Interzone, #217, August 2008

Advance publicity in several forum posts heralds issue #217 of Interzone as “not so Mundane this time,” following as it does from the Mundane SF special issue. And it’s quite right: only two of this issue’s stories are Earth-bound, and those two are outlandish enough that they’re far away from Mundane SF. Whether this contrast with issue #216 is deliberate, I don’t know; but I do know there is a lot of good stuff to be found here.

Karen Fishler effectively combines the science-fictional and the personal in “Africa,” which is set in the far future, yet is very much about the relationship between father and son, and what happens when a woman comes between them. Tomeer and his father are the latest in the long line of Guardians tasked by extra-terrestrials with protecting Earth from the rest of humanity, who were banished in the distant past for reasons the Guardians have long since forgotten or ceased to care about—all they know is that the Expelled must not be allowed to repopulate the planet.

Not that the two Guardians have ever actually encountered any Expelled humans—until now, when a woman named Ainkia arrives with her dying father. They are the last of their kind, and Ainkia begs to be allowed to bury her father on Earth. Tomeer would happily agree, but his father is adamant that it must not be permitted. Fishler observes her characters well: they talk of love, which is heartfelt and pretty much synonymous with duty; but physical attraction is a mystery to the Guardians (who have lost their reproductive capacity; both Tomeer and his father are clones), so Tomeer doesn’t understand the feelings he begins to have towards Ainkia (”The smell [of her body] frightened him with its strangeness, yet he savored the soft tang at the back of his nose”). “Africa” taps into some universal human experiences—how many of us haven’t, at a young age, had to deal with an adult authority figure whose rules we didn’t understand?—though the stakes are rather higher (perhaps uniquely so) for someone in Tomeer’s position. And even in the far future, Fishler’s story says, we won’t have neat answers to our moral questions.

The first two paragraphs of “The Two-Headed Girl” by Paul G. Tremblay are as fine an example of how to begin an SF story as I’ve read in some time. In the first paragraph, we learn (but are not baldly told) that the electricity for the protagonist’s house is generated by a swing outside. The second paragraph begins, “Anne Frank is on my left again,” and may well leave you scratching your head by its end. But all (or at least some) soon becomes clear, and it’s there in the title: teenager Veronica has two heads, and the second one keeps changing into those of different historical figures, fictional characters, and other women and girls. Veronica had to leave school because of bullying and now feels stifled, with her main form of socialising being the book club her mother organises, whose participants are all at least twice the girl’s age; and, perhaps most of all, Veronica wants to know where—and who—her father is.

Tremblay’s tale is satisfyingly rich with strangeness: he says almost nothing about the whys and wherefores of Veronica’s second head; but, crucially, he also makes such things seem unimportant. It’s Veronica the person who matters to us, and Tremblay really brings her character to life through the first-person narration. It’s one thing to create a true sense of otherness in a story, and another thing to give a story real emotional depth. It strikes me that it’s not easy to do both in the same piece, but Tremblay does so in “The Two-Headed Girl.” Indeed, that feeling of strangeness comes not just from Veronica’s situation itself, but also in large part from her reaction to it; in other words, the fantastic and the human go hand-in-hand, as well they should.

Jason Sanford’s “The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain” is set on a mysterious world with no bodies of water, just land that piles up and up as ships fly over and deposit organic material, metal, atmospheric gases, water—the things needed to sustain life that the world itself cannot provide. And yet, despite the constant accretion of material, the world grows no larger in size. The story follows Tem, a weather forecaster (who does her job the old-fashioned way, looking at the sky from the top of her weather tower), and her apprentice, Cres, as the two make a discovery that will reveal to them the truth about their world…And the problem is, that whilst the truth inspires feelings of profound joy, awe—even fear—in various characters, Sanford’s writing does not enable us as readers to share those feelings. It is interesting to read about these characters and their discoveries—it’s just that we’re not really there with them.

Suzanne Palmer contributes “Concession Girl,” an entertaining mystery set on a space station used as a “diplomacy shop,” as Verah, our narrator (who runs a hot dog stand on the station), puts it. Ambassadors from two alien races have come to the station to make peace; but Verah, and Loo, the station-owned cleaner, will soon uncover evidence that someone seeks to disrupt the negotiations. There’s a good humour about this piece which I enjoyed very much, and many little details made me smile (to give just one example, I laughed at the idea that “Do you want fries with that?” might still be a familiar refrain so far in the future). The mystery element lets the story down, as neither characters nor readers really get a chance to solve the puzzle—Palmer gives the answer away on a plate. It’s a pity, because the rest of “Concession Girl” is such fun to read.

In his notes on “Little Lost Robot,” Paul McAuley says he was aiming to subvert the usual template of the killer-robot story by telling the tale from the viewpoint of the machine. So, here we have a “superbad big space robot” dedicated to roaming the universe and destroying all life. It’s nigh-on invincible—so good at its job, in fact, that it’s running out of targets. The robot is keen, therefore, to chase after a new signal it picks up far away, even though it seems naggingly familiar for some reason. By the time the robot arrives, the signal is gone, but then the machine notices an apparent infiltration into its own programming, and then…

As may be anticipated, this story is rather dense with information; it’s a mark of McAuley’s skill that the tale drags so little. The beginning is especially striking, as the author weaves language evocative of space opera movies (”Sooner or later it’ll be coming to the star next door to you, and it will rock your world”) into prose of a more literary style, which has the effect of anchoring this impossible creation into the fictional reality—it’s an aid to suspending disbelief. As for the rest, good prose can only take “Little Lost Robot” so far; its ultimate success depends on its ideas. And, though the ideas were interesting enough whilst I was reading the story, sadly I didn’t find them striking enough to think about them much afterwards.

Rounding off the fiction in this issue is M.K. Hobson’s hugely enjoyable “Comus of Central Park.” Magdalena Delancy is a horrible socialite who sets “challenges” for the guests of her parties, which she invariably uses to humiliate them—yet she’s one of those people you can’t say “no” to. Magadalena’s latest challenge is a hunt for the most interesting thing in Central Park; and Pamela, our protagonist, thinks she has found something (or, rather, someone) guaranteed to turn the tables on Magdalena—namely Comus, a faun. However, Pamela’s plan backfires, as Magdalena takes to Comus immediately, not to mention his ability to turn even the most staid gathering into a full-on orgy. And that’s just the beginning…

Hobson’s story is a great laugh, from characters like Pamela’s absurdly pretentious son, Riley (who constantly has his nose in books by one intellectual or another, but doesn’t necessarily read them), to the consequences of a faun ingratiating himself into Magdalena’s social circle (and, indeed, of a faun simply existing). More than this, the explanation of Comus’s origin captures the imagination and contains a neat piece of social commentary. “Comus of Central Park” completes nicely a fine selection of fiction which is well worth your time.

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