Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #217 Read online

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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 217

  AUG 2008

  Cover Art

  Africa

  By Paul Drummond

  pauldrummond.co.uk

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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, Jetse de Vries, Andrew Hedgecock, David Mathew ([email protected]) Book Reviews Editor—Paul Raven/Jim Steel Proofreader—Peter Tennant Advertising & Publicity—Roy Gray ([email protected]) Typetiffing—Andy Cox E-edition (via fictionwise.com)—Pete Bullock Website—ttapress.com Subscriptions—The number on your mailing label refers to the final issue of your subscription. If it's due for renewal you'll see a reminder on the centre pages pullout. Please renew promptly. Thanks!

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  CONTENTS

  FICTION

  AFRICA—Karen Fishler

  Illustrator: Paul Drummond (pauldrummond.co.uk)

  THE TWO HEADED GIRL—Paul G. Tremblay

  THE SHIPS LIKE CLOUDS, RISEN BY THEIR RAIN—Jason Sanford

  Illustrator: Vincent Chong (vincentchong-art.co.uk)

  CONCESSION GIRL—Suzanne Palmer

  Illustrator: Darren Winter

  LITTLE LOST ROBOT—Paul McAuley

  Illustrator: Paul Drummond

  COMUS OF CENTRAL PARK—M.K. Hobson

  Illustrator: Darren Winter

  FEATURES

  EDITORIAL—Pete Bullock on Electronic Editions & The TTA Podcast

  ANSIBLE LINK—David Langford's News & Gossip, Obituaries

  LASER FODDER—Tony Lee's DVD Reviews, Competitions

  MUTANT POPCORN—Nick Lowe's Film Reviews

  BOOKZONE—Book Reviews

  CONTENTS

  EDITORIAL—Pete Bullock on Electronic Editions & The TTA Podcast

  ANSIBLE LINK—David Langford's News & Gossip, Obituaries

  AFRICA—Karen Fishler

  THE TWO HEADED GIRL—Paul G. Tremblay

  THE SHIPS LIKE CLOUDS, RISEN BY THEIR RAIN—Jason Sanford

  CONCESSION GIRL—Suzanne Palmer

  LITTLE LOST ROBOT—Paul McAuley

  COMUS OF CENTRAL PARK—M.K. Hobson

  LASER FODDER—Tony Lee's DVD Reviews, Competitions

  MUTANT POPCORN—Nick Lowe's Film Reviews

  BOOKZONE—Book Reviews

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  EDITORIAL—Pete Bullock on Electronic Editions & The TTA Podcast

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  How will the Internet and electronic media affect readers, writers, and publishers in the future? As TTA Press's Electronic Editions Editor, I can't help but wonder about this. This year marks the first time iTunes has surpassed Wal-Mart as the number one music retailer in the world. What does that foreshadow?

  Readers sometimes speculate about whether eBooks will supplant printed books entirely. I don't think so, but who knows? When was the last time you used a quill pen or read from your favourite scroll? Have you purchased our magazines at Fictionwise?

  Currently, reading devices cost more than a CD or MP3 player. When prices come down significantly, eBooks should really take off. This will no doubt be seen as a boon by students who carry a huge pile of books on their backs.

  Fortunately, eye strain caused by bright backlit screens has been solved through E-ink technology. It mimics real paper by using tiny microcapsules on a sheet of plastic film. This is laminated over a layer of circuitry to form electronic paper. I've seen this technology first hand on the Sony Reader, and it really does have the same reflective qualities as regular paper. Power is only used when the display is changed, so text can be displayed for weeks without power.

  Audio Podcasts are another way that fiction is progressing from author to publisher to reader. In fact, this summer marks the launch of TTA Press's new audio podcast with stories from the pages of our magazines, past and present. Visit our website for details.

  Print On Demand is changing the face of publishing. Libraries and bookstores are installing the Espresso Book Machine, which is capable of printing a 300 page paperback, complete with cover, in just three minutes. The $50,000 machine produces these at a cost of $3 each.

  Change seems to be the only constant. Maybe one day a Worldcon supporting membership will get you a live videocast of the Hugo awards. Who knows. The universe is the limit.

  Copyright © 2008 Pete Bullock

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  ANSIBLE LINK—David Langford's News & Gossip, Obituaries

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  As Others See Buckminster Fuller. ‘Fuller's themes often had the hallucinatory quality associated with science fiction (or mental hospitals).’ (Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker, 9 June)

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  Novel Awards. Arthur C. Clarke: Richard Morgan, Black Man (US title Thirteen). * Nebula: Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. * Andre Norton (YA Nebula): J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. * James Tiptree Jr: Sarah Hall, The Carhullan Army.

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  Doris Lessing regards her 2007 Nobel Prize as ‘a bloody disaster'. Too much media attention, not enough time for work: ‘All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.’ And the writing? ‘It has stopped, I don't have any energy any more.’ (Radio 4 interview)

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  As Others See Us. Sam Wollaston of the Guardian complains that ‘Sci-fi has no smell’ and bewails the effort of comprehending Battlestar Galactica's season-four opening without having watched a single past episode: ‘I don't understand half the complexities. (That, incidentally is another problem: it's so bloody complicated. Why is sci-fi like that—a competition for boys to see who's best at working out what the hell is going on?) [ ... ] This obviously makes me a girl.'

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  Christopher Tolkien continues to litigate, with ‘one last crusade’ to ‘terminate’ rights to The Hobbit and block the planned films unless Warner/New Line cough up the claimed 80 million pounds owed to the Tolkien estate from a deal that gave it 7.5% of profits.

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  As Others Sniff At Us. ‘If you've been in any bookstore in your lifetime, you're probably familiar with that most peculiar of book retail locales: the Fantasy & Science Fiction section. This strange and sweaty place is kept separate from the rest of the bookstore so that its residents, the soap-averse fans of Fantasy & Science Fiction novels, can go about their plots and dark rituals without disturbing any of the normal-smelling clientele.’ (Chris Bucholz, Cracked.com)

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  Salman Rushdie risks being declared Fair Game: ‘I have an early novel by L. Ron Hubbard called Death's Deputy. You cannot believe the badness, it's almost physically unreadable because the man was functionally illiterate. The idea of him being a founder of a great world religion is just hilarious. I don't want to claim Hubbard as any type of influence as the horror that would bring my way would be a fate worse than death—there's Tom Cruise for a start! But I grew up on science fiction...’ (Interview, June)

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  J.K. Rowling gave this year's Harvard commencement day address. Someone in the student paper The Harvard Crimson reacted by calling her ‘a flash in the pan [ ... ] a petty pop culture personality [who] tricked parents into letting their kids read books filled with sex, murder, and homosexual role models'. This led to a strange Guardian piece, ‘When Harry met sexism', arguing that the biased critical establishment marginalizes female fantasists while praising Pullman and Tolkien in accordance with ‘the dominant man-worshipping default mode.’ Acclaim for Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin doesn't count, since—the article explains—they merely occupy ‘a few token high-priestess places for the ladies.'

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  Futurology Masterclass. ‘The speed trend curve alone predicts that manned vehicles will be able to achieve near-infinite speeds by 1982...’ ‘By 1981, this [energy] trend curve shows that a single man will have available under his control the amount of energy equivalent to that generated by the entire sun.’ (G. Harry Stine, ‘Science Fiction Is Too Conservative', Analog, 1961)

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  As Others Research Us. From a positive article on sf at the Glasgow Science Festival: ‘The whole basis of the internet was famously inspired by William Gibson's book Neuromancer and Isaac Asimov, who recently died, “invented” earth-orbiting satellites in one of his tales.’ (Sunday Herald)

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  Alaa Al Aswany, Egyptian novelist, denounces the New Wave: ‘I am writing for ordinary people. I want everyone to be able to read my books. The problem with Arab literature has been that it forgot to tell stories and lost its way in experimentation. Too many novels that start with lines like “I came home to find my wife having sex with a cockroach."’ (New York Times)

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  Thog's Masterclass

  Fowl Play Dept. ‘Ross Duval choked back an emotional swallow.’ (Clark Howard, ‘Cruel and Unusual', Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, 2008)

  Alternate Tissue Dept. ‘One of those old-fashioned protonic guns ... they kill without damaging tissue, by destroying brain cells.’ (Gardner F. Fox, Escape Across the Cosmos, 1964)

  Dept of Misadventure. ‘...they were on the verge of being sucked under a lake of molten magnetic lava when, by sheer theoretical knowledge, they pulled out and made off into space once more. / A barrage of cosmic rays, turned on them by inhabitants of a queer, elongated planet, had almost spelled disaster, but radio beams saved them. / Once, in mid inter-planetary flight, they were brought to a dead stop. The cause? They had entered the “no-man's land” between two planets, where, opposed to all normal theory, the two worlds, acting in complete unison, were poised on the same plane, although millions of miles apart.’ (Terence Haile, Galaxies Ahead, 1963)

  Inexorable Fate Dept. ‘It would not be like that, but that was the way it would be.’ (Michael Marshall Smith, The Servants, 2007) ‘It was that way, but also it was not.’ (Ibid)

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  R.I.P.

  Robert Asprin (1946-2008), US author whose first novel was The Cold Cash War (1977), died on 22 May aged 61. Asprin is best known for creating (with Lynn Abbey) the ‘Thieves’ World’ fantasy shared world, and for his ‘Phule’ sf comedies (later with Peter J. Heck) and ‘MythAdventures’ comic fantasies (later with Jody Lynn Nye).

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  John Berkey (1932-2008), noted US sf artist whose work is collected in The Art of John Berkey (2003, text by Jane Frank), died on 29 April.

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  Algis Budrys (1931-2008), East Prussian/Lithuanian-born US author, critic and editor, died on 9 June; he was 77. In fiction he is remembered for the classic Rogue Moon (1960, aka The Death Machine) and many fine short stories; as critic, for the Galaxy review columns collected in Benchmarks (1984); as editor, for Tomorrow SF magazine and the Writers of the Future anthologies. Other notable novels are The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn (1967), Michaelmas (1977) and the underrated Hard Landing (1993). Budrys received the 2007 Pilgrim award for criticism.

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  Alexander (Sandy) Courage (1919-2008), Emmy-winning composer of the USS Enterprise fanfare in Star Trek (reprised in ST:TNG and all the films), died on 15 May aged 88.

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  Michael de Larrabeiti (1934-2008), UK writer most noted in genre circles for the exhilaratingly uninhibited violence and language of his Borribles trilogy of children's novels, died on 18 April after long illness. He was 73.

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  Joseph Pevney (1911-2008), US director of 14 episodes of the original TV Star Trek and 11 of The Munsters, died on 18 May; he was 97.

  Copyright © 2008 David Langford

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  AFRICA—Karen Fishler

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  Illustrated by Paul Drummond

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  Clarion West graduate Karen Fishler made her short-fiction debut with ‘Miko’ in The Third Alternative (now called Black Static), which was soon followed by a second story ‘Mission Memory'. Since then she has sold several stories to publications like Realms of Fantasy, The Infinite Matrix and Interzone ('Someone Else’ in issue 194, ‘Among the Living’ in issue 203). She lives with her husband Barry in West Seattle and works as a coach (visit Karen's website at fishler.com for more information).

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  Tomeer peered through the Inward Watcher, the adjustable lens in the clear floor on the station's underside. He wanted to see again the continent the first Guardians—those who had witnessed the Expulsion—had called Africa.

  "Your time is best spent watching outward, not looking down at the surface,” his father said suddenly from behind him. “Never allow yourself to be seduced by what we protect."

  Tomeer sat back up and controlled his breathing. How long had his father stood there with his white hair and piercing eyes, still erect despite the tremble that had crept into his limbs in recent months? Tomeer had the same face, the same hair and eyes, the same purpose, though he was twenty and his father was three hundred. Yet his father still watched over him.

  "The station will let us know if any of them come near,” Tomeer said. “And how can we protect what we know nothing of?"

  "The station merely supports us,” his father answered. “It is up to us to carry out the task itself, as the Talienns intended. We must watch, and wait.” He sighed and sat down slowly on a small stool near the Watcher.

  "I will do as you ask, father,” Tomeer said.

  Yet he could not keep from putting his eye to the Watcher and looking down again. Miles below, the green mass—the place where humans had begun, Guardian legend said—reeled slowly by, the lush color rolling on and on over bountiful plains and forests, every detail distinct.

  Not a trace of any human presence remained below. No structure of any kind. Not here, nor anywhere else on the surface of the Earth.

  Tomeer zoomed the Watcher closer to see a herd of brown-backed animals flow from under some trees, down a hill, and across a river. Small ones tried to keep up with the larger herd, then pattered to a stop as the group halted and began grazing. The adult animals had horns, but those would not necessarily—

  Danger! There! A skulking great cat emerged from under a single tree nearby, followed by another. The prey animals shifted, then bolted. The cats darted after them and closed on a young one that straggled, while the remainder of the herd fled, out of the Watcher's field of vision.

  "What are you looking for?” asked his father. “The animals are born, they gro
w to adulthood, they mate, they bear young, they eat or are eaten."

  "Exactly,” Tomeer said.

  "Exactly what?"

  "Exactly the things we are no longer capable of,” he said.

  Strilikan crawled into the bubble with them. Tomeer stroked the long, featherlike antennae, and Strilikan burbled, then sank down beside Tomeer, folding all of his legs into a compact pad under his body shell, so reminiscent of the station's shape.

  Tomeer's father sniffed. He considered Strilikan an indulgence. Yet looking down through the Watcher again as the cats started tearing into the prey animal, Tomeer allowed himself a little feeling of satisfaction. After his father had created him and he had matured enough to develop his own interests, he had begun to experiment, to create in his turn, using the station's overlooked insects and his own ideas. Strilikan was the eventual result. Not a copy of himself to carry out the great purpose, another in the long line of Guardians, but a new creature altogether, for no purpose but Strilikan's own, whatever that might prove to be.

  Strilikan's pincers could not only compress and slice, but stab as well—features of no use here, but nevertheless a pleasing accident. He was larger than his forebears by a factor that brought him above Tomeer's knee when they walked together. His glossy blue-black exoskeleton stood out against the station's faded colors, and his many legs, which had multiplied through the generations of his ancestors, took him anywhere and everywhere. His vocabulary was somewhat like that of Earth's birds, whose sounds had been preserved in the station's records by the very first Guardians and passed down through all the hundreds of years since.

  Most importantly, Strilikan had not died like his predecessors.

  The station, and thus the Watcher, had moved on, sliding randomly on the clear barrier membrane that enveloped the planet, seeming to trail the course of a great river. The station's position could be directed, but Tomeer's father had never seen a reason to do so.

  "Do you not love what we see?” Tomeer asked, gesturing below their feet. “Do you never wish to go to the surface and experience what the Talienns considered so important to preserve?"