Interzone #287, May/June 2020
“Night-Town of Mars” by Tim Lees
“Those We Serve” by Eugenia Triantafllou
“The Transport of Bodies” by John Possidente
“Make America Great Again” by Val Nolan
Reviewed by Kevin P Hallett
The 287th issue of Interzone has four original stories, including two novelettes. It was an entertaining collection of stories well worth the price of admission.
“Night-Town of Mars” by Tim Lees
This horror fantasy novelette has a nephew helping his wacky uncle defeat the local council. The school-aged nephew gets some strange and nonconformist ideas from his Uncle Edward.
It starts when the nephew gets permission to stay a week or more with his uncle and aunt outside of London. When he gets there, he finds his eccentric uncle in trouble with the local town council. His uncle claims they have secret records on him. In short order, the uncle has enrolled his nephew in a mysterious plan to steal those records.
Each night, the nephew wakes from his dreams to find himself elsewhere. It looks like a Martian version of the town. Is this a way to get those secret records?
This story was quirky with small hints of Alice in Wonderland in the plot. But it was entertaining and read well.
“Those We Serve” by Eugenia Triantafllou
Manoli keeps a tourist island going during the summer season in this SF short story. But, unknown to the tourists, he isn’t human. His human counterpart placed Manoli there so he could go off and live his life elsewhere. Manoli’s programming will not let him leave the island or reveal the illegal deception.
One of the human visitors, Amelia, comes every year and Manoli has a special place in his artificial heart for her. His human half began those feelings thirty years ago, but Manoli has his own now. Amelia wants him to leave the island with her on an excursion, but he can’t. Worse yet, Manoli thinks he’s seen a tourist that looks like him lurking around the hotel grounds.
This character-driven story’s prose flowed well. And many readers will find themselves caught up in Manoli’s fate and may even shed a tear or two by the end.
“The Transport of Bodies” by John Possidente
A journalist on Humboldt space station is at the infirmary to pick up his distant cousin’s hibernating body in this short SF tale. When a celebrity is brought in under arrest, the journalist goes for the interview when the policeman is distracted.
The celebrity tells him a story about going out past Neptune with his new husband to check out a gravitational anomaly. What they find is a rock with the gravity of a Martian moon and the size of two football fields. Furthermore, its semi-porous surface creates problems for the two explorers that ends up with one of them under arrest for murder.
The prose was easy to read and kept the reader engaged.
“Make America Great Again” by Val Nolan
A year after the Fulham riots, Jefferson, a black journalist, is chasing a strange story in this SF novelette set in the present. A few people believe a man, killed in the Second World War, was brought forward to stop people being killed in the riot. But Jefferson sees only the human side of the story, an honorable man stands up to the neo-Nazis and puts his life at risk to save an innocent girl.
Jefferson’s story isn’t well received though, and he sets off to try and find the real story behind this urban legend. It takes him on a journey he can never forget afterwards.
This was a story that has been told many times in science fiction, but Nolan has found a new and heart-warming way to expand the story and create a wonderful character-driven page-turner.