Interzone #303

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Rating: 4/5.

An interesting issue of Interzone, filled with ‘weird’ stories that stretch, but not quite, break credibility and only Interzone stories can. Good stories in this issue by Nathan Brown and Sasha Brown, Corey Jae White and Maddison Stoff, Humphrey Price, Eygló Karlsdóttir and Ashley Stokes, and Giselle Leeb.

• “The Chainsaw Surfer Against the Army of the Deep” by Nathan Brown, Sasha Brown: an accurate title for a fantastical story of an army from the depths of the ocean that rises to conquer New York, and it may be up to one surfer with a chainsaw on a surfboard to save humanity.
• “Do Motorcycle Centaurs Dream of Five Stars and a Tip?” by Corey Jae White, Maddison Stoff: a weird, but fun story of a ‘centaur’, an organism merged with a motorcycle, that makes a living delivering food. But its job may be cut short when a new company with a faster delivery system arrives that may render it obsolete. Then, a hostage situation gives it a chance to fight back, when the hostage taker makes a food delivery request: the delivery race is on.
• “Project Star Train Final Report” by Humphrey Price: the final report, written on a manual typewriter, of a mission to send a series of probes to a nearby star, the discovery of intelligent life on a planet orbiting the star, and the resulting mess that occurs when information was transmitted that would lead to a technological backlash.
• “Cautionary Pulses” by Eygló Karlsdóttir, Ashley Stokes: in a future when a gadget determines the relationships people may have with each other, two people bump into each other by accident and find each other sexually attractive, despite the gadget’s insistence that they are totally incompatible.
• “Meat” by Rachael Cupp: a continuing series in life after a nuclear apocalypse, this one has a girl who manages to save and befriend a large wild cat, only for the friendship to be cut short.
• “The Canine Lodge” by Giselle Leeb: two cyclists rest at a lodge that also houses a group of fisherman who fish at night, but curiously at a lake that does not permit fishing at night. They sneak out at night to see what the fishermen do, only to discover the true meaning about the sign about a canine lodge that they saw earlier.
• “Bindweed” by Kat Sedia: a more contemporary story of the sexual meetings between two people high on drugs and on rough sex.
• “Bosch” by Ben Tufnell: a priest and a scout journey through a scorched land to reach a camp, where the priest discovers he has to perform a rite on the Captain of the camp.
• “Your Snow White Moment” by Leslie What: a woman recovering from an abusive relationship with her ex-husband and his daughter wander into another relationship, only this one involves ducks who demand more and more from her when she keeps feeding them.
• “Baywater” by Crystal Koo: a person is suddenly cleaved into two. Both portions then go on to lead their own lives, one following the path she has always followed, but now shunned because of her appearance, the other down an unknown path.

Magazine read from 2025/10/01 to 2025/11/06.