Interzone is a long running UK science fiction and fantasy magazine. In appearance, it’s a glossy professional looking publication with striking internal colour artwork, as well as fiction, articles, and reviews. Generally, the fiction is of an exceptionally high standard.

‘Harsh Oases’ by Paul Di Filippo was one of my favourites, and indeed is one of the best stories I’ve read in this small press roundup. In the future, new creatures, mosaics, have been genetically engineered from the genes of different species. Thomas Equinas is a mosaic, part horse, and forced to work for humans. A woman enables him to read and he goes on to become a celebrity. In old age, as some humans plot the destruction of all mosaics, Thomas is entrusted with a newly created being who will contain all the genetic material of the mosaics, thereby securing their survival. Thomas has to act as guardian, tutor and mentor until the youngster is old enough to fend for itself. Thomas names it Swee’pea and takes it away just as another creature, sent by humans, arrives to kill it. This creature, the Manticore, turns up again and again, as Thomas and Swee’pea move from one location to another. Swee’pea meanwhile has the unique ability to change form, species, and sex. But Filippo never allows the science fiction aspects of the plot to overwhelm the characters, and in his prose he paints beautiful and memorable images of various locations, including an underwater society.

‘Sheila’ by Lauren McLaughlin follows AIs contained within the internet, designed to help humans with requests and enquiries. These AIs have personalities, to the extent that they represent a threat to humans. The most dangerous is the mysterious Sheila, an AI who has almost become the centre of a new religion. As the reader finds out in Part Three of the story, Sheila does indeed have plans as far as humans are concerned. Though there’s no emotional engagement with these characters (possibly for obvious reasons), the story is well paced and well written, and revisits science fiction’s popular theme of Artificial Intelligence, while bringing in a more familiar web-based element of message board postings and web links.

In Jessica Reisman’s ‘Boy Twelve’ Virtue, a woman who works in salvage is visited by the twelfth clone of her dead lover. As we soon find out, Virtue has a destructive temper, and the sight of this latest replica of James leads to another near explosion. It transpires that she’s been genetically engineered to kill. When her brother was disturbed by her relationship with James, he deliberately provoked her anger and set James in her path, leading to his murder. The latest clone is also meant to set her off, but her brother’s plans don’t work out the way he hoped. There’s a lot more to this story in terms of the background and setting, and it’s engaging and well written, though there’s the occasional awkward sentence. There are also poetic sections which add to the descriptions and the atmosphere. ‘Boy Twelve’ is easily up to the standards of the magazine.

‘Wax’ by Elizabeth Bear is an alternative history story - set in a world where the US is still a British colony. This is also a society where occult methods are used in murder investigations. At the centre of this story is Detective Crown Investigator Abigail Irene Garrett. In some respects she reminded me a bit of Johnny Depp’s character in ‘Sleepy Hollow’ - and the supernatural is certainly present in this story. A murder has taken place, while the victim’s family have mysteriously disappeared. A Spaniard turns up to help her in the case - a man who is soon revealed to be a vampire. But this is an alternate world where such things are not out of the ordinary. ‘Wax’ is another of the best stories I’ve read in the current roundup, involving in the way Paul Di Filippo’s first story is, but with an entirely different atmosphere. It’s a darkly fantastic, alternate historical murder mystery, and the mixing of genres is well executed, displaying the strengths of cross-genre fiction.

In addition to these stories, there’s the first part of Richard Calder’s new novella, ‘After The Party’ which has something of the dark, slightly old fashioned atmosphere of ‘Wax’. This story will be assessed along with Interzone 203 at a later date.

Interzone 202 is a special New Year Issue with 80 pages compared to 201’s 64. There are interviews with Terry Pratchett and Gerry Anderson plus the regular review columns. The second instalment of Richard Calder’s novella appears, as well as four stories. The first of these is ‘Sundown Sheila’ by F Gwynplaine MacIntyre, which is set on a planet where the same side of the planet is always turned towards the sun, meaning that there are places where the sun is always at mid-day, or where it’s always night. Only at the equator does the sun rise and fall. The characters in the story are stuck with a permanent noon, which becomes a kind of running joke. They are genetically engineered to work on terraforming, and the narrator, Bodger, by far the least intelligent of the two, has had the memories of dead men implanted into his brain, which leads to periods of confusion. He remembers Australia, a place he’s never been. All the characters in the story speak an exaggerated type of Australian dialect that in itself might be a kind of composite language. A woman turns up, Sheila, and she’s soon having sex with Dicko in his hut, while Bodger hangs around outside, curious about what they’re getting up to. He’s effectively a eunuch with no knowledge of sex. He’s attracted to Sheila, but doesn’t understand his reactions to her. Later, he kills Dicko in an argument. But a new Dicko appears, and Sheila is revealed to be genetically engineered herself, part human and part marsupial, perfectly designed to survive in the harsh conditions. The story is somewhat more complicated than the precious outline suggests. It’s an entertaining piece, lively, humorous, though there might be just a little too much Australian stereotyping.

‘The Macrobe Conservation Project’ by Carlos Hernandez has a child narrator, a boy who lives on a space station with his human father and robot mother and brother. His father is a scientist working on a macrobe program, designed to save the endangered macrobe species that human colonists have unwittingly brought to near extinction. Human cadavers are used to incubate the macrobes. When the narrator sees one of these cadavers, he thinks she looks like his mother who lives with his real brother. But when he calls his brother, he discovers she’s not there and the truth dawns. He sees his father visits the cadaver of his dead mother, who now moves and opens her eyes because the macrobes have taken over her body. Science has given her the appearance of life but not the reality. The ending ought to be poignant, but there is something detached about the narrative style which doesn’t quite take it that extra mile. At least, not for me. However, the story is well written, and there are some nice darkly humorous moments between the narrator and his robot younger brother.

‘The Unsolvable Deathtrap’ by Jack Mangan was the least involving story for me. Having said that, it moves along, but the entire narrative concerns a journey and details of the traffic lanes and accidents, and it all becomes a little monotonous after a while. The story focuses on a taxi driver who suffers major paranoia about being in an accident one day. The way he sees it, all sorts of disasters seem to lurk in life. So when he picks up a suspicious fare, he immediately leaps to the right conclusions for once - that he has two terrorists in his cab - and takes action. Whether or not the story is meant to refer to the post 9/11 situation (it’s set in the future), it does seem to smack of that paranoia.

‘The Last Reef’ by Gareth Lyn Powell returns to the theme of Artificial Intelligence and nanotechs. The plot is too complicated to go into here, particularly the nature of the Reef, a form of AI, but it’s a case of something out of control and deemed a threat by those in power who want to destroy it. However, those directly touched by the AI see it very differently. At best, it’s an ambiguous entity which offers gifts to some, and destruction to others. A love triangle plays out against this background, a man still in love with his ex-partner who is now with another woman. This story is one of the best in the issue, alongside ‘Sundown Sheila’. But all four are up to the usual standards of the magazine. As issues 201 and 202 illustrate, Interzone is a publication which offers high quality speculative fiction, with high production values and colourful artwork.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.