Interzone #278

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Rating: 2/5

A not very interesting issue of Interzone, mainly because the stories appear to be on the theme of conflicts (mainly military related) and not of much interest to me. Natalia Theodoridou’s story about unusual genetically engineered soldiers is probably the most interesting.

• “Soldier’s Things” by Tim Lees: a soldier returns home, injured from a war, to discover that many things have changed: from the way people treat him to his own memories of life and the war.
• “Doomed Youth” by Fiona Moore: a story that mixes together a student’s attempt to learn when and where giant ants started appearing with suspicions about ‘foreigners’ in an alternate world where conflict is more widespread and a terror attack is about to happen.
• “The Path to War” by Louise Hughes: a storyteller wanders through the land, telling stories about peaceful times for food and shelter, as the surrounding country prepares for conflict. But when he is caught by an enemy scout and interrogated for information on a camp he had just left, it would be his storytelling and other abilities that might save him.
• “Heart of an Awl” by Eliza Ruslander: a strange story about the AI of a car that has been transplanted into the body of a deceased man and is now living with the widow. Lots of meandering passages as they travel around together.
• “Zero Day” by Sheldon J. Pacotti: a hacker for the military is on his off day when he meets what he thinks is the girl of his dreams. But his actions to find her and show off to her gets interrupted when various zero-day vulnerabilities are used on that day.
• “Birnam Platoon” by Natalia Theodoridou: a story about the aftermath of a military trial of a doctor who was part of an attempt to use unusual genetically engineered soldiers in conflicts; soldiers that finally decided that peace was better than war at the wrong time.

Magazine read from 2018/11/26 to 2018/12/03