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Interzone # 212 - September-
01/12/2007 . Source: Neale Monks 
bi-monthly magazine: UK publisher/editor address: Andy Cox, TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambridgeshire CB6 2LB. Price: £ 3.75 (UK) $ 7.00(US). ISSN: 0264-3596. check out website: www.ttapress.com
This issue of 'Interzone' maintained the positive impression I'd gained from issue 211. Good print quality, some nice artwork, interesting editorials and a solid roster of entertaining SF short stories. The only part I found tedious was the 'Celebrating 25 Years Of Interzone' article. While these sorts of things are perhaps interesting in a self-congratulatory way to the publishers and writers, to everyone else they smack of self-indulgence.
This one example of mental masturbation aside, the rest of the magazine definitely scores well. David Langford's column of miscellaneous SF happenings from media quotes to author obituaries is one of the high points of the magazine. His collection of strained writing under the subtitle 'Thog's Masterclass' is a particular gem.
Turning to the stories, the balance is somewhat tilted towards SF in this issue. The first tale, 'Flesh' by Douglas Elliot Cohen is a solid, strong tale mixing the mysterious-hero-with-a-past trope with the splendid idea of (apparently human) mutants called Aberrates capable of stealing senses from their victims. The result is that someone who has fallen prey to a Taster mutant loses their sense of taste forever, Listeners would take away the ability to hear and so on. It's a clever idea and one that builds up a very different sort of horror to the more traditional horror monsters that simply kill their victims outright. Moreover, the reader's inevitable anxiety about how they would live without one or more of their senses creates a different sort of thrill. In the event, the tale itself is not especially novel in terms of plot or ending, but it holds together well and the writing is tight, well-paced and entertaining.
Next up is the delightfully-named 'Ack-Ack Macaque' by Gareth Lyn Powell. The author plays with the idea of what happens when the Fourth Wall between the protagonists of the tale and their fictional creation collapses. The mechanism chosen for this catastrophe is clever enough to be plausible without too much technobabble being required and Powell manages to pull the thing off remarkably well in what is basically a humorous, lightweight tale. There's also a very British (ie gloomy) love story going on in the background, as well as some decent satirical swipes at what happens to characters in comic novels when Hollywood decides to turn them into cash-cows. All in all, a fun story and one of the best in this particular issue of 'Interzone'.
'A Handful Of Pearls' by Beth Bernobich is definitely a lot less whimsical. SF strands apart, this is a tale about child abuse. Unlike the usual take on these sorts of stories where the child is ultimately rescued and the abuser punished, that simply doesn't happen here. Quite the reverse in fact. So there's none of the feel-good resolution we've come to expect from stories with plotlines involving abuse, rape or murder. But just because Bernobich doesn't settle the scores in a way we'd like doesn't mean she hasn't tackled the issue in an adult and informative manner. It's the revelation of how a child abuser might think and act that makes the story powerful, if troubling, reading. Hardly the standard SF fare, but hats off to 'Interzone' for running a risky, difficult story that is way out of the ordinary.
'Dada Jihad' by Will McIntosh is a more downbeat, traditional tale set in a near-future world sliding into collapse. The protagonist is Ange, a young woman in the process of getting her PhD. At the same time, she's involved with a group of bio-terrorists trying to moderate the impending crisis by destroying the society that is allowing it to happen. It's a grim tale without a happy ending and all the more depressing given that all we need to do now to get to the world prophesied by McIntosh is to carry on exactly what we're doing now.
The last story is 'The Algorithm' by Tim Akers, a curious little story that's more a critique of organised religion than the foray into clockwork-punk fantasy it seems at first glance. It's a metaphor-heavy tale with a distant God sending packages of revelation to the people as bits of machinery in wooden caskets that float down a river. The people assemble what is essentially a clockwork church from these bits and pieces. Eventually a barrel turns up that contains a girl. Jesus-like, the girl starts off seemingly a regular child, but eventually there comes a transformation and her role as divine messenger is revealed. Religious overtones and somewhat predictable ending aside, 'The Algorithm' works nicely as the sole fantasy piece in this issue.
As usual, 'Interzone' rounds off with several pages of book and film reviews. These are certainly intelligent and well-researched, even if one doesn't happen to agree with them. Nick Lowe's warm and rather positive review of 'Fantastic Four: The Rise Of The Silver Surfer' seems to have been based on a completely different film of the same name as the trite All in all, an interesting issue of 'Interzone' and one well worth reading.
Neale Monks
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