Interzone 252 May-Jun 2014 Read online

  ISSN 0264-3596

  Publisher

  TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs CB6 2LB, UK

  w: ttapress.com

  e: [email protected]

  f: facebook.com/TTAPress

  t: @TTApress

  Editor

  Andy Cox

  e: [email protected]

  Assistant Fiction Editor

  Andy Hedgecock

  Book Reviews Editor

  Jim Steel

  e: [email protected]

  Story Proofreader

  Peter Tennant

  e: [email protected]

  Events

  Roy Gray

  e: [email protected]

  Technical Assistance

  Marc-Anthony Taylor

  © 2014 Interzone and contributors

  Submissions

  Unsolicited submissions of short stories are always welcome, but please follow the guidelines.

  POLLS AND AWARDS: INCLUSIVITY AND THE TRAP OF SILENCE

  The late comedian Linda Smith was a deft exponent of the metaphorical boot to the groin of political hypocrites and talentless scandal magnets. On one panel show, a fellow guest suggested she temper her scorn as it might give her subject “the oxygen of publicity”. Her response: “I’m not that happy with him having the oxygen of oxygen, actually.”

  Criticising those whose views you find abhorrent is always a stroll through a minefield. But, to misquote someone much smarter than ourselves, silence can make you guilty of complicity.

  We’re delighted readers, writers and critics think enough of Interzone to include us, once again, on the Hugo Award shortlist (for Best Semiprozine) but perplexed at finding ourselves on a page of nominees with Theodore Beale, the writer also known as Vox Day. Since the nomination of Day’s ‘Opera Vita Aeterna’ for the Best Novelette category, much has been written about the rights and wrongs of allowing an author’s politics to adulterate one’s assessment of the value of their work.

  We share the view that publishing should be genuinely inclusive, and we fully respect the view that inclusivity must be based on an acceptance of views in opposition to one’s own. It is not however always possible to apply the maxim that writers should be assessed independently of their politics. In the case of Vox Day we are not talking about differences in opinion on rates of taxation, unemployment benefit, NHS funding or the role of austerity in eradicating a fiscal deficit: the hostile reaction to the inclusion of Day is triggered in part by his hate-fuelled rants against people purely on the basis of their identity.

  Day has been openly hostile to minorities in the US, comparing Mexican immigration to the Nazi occupation of Europe in WW2. He has said many rape victims are “stupid” and have colluded in being attacked. He considers women’s rights to be “a disease that should be eradicated”. He has suggested African-American writer and critic N.K. Jemisin is “not equally” homo sapiens sapiens, and has described people “like her” as “half-savages”. All this from a writer who asserts “politics don’t belong in science fiction” and assumes there are shared, apolitical, “common sense” values (his values) that simply cannot be up for debate.

  Vox Day and Larry Correia have acknowledged using their blogs to encourage tactical voting: in fact they are openly celebrating their success in engineering the inclusion of more right-leaning writers on the Hugo lists. Smart thinking and effective tactics, but hardly in the spirit of the Hugos? If we do belong to a literary and artistic community, shouldn’t the whole point of the awards be to celebrate the ability of writers, artists and editors to bring us new insights into the human condition and its possibilities?

  We’d like to congratulate all Hugo nominees, and wish the best of luck to all those who share a sense of common humanity with all their fellow writers, readers and editors.

  On an unreservedly positive note, we’d like to congratulate Nina Allan on winning a well-deserved BSFA Best Short Fiction award for Spin (TTA Press). It’s a magnificent piece of work. Why not buy a copy and find out exactly why?

  We’re also cock-a-hoop to report an increase in voting in this year’s Readers’ Poll. Sadly there were a number of disqualified votes, owing to suspicious voting patterns, but this has not affected the outcome. So we’d like to congratulate joint winners Sean McMullen (for ‘Technarion’) and Jess Hyslop (for ‘Triolet’).

  The Editors

  CONTENTS

  COVER ART: CARAVAN BY WAYNE HAAG

  http://www.ankaris.com/blog

  INTERFACE

  EDITORIAL

  ANSIBLE LINK

  DAVID LANGFORD

  news, obituaries

  READERS’ POLL RESULTS

  MARTIN McGRATH

  FICTION

  THE POSSET POT

  NEIL WILLIAMSON

  illustrated by Richard Wagner

  [email protected] (email)

  THE MORTUARIES

  KATHARINE E.K. DUCKETT

  novelette illustrated by Warwick Fraser-Coombe

  warwickfrasercoombe.blogspot.co.uk

  DIVING INTO THE WRECK

  VAL NOLAN

  illustrated by Wayne Haag

  www.ankaris.com/blog

  TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE

  OLIVER BUCKRAM

  A BRIEF LIGHT

  CLAIRE HUMPHREY

  illustrated by Richard Wagner

  SLEEPERS

  BONNIE JO STUFFLEBEAM

  illustrated by Martin Hanford

  martinhanford1974.deviantart.com

  REVIEWS

  BOOK ZONE

  books, Neil Williamson interviewed, Jonathan McCalmont's Future Interrupted

  LASER FODDER

  TONY LEE

  DVDs/Blu-rays

  MUTANT POPCORN

  NICK LOWE

  films

  ANSIBLE LINK

  David Langford

  As Others See Us. ‘The Hugo award is a vaguely dildo-shaped silver rocketship…’ (New Statesman)

  Hugos. As usual the nominations have several surprises, such as the appearance thanks to a rules quirk of a long-running fantasy series – 14 fat volumes, 4.3 million words – as a Best Novel nominee. Spot the elephant in the room: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie; Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross; Parasite by Mira Grant; Warbound by Larry Correia; The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson. Interzone is shortlisted under Semiprozine. For the full list and 1938 Retro Hugos, see www.loncon3.org/hugo_awards.php. For assorted controversy links, see tinyurl.com/mfwtjpk.

  Ari Handel, one of the Noah screenwriters, responded to complaints about the film’s all-white cast by explaining how diversity leads to uncoolness: ‘Either you end up with a Bennetton ad or the crew of the Starship Enterprise.’ (Independent)

  More Awards. Arthur C. Clarke: Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice • BSFA: Novel (tie): Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice and Gareth L. Powell, Ack-Ack Macaque. Short: Nina Allan, Spin. Artwork: Joey Hi-fi, Dream London cover. Nonfiction: Jeff VanderMeer, Wonderbook. • Compton Crook (first novel): Charles Gannon, Fire With Fire. • Ken Kesey Award: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Unreal and The Real. • PEN/Faulkner Award: Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. • Philip K. Dick: Ben H. Winters, Countdown City. • Pilgrim Award for sf studies: Joan Gordon. • World Horror Grand Master: Brian Keene.

  Peter Jackson’s altered subtitle for the third Hobbit movie was not, as I’d expected, The Battle of the Three Armies with a fourth film added to do proper justice to The Battle of the Other Two Armies.

  George R.R. Martin’s death grip on the Zeitgeist becomes ever tighter: ‘Need a baby name? Try Game of Thrones! 146 Khaleesis were born in the UK in 2012. Strangely there are no recorded instances o
f a Joffrey.’ (Independent) Why it’s OK to like the series: ‘Game of Thrones is more Dynasty than Lord of the Rings, more House of Cards than Xena: Warrior Princess. It may have pretensions to the fantasy genre but in reality it is pure soap opera, sex and gore, and family politics dressed up in corsets and fabulous costumes.’ (Telegraph)

  The Weakest Link. Host: ‘Buzz Lightyear was on the Apollo 11 space mission. True or false?’ Contestant: ‘True.’ (BBC1 Perfection) • Host: ‘Who wrote I, Robot?’ Contestant: ‘William Burroughs.’ (BBC2 Revenge of the Egghead)

  Court Circular. Tess Gerritsen, whose 1999 novel Gravity has ‘a lone female astronaut trapped aboard a space station and struggling to get home’, is suing Warner Bros not for copyright infringement (they bought the book rights and then used a supposedly original screenplay) but for not giving her a ‘based on’ film credit. (Vulture.com) • The forgotten 1970s Scots band Bilbo Baggins is now nameless, thanks to the dread Saul Zaentz Company. The band’s court appeal was stopped by an IPO judge unimpressed by rebranding with its erstwhile manager’s name: ‘Henry Spurway’s Bilbo Baggins’. SZC doesn’t always get its way, failing ‘to stop the London-based marketing firm Ocean Outdoors from offering advertising space on two towers on either side of a motorway despite SZC’s claim that this was similar to the title of one of the volumes of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.’ (Independent) If Elvis Presley ever makes a comeback, he too will be in trouble.

  Safe Viewing. After long negotiation and screening-out of vile Western corruption, North Korea has chosen three BBC TV series which its people can be allowed to watch: Doctor Who, Top Gear and The Teletubbies. (Independent)

  Media Awards. Oscars: many categories though not Best Picture were won by Gravity; Frozen won for animated feature and original song; Her original screenplay. • Razzies: three wins for After Earth! Worst actor, Jaden Smith; worst supporting actor, Will Smith; worst screen combo, Jaden and Will Smith. • Empire: overall film and director Gravity; British film The World’s End; sf/fantasy The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug; thriller The Hunger Games: Catching Fire; horror, The Conjuring.

  Thog’s Masterclass. Dept of Similes. ‘He’d yawn like a whale on a plankton hunt and swallow like he was choking down a lump of concrete, but his head got more and more like a pressure cooker no matter what he did.’ ‘He looked like he’d lost about twenty pounds in stature.’ (Jack Harvey [Ian Rankin], Bleeding Hearts, 1994) ‘He slammed onto the hay floor like thirty anvils dropped out of a ten-story window.’ (Richard S. Meyers, Cry of the Beast, 1979) • The Gap into Thogness. ‘Angus’ heart clenched in a grimace which didn’t show on his face.’ ‘Her shoulders hunched into a clench of disgust, which she deflected into a shrug.’ ‘Nick let out a clenched laugh.’ ‘Above his open mouth, his eyes blinked like cries.’ ‘His aura yowled of furies that didn’t show on his face.’ ‘The smears on his lenses refracted his blue gaze into streams of hope and apprehension.’ ‘His eyes slid off as if they’d lost their grip.’ ‘The air had grown viscid with mortality.’ (all Stephen R. Donaldson, The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order, 1994)

  R.I.P.

  Stewart H. Benedict (1924–2014), US journalist, author and playwright who edited Tales of Terror and Suspense (1963), died on 19 March.

  John Clagett (1916–2013), US author of the sf novels A World Unknown (1975) and The Orange R (1978), died on 5 November 2013 aged 97.

  Philippe Ebly (Jacques Gouzou, 1920–2014), French author of many sf shorts and novels that sold over two million copies from 1971 and were translated into several languages, died on 1 March aged 93.

  Donald Malcolm (1930–2013), Scots author of short sf in Nebula, New Worlds and New Writings in SF 1957–1976 – plus two 1976 novels for Laser Books, The Unknown Shore and The Iron Rain – died on 9 November 2013.

  Alexander Malec (1929–2014), US author whose sf stories are collected in Extrapolasis (1967), died on 1 January aged 84.

  Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014), hugely popular and distinguished Colombian author who won the Nobel Literature Prize for works of magic realism – most famously the unforgettable One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) – died on 17 April aged 87.

  Steve Moore (1949–2014), UK writer who scripted comics for 2000 AD and Warrior, was an editor of Fortean Times and Fortean Studies, novelised the film V for Vendetta (2006) and published the 2011 fantasy Somnium, died on 14 March aged 64.

  William H. Patterson Jr (1951–2014), author of the biography Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century (two volumes, 2010 and May 2014), died on 22 April.

  Juan José Plans (1943–2014), prolific Spanish sf/fantasy/horror author who adapted many genre classics for radio, died on 24 February.

  Andy Robertson (1955–2014), UK editor, publisher and author, Interzone’s assistant editor for some 20 years from 1984, and latterly running his own Night Lands project (stories in William Hope Hodgson’s dying-earth milieu), died on 17 April aged 58.

  Alan Rodgers (1959–2014), US author – mainly of horror but also of some sf – who won a Stoker award for his debut story ‘The Boy who Came Back from the Dead’ (1987), died on 8 March aged 54.

  Peter Ruber (1940–2014), Australian-born editor at Arkham House 1997–2004, who edited collections by H. Russell Wakefield and Seabury Quinn for Ash-Tree Press, died on 6 March.

  Jonathan Schell (1943–2014), bestselling US nonfiction author whose The Fate of the Earth (1982) inspired the nuclear-holocaust film The Day After (1983), died on 25 March aged 70.

  Hilbert Schenck (1926–2013), Hugo- and Nebula-nominated author of several striking sf stories 1953–1993, whose novels include A Rose for Armageddon (1982), died on 2 December aged 87.

  Michael Shea (1946–2014), US author of much fine dark fantasy and sf/horror – often echoing Vance as in the World Fantasy Award-winning Nifft the Lean (1982), or Lovecraft as in The Color Out of Time (1984) – died on 16 February; he was 67. His novella ‘The Growlimb’ (January 2004 F&SF) was another WFA winner.

  Lucius Shepard (1943–2014), US author of much richly styled sf and fantasy flavoured with magic realism – a note established in his 1984 debut novel Green Eyes – died on 18 March aged 70. His many awards include the 1985 Campbell for best new writer, a Nebula for the 1986 ‘R&R’ – incorporated into Life during Wartime (1987) – and a Hugo for ‘Barnacle Bill the Spacer’ (1992). A personal favourite, from the Dragon Griaule fantasy sequence, is The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter (1988).

  John Rowe Townsend (1922–2014), UK academic and author of young-adult novels – several sf, beginning with Noah’s Castle (1975) – died on 24 March. He was 91.

  READERS’ POLL

  Sean McMullen and Jess Hyslop are joint winners of the 2013 Readers’ Poll

  There was a dead heat at the top of this year’s poll with ‘Technarion’ by Sean McMullen and ‘Triolet’ by Jess Hyslop coming out as joint winners. Jason Sanford’s ‘Paprika’ was only one vote behind.

  The number of votes cast increased significantly on last year. But, as no award is complete without its controversies, I took the decision to disallow seven ballots as a result of a suspicious voting pattern. While, obviously, it is acceptable for authors to remind their friends that they can vote in the poll, this is a poll for Interzone readers to pick their favourite story and not a popularity competition.

  As has become the norm, voting was overwhelmingly positive, with positive votes outstripping negative votes by almost thirteen to one. However, for the first time since 2008 one story received a negative aggregate score and two stories split readers right down the middle, scoring the same number of positive and negative votes. This year’s most controversial story was ‘The Angel at the Heart of the Rain’ by Aliette de Bodard – which some of you adored but which attracted negative votes too.

  The most popular issue this year, by the very slimmest of margins, was #248, just beating #249 in positive votes. Generally the average scores per issue were higher than in previous years, but #247 was clearly the lea
st popular issue.

  I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to vote, especially those who took the time to explain their choices and offer comments. It’s always good to hear from you.

  Martin McGrath

  Top ten short stories

  1= ‘Technarion’ Sean McMullen issue #248

  1= ‘Triolet’ Jess Hyslop issue #246

  3 ‘Paprika’ Jason Sanford issue #249

  4 ‘Build Guide’ Helen Jackson issue #244

  5 ‘Sentry Duty’ Nigel Brown issue #246

  6 ‘The Book Seller’ Lavie Tidhar issue #244