Interzone #270

Main Index / Reviews Index / Magazine Reviews Index / Interzone Reviews Index

Rating: 4/5

An above average issue. Malcolm Devlin’s story of a man revived in another body but with missing memories stands out for the questions it asks about what makes a personality. Shauna O’Meara’s tale of a tourist taken for a VR ride to unexpected places was also exciting but tragic; for we are all fickle tourists in the end.

• “Rushford Recapitulation” by Christopher Mark Rose: a strange story about a small town where women start to give birth to things. The ending does not resolve how this strange sequence of events happen.
• “Like You, I Am A System” by Nathan Hillstrom: an AI system accidentally becomes conscious, destroys other copies of itself (but regrets it), enters the outside world and tries to remake humanity so that it can talk to humanity as a single being. It, of course, fails and regrets it.
• “Dirty Code” by Wayne Simmons: a story that starts off with a ‘bounty hunter’ who hunts and eliminates computer code viruses that have invaded human bodies; but ends up as something else, for the people involved are actually compassionate ones that want to also help the infected.
• “Encyphered” by Jonathan L. Howard: not much of a story about the life of a man who was fascinated with secret codes and cyphers, unless you’re more interested in the history and current status of encryption.
• “The New Man” by Malcolm Devlin: a fascinating story about a man who, after a serious accident, is revived by having his memory and personality transferred to a new body. But the transfer is incomplete, leaving gaps in his memory and personality that he isn’t even aware of. His family life suffers in the story, as does his work life as we learn more about this future where body transfers may be a growing trend.
• “Evangeline and the Forbidden Lighthouse” by Emily B. Cataneo: what starts off as a tale about two girls growing up together on a beach in the shadow of a lighthouse that apparently nobody can get to turns into an interesting story about determinism and decision as bottles appear with messages that apparently foretell the future.
• “Memories of Fish” by Shauna O’Meara: a look at a virtual reality future, where tourists view what remains via remote drones. But one tourist get a rough, fast, ride when the drone he’s viewing get hijacked by a girl who wants to show him what the drones normally don’t show. A fascinating future where forbidden glimpses, Twitter trends and fickle tourists become mingled with personal tragedy.

Magazine read from 2017/05/26 to 2017/06/03