User Profile

INTERZONE #299 is out!

In this issue: stories by Seán Padraic Birnie, E.G. Condé, Rachael Cupp, Roby Davies, Matt Hollingsworth, Prashanth Srivatsa, and R. Wren; columns by Alexander Glass, Nick Lowe, Val Nolan, and Aliya Whiteley; and book reviews by Gautam Bhatia, Zachary Gillan, Kelly Jennings, Paul Kincaid, Giselle Leeb, and Val Nolan. The cover art, SIBILANCE, is by Carly A-F.

Subscriptions and issues direct from IZ

https://interzone.press/iz-299/

#sff #fantastika #shortFiction #zine #INTERZONE

New @InterzoneMag issue today, looks awesome! https://weightlessbooks.com/interzone-299/

May issues of Lightspeed, Nightmare, The Dark, @Locusmag , Flash Fiction Online, @clarkesworld, Forever, @lunastation and @SmallWondersSFF are here! https://weightlessbooks.com/2024/5/

Niall Harrison Reviews Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang https://locusmag.com/2024/04/niall-harrison-reviews-jumpnauts-by-hao-jingfang/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-RSS

An interesting story of a young girl who helps her mother and father run an inn by the river. Only, she and her mother do all the hard work of keeping the inn running while the father does other 'monetary activities' and they have to clean up after him.

That cleaning up includes getting rid of the corpses of officials and others that the father kills to prevent them interfering with his business of making money. Resentment builds up in the girl when she sees her father been flattered by the villagers while she and her mother are ignored.

But it all comes to a head when a ghost appears and exposes the whole operation. And now, the girl must act in the only way she can to save the business, even if it means being mean to her father.

Explore @garykwolfe’s review of THE DEAD CAT TAIL ASSASSINS by @pdjeliclark: “Clark is adept at balancing his central mystery with quirky character development and enough witty details…” https://locusmag.com/2024/04/gary-k-wolfe-reviews-the-dead-cat-tail-assassins-by-p-djeli-clark/

Part of what I love about reading the Murderbot books is the sampler-box of competency porn. SecUnit themselves is a high tech assassin/RoboCop, ART is immensely clever, and all of Preservation is just chock-full of emotional and social intelligence, with all the Preservation humans demonstrating empathy, compassion, humility and emotional honesty.

I want to be adopted by Preservation. SecUnit is thus a tender combination of ruthless protector and vulnerable child — and so are the people of Preservation, in almost entirely complementary circumstances. it's so satisfying to see each of them displaying their competencies to protect each other.

It's genuinely a relationship novel, but without pair-bonding, jealousy, or sex — two different systems that need each other, in a long slow burn of trying to be together and be different at the same time.