Interzone #276

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Rating: 3/5

An average issue with interesting stories by Rachael Cupp and Paul Crenshaw.

• “Grey Halls” by Rachael Cupp: in a distant future, humanity lives in a closed-up world with only fragments of the past available. From the fragments, one composer has come up with a composition called “Grey Halls” that earns him a chance to travel to the past. What he discovers there will shake his artistic abilities and leave to wonder whether there is truly anything new to compose.
• “Superbright” by Ryan Row: a growing up tale of a boy who can give off heat and light, in a world where people with super abilities exists. Going through school, forming a super team, fighting evil was all standard until one day, he gets really super abilities - abilities that would bring his whole world crashing down.
• “Tumblebush” by Darby Harn: a rich old woman asks an investigator to find her missing daughter in a world where the climate has changed, a powerful corporation owns the computing servers and people make a living by taking photos for the corporation and hoping to be noticed.
• “P.Q.” by James Warner: researchers investigating ant nests discover some nests piling together structures with no apparent purpose. Investigating them would reveal the structures may be related to the way the ants sense the world through scents and chemicals, and perhaps to store knowledge. But the ants would be threatened by approaching fires unless something is done to save them.
• “Throw Caution” by Tim Major: prospectors on Mars converge on an area discovered to have Martian life: a crab that has a jewel embedded in them. But the pickings are few and hard to come by for a new group unless they take a chance during a storm and chase after the crabs and discover their purpose.
• “So Easy” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam: in a dying country, a mother and child make a final journey to the sea to end it all.
• “Eyes” by Paul Crenshaw: a fascinating tale told by a pair of eyes found in a stream one day by a boy. Gradually, the boy learns the story of the country where the eyes come from, where eyes are passed down from parent to child over generations, gathering knowledge as the eyes see the world.

Magazine read from 2018/07/23 to 2018/08/08