Interzone #182

[coalescent]

Not a review, just a couple of things that piqued my interest. First up, a letter about John Clute:

"...I have just finished reading John Clute's reviews in Interzone 181. May I just ask what "Twins are termites of the scaffolding of the self in daylight, they are phagocytes of the world day" actually means? I'd like to think I have a reasonable level of intelligence, however the reason for the inclusion of the above in the review of Greg Bear's Vitals mystifies me. As does, on reflection, about 70% of the rest of his reviews."

The editor responds...

"Longtime readers of this magazine will know that John Clute is a law unto himself."

Well, indeed. :-)

Later in the issue, there's an interview with Ted Chiang. I keep seeing comparisons between Chiang and Greg Egan, which alone is enough to make me want to read him. The opening of the interview is:

All science fiction is fundamentally post-religious literature. For those whose minds are shaped by science and technology, the universe is knowable. Faith dissolves, replaced by a sense of wonder at the complexity of creation.

This is the perspective explored in Ted Chiang's first collection, Stories Of Your Life And Others (Tor, 2002). Born in 1967 in Port Jefferson, New York, Chiang has published eight breathtakingly good stories in the past twelve years. He has yet to publish - or even try to write - a novel. Despite his limited number of publications, however, Chiang has exerted a quiet influence in the genre. A five-time Hugo nominee, he has won nearly every major science-fiction award, including the Nebula (twice, in 1990 and 1999), John W Campbell award (1992); Asimov's reader's choice award (1992); and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (1999). Most recently, he won the 2001 Sidewise award for 'Seventy-Two Letters', and the Locus award for 'Hell is the Absence of God', which has also been nominated for a Hugo this year.

(He went on to win the Hugo)

Now, awards aren't everything, but that density of awards is pretty damn impressive. The rest of the interview is very interesting, and the short story collection is reviewed here. I have decided that I Need It. Unfortunately, it's not been published on this side of the pond yet...