Interzone #269

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Rating: 3/5

An average issue with a fun story by Sean McMullen to start things off and ending with Steve Rasnic Tem’s story which feels more like a fragment from a longer tale. Tim Akers’s tale sound intriguing and could be part of a book to flesh out the background more.

• “The Influence Machine” by Sean McMullen: an interesting piece set at the beginning of the 20th century in Victorian England. A police inspector with a scientific background is tasked to investigate a wagon filled with electrical equipment and a strange camera created by a woman. What he sees changes his world view and his opinion of the woman. But greater forces intervene when the masters of the land hear of the invention and attempt to intimidate the woman into giving her machine to them. What is a sympathetic inspector to do?
• “A Death in the Wayward Drift” by Tim Akers: an unusual story set in a place where people are divided in groups that take care of the water, trees, ground, etc. One group of water carers must navigate their treacherous lake to fix an underwater water pump. When one of them dies in the attempt, the partner has to take a journey to return his remains to the water; a journey that entangle the partner with a member of the tree people.
• “Still Life With Falling Man” by Richard E. Gropp: a tale about the mysterious appearances of points on Earth where time appears to almost stand-still for those caught in them. One man, who has the ability to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ events far away via a mental window, discovers the latest one to appear. But in the race between organizations to claim it, he gets caught in one.
• “A Strange Kind of Beauty” by Christien Gholson: in a desert area, an old woman who acts to interpret written prophesies decides that it is time to enter a forbidden area. What they find there causes a group of travellers to question the prophecies. But danger lies in wait for the woman, for her skill also lets her converse with ghosts from the pasts - and one ghost may want her for his own plans.
• “The Common Sea” by Steve Rasnic Tem: a day in the life of a family in a future Florida slowly vanishing beneath the waves due to global warming. The father struggles to keep the family safe, get supplies – and also to distinguish between reality and visions of another world perhaps nearby, perhaps faraway.

Magazine read from 2017/03/28 to 2017/04/05