Interzone #273

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Rating: 2/5

A below average issue of Interzone, containing eerie tales not quite to my taste. The ones that I found most interesting are by Laura Mauro and the 2017 James White Award Winner story by Stewart Horn.

• “Looking for Laika” by Laura Mauro: a story about a kid living near a beach with his grandparents and younger sister who has a paranoid fear of nuclear war. He fights the fear by keeping to a routine while keeping his sister occupied with a story of the Soviet space dog, Laika, exploring the universe to find a new place to live. Things come to a head when his sister finds a strange dog tag and a tragic event occurs in London.
• “After the Titans” by Rachael Cupp: in a strange time when titan roam the earth, a girl makes an agreement with a titan to heal her injured brother. But it may force her to sacrifice the object of her desires.
• “Fully Automated Nostalgia Capitalism” by Dan Grace: in a future where nostalgia for things past is regulated, a couple tries to escape their regulated lives.
• “The Big So-So” by Erica L. Satifka: in a future, humanity has been divided into those who pass a ‘test’ via a pleasurable chemical and are accepted by aliens into ‘Paradise’ and those who do not. Naturally, civilization has broken down as people not accepted give up hope. But two people want to change things: one by stealing the chemical, and the other by raising civilization again. Only time will tell who succeeds.
• “The Garden of Eating” by R. Boyczuk: a tale of a boy in a brutal post-war like future, looking for food. He is warned by a mysterious guide who intones UN-like ‘resolutions’ against working with a woman who apparently represents America.
• “The Morrigan” by Stewart Horn: a tale of gang violence as told by one of the gang members in a town when a mysterious girl appears who offers weapons of violence and slowly begins to incite the gang members to take up arms against other gangs. When he survives the violence that ensues, he sets off to hunt down the girl; but is it to bring her to justice or to join her?

Magazine read from 2017/12/25 to 2018/01/02