, had only one hand and a star tattooed on the back of the other.’ (Patrick Leigh Fermor, The Broken Road, 2013) • À la Recherche des Eyeballs Perdus. ‘The letter, of whose provenance he knew absolutely nothing, fascinated him and at any moment I expected his glittering eyeballs to detach themselves from their sockets and fly to the letter, insignificant in itself, which his curiosity had magnetised.’ (Marcel Proust, Sodom et Gomorrhe, trans C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, 1989) JFH • Hitler Was a Martian Dept. ‘…Robot Army…From a million metal throats burst a terrifying roar – the Martian Cry of Victory: / “Zhig Gheil! Zhig Gheil!”’ (Errol Collins, Mariners of Space, 1949) • Dept of Future Business English. Context: Van is annoyed with his stockbroker, who failed to sell some shares. ‘“No buyers? Hop down, father, and jest me not! I’m in no mood for—” “Bible stuff, Van, s’help me. I’ve been shagging since yesterday. The market’s dim.” “Then you haven’t been shagging hard enough.”’ (Evan Hunter, ‘Malice in Wonderland’, 1954)

  R.I.P.

  Maurice G. Dantec (1959–2016), French writer (in Quebec from 1999) whose sf includes Babylon Babies (1999; trans 2005; filmed as Babylon A.D. 2008) and Cosmos Incorporated (2005; trans 2008), died on 25 June; he was 56.

  Robin Hardy (1929–2016), UK film director and writer best known for The Wicker Man (1973), died on 1 July aged 86.

  Tim LaHaye (1926–2016), US evangelist and author who with Jerry Jenkins wrote the 13-book ‘Left Behind’ sequence of near-future Bible-thumping apocalyptic fantasies, died on 25 July aged 90.

  Norman Longmate (1925–2016), UK novelist and military historian whose If Britain Had Fallen (1972, based on the BBC TV series of that name) is an alternate-nonfiction study of the Hitler Wins scenario, died on 4 June; he was 90.

  Michael McCurdy (1942–2016), US illustrator whose artwork appeared in over 200 books – his first for children being Asimov’s Please Explain (1973), while another was the Centennial Edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – died on 28 May aged 74.

  Gordon Murray (1921–2016), UK creator of the well-loved BBC children’s puppet series Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley, whose earlier A Rubovian Legend (1955–1961) is fantasy, died on 30 June aged 95.

  Robert Nye (1939–2016), UK poet and historical novelist whose stylistically rich works include some fantasy – Merlin (1978) and Faust (1980) for adults plus many more for younger readers – died on 2 July; he was 77.

  Sandy Pearlman (1943–2016), producer, manager and lyricist for Blue Öyster Cult, whose sf-themed album Imaginos draws on his unpublished alien-conspiracy verse cycle ‘The Soft Doctrines of Imaginos’, died on 26 July aged 72.

  Carolyn See (1934–2016), US author whose sf novels were Golden Days (1986) and There Will Never Be Another You (2006), died on 13 July; she was 82.

  April Rose Selley, US academic who published at least one genre story and whose writings on popular culture often dealt with Star Trek, died on 13 July aged 61.

  The Shawshank Tree, a white oak in Ohio featured in the Stephen King-based film The Shawshank Redemption, blew down in July; it was 180 to 200 years old.

  Ruth Stuart, Canadian author who published some stories in genre anthologies from 2004, died on 12 August.

  Alvin Toffler (1928–2016), US writer whose futurological works – especially Future Shock (1970) – influenced much contemporary sf, died on 27 June aged 87.

  Carolyn Whitaker, UK literary agent who founded her London Independent Books agency in 1971 and represented Alex Bell, Joe Delaney, Elizabeth Kay, Richard Morgan and Chris Wooding, died on 17 June; she was 79.

  BLACK STATIC #54 OUT NOW

  novelettes

  STEVEN J. DINES

  RALPH ROBERT MOORE

  JULIE C. DAY

  MALCOLM DEVLIN

  interviewed

  DAMIEN ANGELICA WALTERS

  comment

  LYNDA E. RUCKER

  STEPHEN VOLK

  book & film reviews

  PETER TENNANT

  GARY COUZENS

  art

  JOACHIM LUETKE

  RICHARD WAGNER

  BEN BALDWIN

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  Buy the print version from ttapress.com/shop/

  THE APOLOGISTS

  TADE THOMPSON

  illustrated by Martin Hanford

  Today, I decide to go to a bar. I’m not dressed for it. My clothes are torn in places and although the darkness of my jeans hides grime, my shirt should be negotiating a spin cycle rather than warming my skin. Nobody notices, though. They haven’t bothered to name this establishment but there’s a neon sign with weird symbols that don’t, as far as I can tell, mean anything. Though there is a ribbon and stanchion arrangement, bouncer, and queue, I walk right up to the door and walk in. The bouncer is a stocky sort, fat-over-muscle build with a skin-colour approximating black. He smiles at me like I’m a celebrity. None of the punters in the twelve-person queue yells expletives. New world.

  Inside, they’re playing nineties hip hop. ‘Ambitionz Az A Ridah’. I had that song on repeat when I was in university. There is the usual hum of conversation. Men and women talking to each other, flirting, drinking. I nod to myself, first at random, but later to the bass line of the song. There’s an empty stool and I aim for it before someone claims it. Reflex. I shouldn’t h
ave bothered; nobody tries. When I squeeze into the space my shoulders bump the adjacent punters, but they just smile and continue their conversations.

  The bartender is on me in seconds.

  “Cider,” I say. “Whatever’s on tap.”

  He nods, gets it for me, walks away like it’s an open bar.

  It’s warm, stuffy even. I’m sweating, but nobody else is. That pisses me off. I hate that they don’t sweat, that they all look neat and smell good. I sip the cider. Tastes like urine. I know this because I have tasted my own urine before. I blame myself, my lack of skill in providing the right adjectives to describe taste to the strangers. All I could muster were words from the advertisements. Unique! Cutting! Sharp! Perfect blend! None of which mean anything.

  The woman to my left is wearing a red dress with thin straps that make me wonder how the whole ensemble holds together. She has freckles on her back. I study them, wonder if each one is identical. To my delight they are not. She has hair cascading down in brunette waves and large, circular platinum earrings that dangle as she speaks. She’s talking to a Tiger Woods-type and drinking Chablis. The Tiger Woods-type glances at me, perhaps registering my behaviour as an anomaly. Fuck it. I tap the woman on the shoulder.