From Publishers Weekly
This volume contains a dozen stories selected from the pages of Interzone, a British magazine of science fiction and fantasy, plus one never published before. It is a diverse group of pieces, in terms of both quality and style, for the magazine specializes in experimental forms. Among the best stories are Geoff Ryman's "O Happy Day!," a grim vision of a fascistic matriarchal society; Scott Bradfield's "The Flash! Kid," about an ancient otherworldly artifact that is actually a time-bomb, and of the unfortunate child through whom it works; John Shirley's "What Cindy Saw," a nightmarish detailing of a hallucinatory paranoid psychosis; J. G. Ballard's "The Object of the Attack," which takes deadly aim at our propensity to follow and assassinate demagogues; and Michael Blumlein's darkly humorous exercise in poetic justice against the body politic, "Tissue Ablation and Variant Regeneration." These tales reveal a political sophistication beyond that of most American science fiction and at their bestthe Ballard, for instancea quality of writing rarely encountered.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
