Interzone #289

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Rating: 3/5

A lower than average issue with stories that didn’t really attract my attention apart from stories by Cécile Cristofari and David Maskill. The tale by Maskill is the 2019 James White Award Winning story.

• “Cryptozoology” by Tim Lees: a tale of a couple who join a trip to track down a ‘cryptid’ or legendary creature. As the story goes, it turns out that the girl is fascinated by them while her boyfriend goes along, but is sceptical. As their journey looking for cryptids continue, tensions boil over, and they separate. At the end, he sees something that makes him rethink their relationship but by then it may be too late.
• “The Ephemeral Quality of Mersay” by John Possident: on a space station, a reporter reports on a possible crisis that affects the entire station. But it later turns out to be a manufactured crisis to cover over a criminal operation.
• “The Way of His Kind” by James Sallis: a story about the arrival of new people to a town, leading to changes to its way of life. Whether it is better or worse is left up to the reader.
• “Smoke Bomb” by Matt Thompson: a story of a future where people can be altered to become biological reactors to produce liquids of exquisite quality. The story is of one such person and her guardian who gets a well known artist as a client, but who may have other plans for the person that may not involve the guardian.
• “There’s a Gift Shop Now” by Françoise Harvey: on a walk through a place once used to do experiments on children, to horrible effect.
• “The Third Time I Saw a Fox” by Cécile Cristofari: a night watchman with the ability to talk and interact with the exhibits suddenly struggles to recall his encounters with foxes while telling his stories to the exhibits.
• “Limitations” by David Maskill: two researchers stuggle to interact with a possible alien being who lives in a toxic atmosphere in their lab. Their attempts usually end in failure. But with each failure, the attempts repeat with changes and slowly the researchers realize what’s going on and maybe what must be done to end the repeating cycle.

Magazine read from 2020/12/01 to 2020/12/16