I have been assiduously buying Interzone all year, and not finding the time to read it. It’s not a complete lie to say I bought the last couple of issues in part because I’m impressed that they finally got their act together on the cover art front, and I wanted a complete set. Still, now that I’ve got them, it seems silly to just have them sitting there. Since Interzone published just over thirty stories this year, I should be able to get through them in a month: time for a December reading project. Taking a leaf out of Martin’s book, I will be posting about each story individually. I’m unlikely to manage a strict regime of one a day — I forsee fallow periods during the week, and catch-up at the weekends — but we’ll see how it goes. And I’ll update this post with links to the posts on each story.
Interzone 220
- “Monetized” by Jason Stoddard
- “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster
- “After Everything Woke Up” by Rudy Rucker
- “Spy vs Spy” by Neil Williamson
- “Miles to Isengard” by Leah Bobet
- “Memory Dust” by Gareth L. Powell
Interzone 221
- “A Clown Escapes from Circus Town” by Will McIntosh
- “Fishermen” by Al Robertson
- “Saving Diego” by Matthew Kressel
- “Far & Deep” by Alaya Dawn Johnson
- “Home Again” by Paul M Berger
- “Black Swan” by Bruce Sterling
Interzone 222
- “Johnny and Emmie-Lou get Married” by Kim Lakin-Smith
- “Unexpected Outcomes” by Tim Pratt
- “Lady of the White-Spired City” by Sarah L Edwards
- “Microcosmos” by Nina Allan
- “Ys” by Aliette de Bodard
- “Mother of Champions” by Sean McMullen
Interzone 223
- “Butterfly Bomb” by Dominic Green
- “Coat of Many Colours” by Dominic Green
- “Glister” by Dominic Green
- “The Transmigration of Aishwarya Desai” by Eric Gregory
- “Silence and Roses” by Suzanne Palmer
Interzone 224
- “Sublimation Angels” by Jason Sanford
- “No Longer You” by Katherine Sparrow and Rachel Swirsky
- “Shucked” by Adrian Joyce
- “The Godfall’s Chemsong” by Jeremiah Tolbert
- “The Festival of Tethselem” by Chris Butler
Interzone 225
- “Here We Are, Falling Through Shadows” by Jason Sanford
- “By Starlight” by Rebecca J Payne
- “The Killing Streets” by Colin Harvey
- “Funny Pages” by Lavie Tidhar
- “Bone Island” by Shannon Page and Jay Lake
vector-bsfa.com 
I will try to play along with Interzone 223 because it is similarly gathering dust.
I just finished #224 and opened #225, so will hope to join in too.
What about mentions of the non-fiction in each issue?
Best part of the magazine if you ask me Ian :-)
I’ve already read the non-fiction, though. To be honest, I find it a bit hit-and-miss these days — Nick Lowe is excellent, of course, and some other individual reviewers are good; but some of the reviews are very weak, and I generally find the interviews a bit superficial. So the focus here is going to be on the fiction. Hopefully starting later today!
If my reviews are crap, I’d like to know. I’m not going to improve otherwise. Admittedly, we only get 350 – 650 words, but I’d like to think they were worth reading…
Yours is not one of the names that I’m disappointed to see, if that’s any good to you.
There is another factor here, which is that given my positions with SH and Vector, I feel … inappropriate? Something, anyway … criticizing other publications’ non-fiction in a way that I don’t when it comes to fiction.
Ouch. Damned with faint praise :-)
I don’t think SH and IZ can compare review-wise – you have so much more room to discuss a book in SH and, I believe, much longer to write the review. OTOH, IZ and Vector – from what I remember, back when I used to review books for Vector – operate very similarly.
Are you a member of the BSFA? I will be taking over as reviews editor of Vector from January so if you are interested in returning to the fold, let me know. I am hoping to be able to give individual reviews a bit more space (certainly more than 350 words).
I really like TTA Press’s non-fiction output. I certainly think that it’s better than the non-fiction output of the glossy SF mags.
Nick Lowe, obviously, is a gem. Peter Tennant also does really good and unappreciated work at Black Static giving shape to a Horror genre that is mostly overlooked in genre criticism circles. I also think Tony Lee fills an important position in so far as so much of genre film-making is not about big blockbusters but rather small-scale DVD releases and so I think his columns are worth reading if you really want to know what’s going on in genre films.
Beyond those three… hmm. The interviews are hit and miss but I think that that’s true of all genre interviews. I seldom read them anymore precisely because they tend to be shit but all the good ones I’ve read have been in interzone (The Moorcock one in the themed issue was great and Black Static had a great Ligotti one recently too).
As for the other columnists and reviews? Hmm. I’ve definitely taken against Christopher Fowler in Black Static and I don’t understand why there’s an Ansible column in Interzone but beyond that I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other, though I must admit that I don’t read the Interzone reviews regularly. Last time I did they seemed fine though that was a while ago.
One issue down, five to go. The pick of #220 is definitely Foster’s story, runner-up laurels to Bobet.
Two down, four to go. Laurels this time go to Sterling.
Half way there! The pick of #222 is certainly “Microcosmos”, runner-up Pratt.
Issue #223 done and dusted: the pick is probably “Glister”.
Issue #224 done — one to go! It’s probably the weakest so far; the Sanford and Sparrow/Swirsky stories are both pretty good, though.
All done! The pick of 225 is Tidhar’s story, honourable mention to Payne.