While the Americans have several well known SF and fantasy magazines, Britain only has one: Interzone. This book is a collection of some of the best stories printed by Interzone in the 1990s.
There are twenty-nine stories featured here, some from current 'big name' authors, most of whom are British. What follows is a sample of stories that particularly caught my attention.
The book opens with Mitochondrial Eve by Greg Egan. As expected, this story deals with genetics, in this case the 'mythical' eve whose mitochondria we all share. The protagonist attempts to trace family lines in a different way through the use of quantum mechanics (via entangled particles); the results of which are unexpected by all who are for and against eve.
The George in George and the Comet is not George Jetson. In this Stephen Baxter story, he is a flying monkey inhabiting a small artificial world orbiting a sun in the far future (the sun is now a red giant). So why is George a flying monkey? Put it down to errors in reading the genetic code by enigmatic aliens! Well, wouldn't you have problems reading the DNA of a human a few billion years dead?
Ian R. MacLeod is a writer who is constantly coming up with extremely unusual (fantastic) alternate Earths. From flying parents to sexless 'uncles' required for breeding (featured in previous stories), he now gives us a look at people able to transform themselves into any shape - animal, vegetable or non-living. The Family Football follows one family whose mother is suffering from an illness making her unable to change shape from a three-toed sloth and a football that may be more than just a football.
Molly Brown's Bad Timing gives a humourous look at time travel paradoxes and what happens when you try, in your fumbling way, to fulfill what has already happened. Here, the protagonist discovers a short story that tells of a relationship between the author of the story and himself many years ago and steals a time-machine to fufill it. Problem is, he did not manage to get the instruction booklet for the machine!
Norbert and the System, by Timons Esaias, is a fascinating story about a future when expert systems prompt your every move, depending on your actions and the actions of those around you. Things began to get interesting when one character innocently asks, while changing his expert system, for an off switch for his system!
John Meaney's Sharp Tang is a standard 'humans land and observe an alien civilisation' story with a very effective, and moving, ending. In the story, the aliens transfer knowledge by cutting of pieces of their own flesh to be eaten by others. The ending is not easy to accept, but unavoidable (think Orson Scott Card and you'll know what I mean).
Thomas M. Disch gives us an unusual look at book readers in a future when reading is a dying 'art' and publishers pay you to read their books in The Man Who Read a Book. Best of all, authors can get endownments and awards from foundations! It is heaven from book readers and writers? Maybe, if you can stand to read the kind of books that are being published in the future...
Human Waste, by Mary Gentle, is a good, but unpleasant, story to read. It is set in an age where nanomachines inhabit us and repair almost any injury, from cuts to lost fingers to broken bones. Because of this, human life is no longer consided very valuable in this world (can you show abuse when all its signs are healed by nanomachines?).
The book ends on a high note with Cyril the Cyberpig by Eugene Byrne and looks at the (humourous) effects of a cartoon superhero (in this case, a cybernetic pig) bought to life in an amusement park and what happens afterwards. It makes you glad creations like Dangermouse don't really exist in real life...do they?
Many of the stories in this collection are wonderful and excellent. I did not enjoy some stories but that is due to personal tastes (I tend to turn off from stylistic pieces). On the whole, an excellent book and shows that that SF and Fantasy in Britain has a bright future. Grab it and read it!
Up till about 4 months ago, Nicola Griffith was a name that I came across in the intro to Gardner Dozois's Year Best anthologies. Yep, so she wrote Ammonite which won the Lambda (awarded to a novel that explores gay/lesbian issues) and the Tiptree award. After all, I'd read China Mountain Zhang which had also won the Tiptree and which also dealt with homosexuality. That was a decent read but hardly worth the hype.
I was pleasantly surprised after reading Ammonite however. Going in without any preconceived notions (more about this later), the book was quite unputdownable (a somewhat rare quality in SF these days). It is, in essence, a biological mystery set amidst a world populated only by women, seen from the eyes of a lesbian. Yes, not a single man sullies the pages of this book. The background is that of a biological mystery, much like Sheri S. Tepper's Grass (another book I enjoyed), but Griffith weaves in sociology and even a lesbian love affair with a successful conception to boot (impossible? Read the book!), while adding a religious fanatic bent on a jihad just to spice up the brew. Aside from a few narrative lapses that slow the flow, the book chugs along smoothly, with a mildly disappointing ending however. For a first novel though, it is an impressive piece of work.
And on to Griffith. Well, she's lesbian, and a UK citizen currently living in Seattle with her partner, Kelley Eskridge, who also happens to be an SF writer. While she was writing Ammonite, she was then suffering from what was thought to be chronic fatigue syndrome, which was later diagnosed to be multiple sclerosis (MS is a nasty disease in which various different parts of your nervous system fail for no apparent reason. Neurological defects like blindness or paralysis may occur, often temporarily, sometimes permanently. There is no cure). It still affects her adversely as she often suffers relapses, paralysing a hand or leg. One relapse even affected her memory, causing her to forget the name of a major character.
She hates Ammonite being labelled as lesbian SF, and has in fact stated that, "My protagonist is a lesbian, and she has a lesbian love affair. It's no more a book about being lesbian than Neuromancer is a book about coming to terms with one's heterosexuality." Which is true in a sense. While you do realise quite early that most of the characters are lesbian, the fact of their sexual preferences becomes quite secondary. The success of the novel lies in the fact that it does not deal with lesbianism but transcends that, so that midway through the novel, they are all simply human and their preferences immaterial. While in Le Guin's classic The Left Hand Of Darkness, the sexual dimorphism of the Gethenians is a central motif that permeates the novel, in Ammonite lesbianism quickly becomes the accepted baseline for all relationships that follow.
Her second novel, Slow River, has similarly won the Lambda, and is in fact a nominee in the upcoming Nebulas. I haven't seen it in Singapore yet, but if you want to lay your hands on Ammonite, I spotted it in Angel Book Store in Far East just 1 week ago. Do yourself a favour and check her out - she's definitely worth a read.