Interzone #241, Jul-Aug 2012.
Stories this month from Sean McMullen, Aliette de Bodard, Gareth L. Powell, David Ira Cleary, and C.J. Paget, and each one hits the spot nicely.
Reviewing short SF since 2000
Stories this month from Sean McMullen, Aliette de Bodard, Gareth L. Powell, David Ira Cleary, and C.J. Paget, and each one hits the spot nicely.
Winner of the James White Award 2011 for unpublished authors, and it’s a story that sits foursquare with the other stories in the issue.
Deceptively clever little story from Swanwick, suggestive of traditionally fantasy, but full-on SF.
A touch of the Langoliers, in a ghost story with a difference that oozes quality throughout.
Originally in a YA anthology, an effective story of love and loss on Mars.
Another inventive and entertaining story from Cleary, which also features The Bay City Rollers…
A story that packs a lot into a few pages.
Roseman’s first story in Asimov’s was an action-packed drama, and he attempts a much more difficult story here.
Do physicists use words like ‘geezer’, ‘galoomph’, ‘cahoots’, and ‘bald bonce’ ?
An entertaining novelette mashup of steampunk/Goth/Victoriana/aviation, with more than enough detailing to cause a few Gentlemen’s Trouser Moments from afficianados of the genre.
A good spread of fantasy and a touch of the horror, but not a huge amount for those of us primarily looking for SF.
Effective contemporary fantasy/horror which minded me of Stephen King (at least the stories/novels of his I read way back in the day).
A protagonist that is a sort of combo of Ellen Ripley and Florence Nightingale in a story of geriatric zombification…
A rare story from Liu that disappoints.
Emshwiller creates a believable, flawed character, a military man taking a mission for money, more concerned about his appearance and worried that he will not be accorded respect due to his status, than matters ethical or moral.
Contemporary urban fantasy in which a young woman is drawn, irresistbly, to a tall, dark stranger who will take her away from her humdrum existence.
Ford looks to the East for inspiration for a story that gradually reveals itself to be a horror story, in which all is not what it seems, and a night of passion in a remote retreat becomes a much darker affair.
A lengthy novella that ultimately disappoints, the ending sweeping the sfnal elements under the carpet, rather than exploring them.