Interzone, #212, September/October 2007

Perhaps the only statement that could equally apply to the handful of stories in issue #212 of Interzone is that after reading one of them, you’d never have guessed what the next would be like. The only real similarity is that they are all, on some level, science fiction, and what this issue may do best is show the variation that exists in the genre.

In Douglas Elliott Cohen’s “Feelings of the Flesh,” Tarrik is a revenge-obsessed bounty hunter of “Aberrates”—monsters best described as vampiric ogres who feed on people’s senses. When his pursuit is interrupted by his encounter with a group of Aberrates, Tarrik ends up saving a woman who reminds him of all that he has lost.

“Feelings of the Flesh” is long for a short story, closer to a novelette (although I didn’t do a word count). Like many stories hovering on that edge, “Flesh” may be too long. While Cohen is an adequate storyteller, I found myself torn. On the one hand, we are deluged with details, including hints about the long-distant past of this world, debates about magic, and suggestions that the Aberrates’ origin is less mystical than it may seem. On the other, we are left with questions about the nature of this world, its past, and why we should care about anyone, including Tarrik. He wants revenge. We get it. So what? Cohen tries to answer that, but what happens is more like a prelude to a novel where all this will be explained, including some potentially very interesting questions about how important the five senses really are.

The protagonist has a gun in a world of peasants, swords, and clubs, and although Cohen provides an explanation for its presence, the explanation still leaves us wondering—much like the other explanations provided. The real problem is not that Tarrik or this world or the origins of the Aberrates are deeply mysterious, it is that we, as readers, can’t tell whether he meant these hints to be enough for the reader or whether his intention was to leave them a mystery. Tarrik’s bleakly vengeful outlook makes it difficult to care about him; the enigma of the world leaves us more curious about the world than about what might happen to it; and the woman Tarrik rescues becomes significant only near the end of the story, disappearing offstage at the end just when we’ve become interested in her fate. “Feelings of the Flesh” could have worked as a short story with a conclusive ending, and were it a novel, I would buy it (and, I think, enjoy it). As a novelette, it doesn’t quite work.

The first sentence of Gareth Lyn Powell’s story, “Ack-Ack Macaque,” feels like a breath of cold, fresh air after the S&S setting of Cohen’s piece:

“I spent the first three months of last year living with a half-Japanese girl called Tori in a split-level flat above a butcher’s shop on Gloucester Road.”

In similarly blunt prose we learn that Tori and the narrator break up, causing him to lose his girlfriend and the creator of his favorite cartoon, all in one blow. As the narrator’s life disintegrates without Tori, Tori’s new boyfriend gets her to give up the rights to Ack-Ack Macaque so the comic can be serialized, mass-produced, and made into generic cartoon goo (figuratively speaking).

“Ack-Ack Macaque” is incredible. I can’t, don’t, and didn’t believe it while I was reading it; I spent the first two-thirds of the story wondering where the speculative element was, and then when it did, I thought, “No way.” Powell used the same, old AI tropes without a single twist, except that in this version, it’s even more unbelievable. And yet, somehow, equally incredibly, it works. I couldn’t decide who to cheer for or who should win, I found the explanation of events utterly implausible, there are explosions and pointless deaths, and yet, it’s a feel-good story. There you have it.

The plot devices are recycled, the speculative element is as unbelievable as your Uncle Bob suddenly morphing into an alien during Thanksgiving dinner (perhaps more so if your Uncle Bob is as weird as mine), and the protagonist is whiny. But in the end, it’s fun. With a cigar-smoking monkey called Ack-Ack Macaque in a bomber plane, how could it be anything else?

“A Handful of Pearls” by Beth Bernobich matches its title, in a way; the suggestion of a scattered, mismatched set of jewels matches both the islands that are the setting of the story and the story itself. Yan, recently dumped by his girlfriend, Meh (a name which does not seem intended to indicate apathy, but which makes it hard to think of her any other way), is one of a group of scientists desperate to find something of research value in these islands. When the expedition comes across a little girl whose tongue has been cut out, the story takes a dark turn.

Bernobich’s writing is fantastic. Image, plot, story, it all comes together in “Pearls.” The only problem is that the speculative element seems gratuitous. Yeah, this is not Earth, there are nonhumans (or partial humans?), and the scientists are in search of some esoteric item that could not exist on Earth as we know it. But the story isn’t about any of those things. The story is about character—the way that evil can hide its face from everything except its own subconscious—and abuse. Stark, harsh topics for any story, and particularly startling in something presented as genre fiction, where if evil prevails, we expect there to be a reason greater than one man’s selfishness and one girl’s powerlessness.

When I read a science fiction story, I want the science to matter. There should be a reason for it to be science fiction; the science should be integral to the plot. In this case, it’s not even debatably necessary, and while, again, I laud Bernobich’s style, skill, and form, I keep wondering: What is this story doing here? It’s a very good story, and perhaps that’s the answer, but when so many mainstream literary journals exist, I wonder why a speculative fiction magazine is printing stories that would be better placed in them.

“Dada Jihad” by Will McIntosh has a near (?) future setting, with a world simultaneously falling apart and tearing itself open from the inside while the government turns an eye made blind by underfunding and power-lust. Ange is a student trying to get her Ph.D.: the entry to a safer, gated world where she’ll have respect and power. But politics and friends are strange bedfellows, and Ange’s path may not be what she expected.

McIntosh can worldbuild like crazy—phrasing that may be more literal than figurative in the violence-ruled, misery-drenched place he’s created in “Dada Jihad.” At the start, a cop pukes onto the sidewalk, and McIntosh’s description is so strong that you can almost smell the vomit as it hits the hot cement. Nearly everything else in the story is equally vivid and true, giving the impression that he’s not writing a story; he’s written up a documentary about a place he’s been recently. He weaves the details in so deftly that there is never a point where we are drawn out of the world.

The problem is that McIntosh has created a vigorous, realistic, fascinating world—and peopled it with characters who don’t deserve it. Ange has one goal. She’s driven to accomplish it as a way of running from her past, and it’s not clear to me why she makes the choices she does, either at the start or the end of the story. The others seem to exist merely to show up and deliver somewhat smug little speeches, except for her dissertation advisor, who is a slimy, sexual harassment stereotype. So it goes sometimes in hard SF, and sometimes that can work. But the focus is on Ange, whom I found difficult to care about. Every time we go back to her and away from everything else happening, I found myself thinking, “But what about the real story?” Nevertheless, McIntosh’s skill is such that I was still happy reading, and I would love to see more from him—especially if it had less single-character focus.

In a way, Tim Akers’s story, “The Algorithm,” is itself an algorithm to be solved. The tone is fanciful, almost mystic, as we encounter a cult of men who rescue boxes from the river. The boxes contain machinery, a gift from a god of machines, until the box that Wright Morgan saves contains a human child. Is she, too, a gift from God? Or is she sent to destroy their world? As they grapple with the mysteries of faith, the story turns dark.

With the one flaw of imagery that is occasionally more heavy-handed than richly described, Akers presents a story that is well-plotted, well-written, and well worth reading. The brutal turn of the story is shocking, yet inevitably necessary, and just when we think we know what’s coming, Akers surprises us again, solving the algorithm in a way that we should have expected and yet don’t. The basic storyline—which I won’t share, as it would spoil the story—is not original. At the end, we realize that it’s one we’ve all heard and seen. But then, there are theoretically only six (or is it nine?) basic plots for any story, and the difference is all in the decorations. Akers proves there’s some truth to the value of those decorations with his skillful treatment in “The Algorithm,” creating science fiction that illuminates human nature.

[Disclosure notice: The Fix is brought to you by TTA Press, publisher of Interzone.]