bugpowderdust

Interzone 220 is blessed with one of the finest covers I’ve ever seen on the magazine (and I’ve been reading since 24).

As for the content, there’s six stories this time round. The issue kicks off with Jason Stoddard’s “Monetized”, a neat enough tale of a near future world where advertising is quite literally in your face. Presumably it was written some time ago, before the global financial apocalypse gathered steam, but there’s a nice frisson reading this story of uber-capitalism against a real world backdrop of headlines screaming recession and economic disaster.
Eugie Foster’s “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest: Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” is as bizarre and convoluted as its title, but in a good way. It depicts a vaguely insect-styled civilization, dominated by a Queen, where a persons role and personality are determined by the mask they wear that day. But what happens if someone’s mask is removed? This was probably my favourite story this time round, an exotic and unusual piece that is never less than convincing.
“After Everything Woke Up” by Rudy Rucker has an interesting conceit (a honeymooning couple who are able to converse with everything in the landscape around them), but it’s an unsatisfying story, perhaps because it’s not a story at all, but an extract from an upcoming novel. The novel might well be worth a look, but as a standalone piece this didn’t cut it. And even if it did, I’d always rather have an original story than an extract from something else as part of my table of contents.
Neil Williamson’s “Spy Vs Spy” takes inspiration from the MAD cartoon of the same name – two rivals locked in an escalating arms race with ever more inventive ways of gaining an advantage. Good fun, and the second story in the issue (after the Stoddard) to take a swing at social networking (wow, just typing the phrase feels so 2005).
Leah Bobet’s “Miles To Isengard” is a close second to the Foster as story of the issue. It’s a story of a band of adventurers trying to destroy some seductive but nasty world-destroying technology by chucking it in a volcano, which I guess is where the LOTR reference in the title comes in, but this is a near future setting with our band of heroes barrelling along in a truck. It’s a well told story, with a nasty creeping paranoia that scratches at the inside of your skull.
The final story is “Memory Dust” by Gareth L Powell., who has had a couple of stories in IZ in recent years (”The Last Reef” & “Ack Ack Macaque”), not to mention a few published in a book alongside your faithful correspondent. I liked this piece for its contemplative and almost retro Golden Age feel, a nice contrast to the savage technological onslaught of most of the other pieces in this issue. It loses points however, for unnecessarily echoing Gateway – I’m sure GLP could have come up with another way to set things in motion than copping the random jumps from that novel – and for maybe just being a little too short to fully carry the weight of the memory dust concept. Good, regardless, but could have been great.

All in all, another quality issue. Interzone’s resurgence under the (not that new anymore) stewardship of TTA Press has been one of the greatest pleasures in SF over the last few years. I really must renew my sub soon…