review by Deon van Heerden
| Published by Rebellion/Solaris
PB 384 pages
RRP £7.99 (Kindle £5.36)
The Recollection's interesting approach to light speed travel and its physical and emotional implications is convincing and well-sustained. Its three primary plots often interact in surprising - and, in one instance, startling - ways. |
From Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
Posted in Reviews | 
Tags: Deon van Heerden, Gareth L Powell, Issue 18, The Recollection | 
Comments Closed
by Nick Wood & Zandile Mahlasela
IT TOOK ME (Nick Wood) a good few years before I plucked up the courage to write the 'Other', i.e. to me, someone who was not white and male. I firstly wrote as a 'white woman' in 'God in the Box' (2003), set in an increasingly familiar London. Phew - that was picked up, published - and I wasn't scorned as a 'sexist imposter'! The leap to crossing the 'colour' divide took a bit longer for me though - part of my fear was that, given South Africa's history, it would be seen as a form of colonization of experience. Then, one day, I sat down and thought long and hard about it. |
Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
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interview by Vianne Venter
Watching a news report on 'corrective rape' that outraged me. Although it's seemingly only a small part of the story, it's a central kernel. Other stories spun outwards from that one - and especially once I'd heard MamBhele's voice, while walking along a path in the Silvermine reserve in Cape Town - then, it almost wrote itself. |
Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
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Posted in Interviews | Tags: Interview, Issue 18, Nick Wood, Vianne Venter, Writers Cornered | Comments Closed
by Nick Wood
We are amongst the last of the last, the ‘do-not-dies’ as the dead now call us. They follow us, the dead do, whispering and pulling at our ears and hair. The other two don’t notice, although they do see and comment on the occasional cock of my head, as I listen without comprehension to dry and meaningless whispers from shadowy lips, the occasional repetition of that one phrase, all I can make out - ‘do-not-dies…’ |
Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
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interview by Vianne Venter
Like a lot of my stories, this one showed up one morning as a fully-formed image: of a man in overalls disintegrating as he’s shuffling down the street. Figuring out who that man was and what was happening to him created the story. |
Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
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Posted in Interviews | Tags: Interview, Issue 18, Thomas Carl Sweterlitsch, Vianne Venter, Writers Cornered | Comments Closed
by Thomas Carl Sweterlitsch
Ashen drizzle. Black sky. Christ, thought McKinley - nothing like the fucking rain. It collected in muddy drifts. It pooled at the curbs. Already the streets were slicked with wet soot. McKinley lifted his boot from the accelerator and hit the emergency flashers. The bald tires of his Ford Focus fishtailed. It was bad enough on clear days when the ash was like fucking snow, but when it rained everything just turned greasy. |
Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
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by Mark Sykes
EVERY NOW AND THEN a sci-fi geek needs a little reassurance that the path he’s chosen is a righteous one. While it’s true that there’s a certain portion of them – sorry, us – that are completely immune to any ridicule being slung their way (for they know their detractors could be silenced with but a wave of the hand and the utterance of a level four banishment spell), there’s a number of geek guys – and girls, of course – who, every now and then, wonder if they’re not just a wee bit old to be learning Klingon, or creating a mini-army of daleks in their basement, or preparing for the day they’ll be picked up by the Xyrilian mothership they’ve been signalling to for the past decade. |
Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
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interview by Vianne Venter
I’ve worked in three different research labs with rats, mice, pigeons and monkeys. Since quitting that line of work, I’ve done the proverbial one-eighty and am now an animal rights advocate. |
Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
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Posted in Interviews | Tags: Interview, Issue 18, Summer Hanford, Vianne Venter, Writers Cornered | Comments Closed
by Summer Hanford
One unremarkable, breezy September morning, a graduate student was cleaning rat cages. Now, most of her rats were housed individually in fine 9 x 12 x 9 inch highly durable plastic bins, but four of them lived together in a colony cage. These four rats were naive Long Evans males, recognizable as 19, 20, 21 and 22 by their earmarks, and were currently on water deprivation in preparation for a study. |
Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
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Vianne Venter
When we started thinking about cover images for this issue, I was keen to create a new image but the deadline was against us. Then Joe hauled this picture I did for Richard Kunzmann’s story ‘Lost In Recollection’ (from Issue 8), out of the archives of his brain – he thought it would work perfectly for ‘The Disposable Man’, by Thomas Carl Sweterlitsch..
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