Interzone: The First Anthology [signed] [first edition]

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.