My favourite thing…

…in Interzone 220 was Rick Kleffel’s excellent interview with Jeffrey Ford.

My favourite Ford novel is still The Portrait Of Mrs Charbuque (and my favourite story is still “Creation”), but I’m thinking of giving The Physiognomy et al another read.

And of course picking up copies of The Drowned Life and The Shadow Year as soon as I can.

Interzone

Silver lining following on from the day’s more depressing news is that Interzone 220 is now out and available.

Stories by Jason Stoddard, Eugie Foster, Rudy Rucker, Leah Bobet, Gareth L Powell and me. Book reviews wrangled by Jim Steel and featuring Michael Cobley and Paul F Cockburn as well as an interview with Jeffrey Ford by Rick Kleffel and a retrospective of Christopher Priest by Andy Hedgecock.  And the annual reader’s poll, too.

It’s the bumper fun, family sized, slice of cracking new SF that your January has been waiting for. Just looking at that gorgeous cover makes you feel sunny inside.

Endings and Beginnings

So, we’ve slipped seamlessly from the end of 2008 to 2009. On Hogmanay, filling in the End Of The Year Club catharsis sheet, it struck me with some force how frickin frustrating last year was for me. On many levels, but mostly creatively. When I got to the section which asked about resolutions (which I don’t generally make, but you couldn’t have an End Of The Year Club catharsis sheet without it), I put:

1/ Complete things

2/ Stop faffing about.

It’d be simplistic, as well as plain wrong, to say that 2008’s various frustrations were solely down to not enough of 1/ and too much of 2/ on my part. There were interruptions, irruptions, intrusions; my time was fractured and my ability to establish a useful routine disrupted. There was a lot of waiting for other people to do things or to be ready to do things too. All in all, it was piss poor. But getting things done and reducing the faffability quotient. These are things I have control over, and steps have been taken to herald 2009 as the Year Of Great Production.

Great beginnings, though, start with endings.

For me, I’m looking forward to completing two long-drawn-out projects – one imminently and the other soon. Writing-wise I’ve been taking a weird kind of pleasure in finally fixing those soft boggy areas that covered up plot holes that I kinda suspected but couldn’t clearly see. That process and the final polishing is virtually complete. And I’ll be glad, so glad, when it is. Music-wise, the gears are rolling again on the long-delayed album. Which in a way has been good because I’ve been able to go back to the songs with fresh ears and new ideas.

So, two big projects come to an end, leaving space for lots of new stuff. My carefully–rationed plan for the next few months includes the creation of a couple of shorts, a novella and the synopsis and first quarter of the new novel. All of which I’m relishing getting to grips with.

Someone else who is relishing getting to grips with his writing again is Andrew Hook. Andrew, the owner, publisher and editor of the multi-award winning Elastic Press, announced in December that he was winding up Elastic so that he could concentrate on his writing. There’s a note of sadness there, of course. Elastic was a superb addition to the British independent press scene. Aside from the eternal debt of gratitude that I personally owe Andrew for bringing The Ephemera to the world, they produced a series of eclectic and fascinating collections by writers of astonishing variety. In addition, their anthology series was also of stellar quality. The good news, of course, is that the world will see much more work from a writer of rare vision and subtle sensitivity, and that makes me excited.

Ps A reminder that The Ephemera can still bought in a variety of electronic formats over at Fictionwise.

And talking of new material from great writers:

1/ I’m still desperately awaiting my copy of Hal Duncan’s Escape From Hell!, which comes to us courtesy of the most wonderful Monkeybrain Books. EFH! is already getting lovely reviews.

2/ Over in his Cave Of Doom, Jim Steel is quietly announcing a veritable cornucopia of his work hitting the streets, shelves and screens at the moment. Some of you might know Jim’s name from his post as reviews editor at Interzone, but he’s also a hugely prolific writer of dark, sardonic, weird and mordantly funny short stories. Check out recent editions of Twisted Tale, Polluto, Beeswax and Premonitions. If you’re familiar with the SF magazine, Jupiter, you’ll already be aware of Jim’s stories, but if you get the most recent issue you should also look out for a new story by Ian Sales, who also has work appearing in Postscripts. As does the excellent Ian Hunter, and loads of other people that I like, but then Postscripts is just full of good fiction.

3/ Another writer you really should be following is Al Robertson. His stories bring great literary depth together with serious atmosphere and a deep-dredged sense of the weird. He also has a story out now in Postscripts, and working coming up real soon in Interzone and Black Static.

4/ And finally some novels on the radar to look forward to this year: Michael Cobley’s return SF with Seeds Of Earth (Orbit, March); Gary Gibson’s follow-up to Stealing Light – Nova War (TorUK, September) and Jeff Vandermeer’s Ambergris-Noir, Finch (Underland, October).

It’s going to be a great year!

Interzone and me

So, yes, officially, my story Spy Vs Spy will be appearing in the next issue of Interzone.

I talk about Interzone quite a lot on this blog: a/ because it’s personally important to me and fundamentally linked to my development as a writer and b/ because it remains a damned good read.

And it has REALLY pretty covers.

Get someone to get you a subscription for Christmas. You won’t regret it.

In fact, while we’re recommending gift ideas, you might like to consider NewCon Press’s Subterfuge. It’s selling well, and the early reviews are excellent.

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Various Variety

Being, in the main, a round-up of random stuff from the last week. It’s been one of those weeks.

• Life is so a Cabaret - spent the weekend in London watching various varieties of cabaret performance. Most especially lovely to see Miss Leggy Pee taking her unique brand of charming on the road to such exotic locations as Vauxhall and Stockwell, but other treats included the sharp-tongued talents of Dusty Limits and Myra DuBois and the rock and roll antics of Holy Ghost Revival. On the other hand, there was a woman with a dodgy French accent talking to a penguin puppet and attempting to play a teapot through a hose.
• For Art’s Sake – and squeezed into the interstices between the cabaret we enjoyed the weans’ cakefest and consumed more Bacon at the Tate than can possibly be healthy. Not sure about the Turner Prize though. The common reaction seemed to be: “pile of toss”, and who am I to disagree.
• Treat him well, he is your Brother (for a day) – Monday night was the annual Brother For A Day variety event in support of the Terence Higgins Trust. More cabaret, more variety, a new act from Miss Pee and a new look for the old fella, but he’s not fooling anyone. And I won a tarot reading in the raffle – which will be interesting.
• I’ve heard the word and the word is DOG – Wednesday was spent at the always entertaining WordDogs. Really nice to see new readers taking part, and some awesome stories being performed. Hopefully the next one will be soon.
• Pirate Music – my infamous pirate-musical story (What? It’s a pirate story written as a musical! What’s so hard to get?) is FREE to download from Keep To The Code – the official fan site for Pirates Of The Caribbean. It’s an exclusive tie-in taster for Fast Ships, Black Sails the stunning new anthology edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, and featuring  exciting piratey stories by Michael Moorcock, Naomi Novik, Garth Nix and many other great writers. The indefatigable Vandermeers have been giving us a sequence of genius anthologies over the last couple of years, and this one looks every bit as entertaining as the rest. Stick it on your Christmas list now – it’ll go nice with the parrot and the festive hamper of ships biscuits and grog.  (Ps. Drop me a comment here if you like the story – I’m genuinely interested in reader reaction to this one).

• Further extra pub news also – Last but not least, there’s a whisper that my story Spy Vs Spy will surface soon in Interzone. Shh! Tell no-one, you never know who’s watching on these internets.

A word in your shell-like

I find this rather exciting. TTAPress have just launched a new arm to their kaliesque fiction goddess – a podcast site called Transmissions From Beyond. Looks like it will consist of spoken word readings of stories published in all three of TTA’s magazines: Interzone, Crimewave and Black Static. There’s three stories up now for your auditory pleasure (I’ll bung on my phone tonight), and they’ve lined up a few real gems for the forthcoming biweekly schedule. Greg Egan’s Crystal Nights? Marion Arnott’s Prussian Snowdrops?

Fantastic! I can’t wait.

The Taste Of Mundanity

So, the Mundane SF issue of Interzone has come and gone. In case you’ve not been aware, there was a whole bunch of foohfarah about the Mundane manifesto, because I don’t know, the rhetoric rubbed people up the wrong way or something. And that was rekindled when IZ announced they were handing over the reins to Geoff Ryman and co for one issue. I’ve not seen any bloggings of seething vindication on either side since the issue came out, but that doesn’t mean the war ain’t raging somewhere.

Anyway. *Yawn*. Doesn’t matter.

My overall reaction to the seven stories that Ryman and friends have selected to exemplify their point is 1/ they are uniformly good, and 2/ this is the sort of stuff Interzone used to publish more regularly than it does now. I felt nostalgic. Nostalgic for the time when a copy of Interzone would throw you a flight of fancy and then on the next page tie you right back down to earth with a gritty, near-future piece that really made you think. Take a galaxy spanning Stephen Baxter or a baroque Richard Calder and follow it up with Greg Egan’s “Learning To Be Me” or Iain McLeod’s “Well Loved” or Chris Beckett’s “Welfare Man” stories. Really stretch your mind. I’m not saying that IZ doesn’t still strive to do this – David Mace’s “This Happens” still lives fresh in my memory – but it’s not as frequent as I remember it being.

So, if the Mundanistas are complaining that people generally aren’t writing enough of this kind of carefully considered, predictive SF; if it’s a spice, a flavour we’ve lost, then maybe they’re right. Especially if they’re as well written as Lavie Tidhar’s “How To Make Paper Aeroplanes”, or Elizabeth Vonarburg’s “The Invisibles”, or Geoff Ryman’s wholly thought-provoking “Talk Is Cheap”, which rounds off the fiction offering of the issue perfectly.

So, Mundane SF. Do I like it? Yes, when it’s done as well as this.

Will I write it? Probably, sometimes, but like most genre writers, not all the time.

Put it this way, if I were a chef I wouldn’t cook with it exclusively, but it’d be a flavour I’d be wanting to use more often in my restaurant.

Thanks to IZ for reminding us what it tastes like.

Diversionary Tactics (2)

Last night’s attempt at mental misdirection was something of a motley collection. Each was engrossing in itself, but short lived. Here’s the rundown:

Wednesday Fives – cracking game of football which involved my side coming back from a seven goal deficit to snatch a tie at the end. Totally absorbing for the hour it lasted, but perhaps too close to the subject I’m trying to avoid. By the time I hit the shower I was already fretting over DiNatale and Toni up against Weir and McManus.

Infamous Assassinations - UKTV History have been running this series during the day time this week, so I’ve been dipping into it when I’ve had a spare half hour. Last night was Che Guevara. To think I didn’t even know he was Argentinian by birth.

Interzone - the new Interzone came in yesterday, presenting a well timed array of temporary distractions. Before bed I enjoyed Andy Hedgecock’s very good interview with Gary Gibson, and a beautiful modern childhood fable by Benjamin Rosenbaum. I’ve been enjoying Rosenbaum’s remarkable stories for a few years now, and his reading at the 2005 Worldcon was one of the week’s highlights for me. “Molly And The Red Hat” is no disappointment, and is an excellent introduction to his work. This issue also includes another of my favourite American writers, Chris Roberson, which bodes well for the diversions of the coming days.

Interzone is 25

With the publication of its latest issue (in the shops now!), Interzone magazine is officially 25 years old. I’ve been reading it for at least 80% of that time and over the years it has introduced me to an uncountable list of fantastic writers that have enriched my life. I’ve eulogised about the mag before, and there’s no need to do so again in detail, but:

1/ Interzone started me writing (and has yet to find a way of stopping me).
2/ Interzone has for a long time now been the keystone of British genre fiction; its editors have an unerring eye for new talent that quickly become household names.
3/ Interzone 209 (out now! buy it!) features an interview between myself and Mr Duncan, plus a new Book Of All Hours story by Mr Duncan, PLUS new stories by M John Harrison, Gwyneth Jones, Alastair Reynolds, Jamie Barras and Daniel Kaysen.

How is it possible you’ve finished reading this and not gone out and bought the thing, or better still ordered a subscription!

This Happens

I’m as guilty as the next person for taking things for granted. We all do it. When something provides us with consistent high quality we forget to be amazed, or even grateful. We just register that it happens, and we expect it to keep on happening.

Take, for example, Interzone, Britain’s longest running professional SF magazine. I started reading it during what some have dubbed its Golden Age. That period of the mid-late 1980s, early 1990s when every month brought new stories by Ian McDonald, Stephen Baxter, Paul McAuley, Eric Brown, Keith Brooke, Chris Beckett, Nicola Griffith, Ian Watson, Molly Brown, Alastair Reynolds, Ian McLeod, JG Ballard, Brian Aldiss… the list goes on. You’ve heard of these guys right? Well back then, many of them were starting out…and Interzone was the place to find them. Every month.

Little wonder that I took the magazine for granted, but looking back I’m grateful for whatever piece of luck it was that led to me picking it up off the newsagent shelves, because Interzone played a large factor in my decision to have a go at writing. I moved to London in 1990 and one of that year’s issues (#34 if I remember right) featured a story by Ian R McLeod called Well Loved. And it was, by me at least. It was a very simple, but immensely affecting, little story about a prostitute who, using a certain device, provides a service that allows men to swap bodies with her so that they can experience sexual violence from the female point of view. The descriptions of how she feels, as a man, having to hit her own face, anticipating the pain she’ll have to deal with half an hour later, are heartbreaking. This was the story that sparked ideas in my head. Extrapolations blossomed, possibilities unfolding like petals. I realised I had stories in me too.

I subscribed to Interzone after that, and have kept my subscription active ever since because the magazine continues to provide me with those moments. For a few years they were fewer and further between, but they were still there – Interzone introduced me to the marvellous work of Liz Williams, Tony Ballantyne and Zoran Zivkovic. And it I’ve never been prouder than when they published stories of my own.

Until a couple of years ago the magazine had persisted largely due to the dedication and energy of its longstanding editor, David Pringle, but when it became evident that Pringle’s reserves were down to the vapour it seemed the right thing to do to hand the magazine on. I stood and cheered at the 2005 Worldcon when David was given a special award in recognition of his services to science fiction, not least of which was Interzone, but by then the new look TTAPress Interzone was standing proud in the dealers room.

For me personally, the marriage of Andy Cox’s TTA and Interzone is perfect. I’ve been reading The Third Alternative since its inception. If you lay out the issues in sequence you can physically see the development of Cox’s talent as a designer, publisher and editor. The Third Alternative will be relaunched soon as Black Static, but Cox’s work on the redesign of the full-colour, sexy Interzone has turned it into a title that beacons out from the newsagent shelves. And the content has risen to fill those glossy covers The non-fiction giants of Interzones past – Langford, Clute and Lowe – have returned, and are joined by a whole host of fresh, insightful reviewers, interviewers and columnists.

And as for the fiction? Well, it’s like 1987 all over again. Alongside some familiar names like Ian Watson, Paul Di Filippo, Dominic Green and Chris Beckett, there’s a whole host of names I don’t know very well producing very good fiction. Check out Will McIntosh and Jay Lake, Karen Fishler and Jason Stoddart.

And in the most recent issue, #205, there’s one of *those* stories. One that excited me so much when I read it that I rewrote it fifty different ways in my head before I got to the end, only to realise that, yes, the way the author did it was the best way after all. It’s a very simple story about catastrophe befalling innocents in a war-zone and, like the best science fiction, it could not be more relevant to the world we live in right now, today.

It’s brilliant.

It’s by David Mace

It’s called This Happens.

Interzone has rolled on past its 200^th issue and it’s as bright and lively and interesting and provocative as when I first started reading it 20-odd years ago, but it shouldn’t be taken for granted. We shouldn’t just notice peripherally that it happens, and it expect it to keep on happening.

Go check out Interzone. You’ll find it on your newsagent shelves. If you’ve got the disposables, take out a subscription.

Read This Happens, and be grateful. Be amazed.