Interzone #275

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Rating: 2/5

A lower than average issue, with not much SF to the stories. The final two stories by Malcolm Devlin and Leo Vladimirsky goes some way to saving the issue.

• “The Fate of the World, Reduced to a Ten-Second Pissing Contest” by Erica L. Satifka: aliens that almost look like us face off with humans in a bar removed from the earth. That’s it.

• “Looking for Landau” by Steven J. Dines: a horror/fantasy piece about a hunt for a person or entity who leaves agonizing phantoms in its wake. When the pursuer finally catches up, it may be the journey rather than the destination that matters the most.

• “The Mark” by Abi Hynes: a person, burdened with a personal guilt, leaves the community to attempt to die alone, far away. As the journey proceeds, the nature of the guilt is revealed, leaving the reader wondering how guilty the person is.

• “The Purpose of the Dodo is to be Extinct” by Malcolm Devlin: a story that starts out focusing on the life of one person suddenly becomes significant when it turns that the person dies in all the various timelines at the same time. The story then focuses on the ramifications of that unusual event to the agency that monitors the timelines and to people in the agency who know him in one way or another.

• “The Christ Loop” by Leo Vladimirsky: the usual ‘death of Christ’ story with a twist: this Christ is still searching for the proper way to sacrifice himself for mankind. Being tortured, burned, mauled by wild animals, etc. doesn’t satisfy him. He relives that day, searching for the proper way. The ending is expected, but here the story is about the journey Christ makes, rather than the end.

Magazine read from 2018/05/22 to 2018/05/29