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Interzone #230, September-October 2010

Interzone #230, September-October 2010
Interzone
Interzone, Britain's leading science-fiction and fantasy magazine, founded in 1982, has now reached 200 issues. Short-listed for the Hugo Award many years running, and a Hugo winner in 1995, it has a high reputation around the world.

Interzone has published short stories by many of the big names of the field, from Brian Aldiss and J.G. Ballard to Ian Watson and Gene Wolfe, but its particular strength has been in the nurturing of newer writers.

Interzone Website

Past Feature Reviews
A review by D. Douglas Fratz

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  The September-October issue of Interzone features a celebration of 25 years of Nick Lowe's "Mutant Popcorn" film reviews that have so often been far superior to the work he is writing about, along with five well-written and imaginatively exotic science fiction stories by burgeoning UK writers that seem a bit too alike in their enigmatic settings and war-torn dystopian pessimism.

The Fiction

Tim Lees' "Love and War" is set in a future where humanoids from a parallel Earth are invading, with a focus on security-minded government crackdown on personal freedom -- a parable of our own times beset by terrorism. "Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders" by Aliette de Bodard is a surrealistic Aztec steampunk far-future in which mechanical beings kill deposed gods again and again. Lavie Tidhar's "The Insurance Agent" tells of an agent hired to protect an enigmatic Spiritual Entity. "Camelot" by Patrick Samphire tells of an immortal man cast out from Camelot who is seeking his brother, while "The Upstairs Window" by Nina Allen is set in a more mundane dystopian future where religious rulers are censoring the arts. All five are imaginative stories by talented young writers, but none stand out as particularly memorable.

The Non-Fiction

The 25th anniversary of Nick Lowe's "Mutant Popcorn" is celebrated by reprinting his very first movie reviews from 1985, most notable being his take on Brazil, along with an interesting interview with Lowe. Lowe also looks at new movies, and his critical views on the flaws of Inception as hard SF are particularly insightful. (The movie was indeed perhaps overrated due to its being the only ambitious science fiction film of 2010.) Highlights in the book reviews this issue included a fine review by Paul Kincaid of Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories that one can only hope will assist in assuring that Leiber's brilliant work is rediscovered by new readers.

Copyright © 2012 D. Douglas Fratz

D. Douglas Fratz has more than forty years experience as editor and publisher of literary review magazines in the science fiction and fantasy field, and author of commentary and critiques on science fiction and fantasy literature and media.


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