Interzone: The First Anthology- New Science Fiction & Fantasy Writing

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. (April 8)