Shoreline of Infinity, Issue 4, Summer 2016

Shoreline of Infinity Science Fiction Magazine #4

by Noel Chidwick (Editor), Holly Schofield, Gary Gibson

We have some great new stories, interviews with Ken MacLeod and Tricia Sullivan, a new column by BSFA award winning writer Ruth EJ Booth, poetry from Shelly Bryant and Benjamin Dodds. We have a fine selection of book reviews, a fresh Beachcomber, and our journey through classic Scottish science fiction continues with Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

Stories

Well Enough Alone—Holly Schofield
Senseless—Gary Gibson
The Stilt Men of the Lunar Swamps—Andrew J Wilson
Model Organisms—Caroline Grebbell
Note to Self—Michael Stroh
From the Closet—Robert Neilson
geefourdotalpha—Clive Tern
Gay Hunter—J Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon)

SF Poetry by Shelly Bryant and Benjamin Dodds

Noise and Sparks, Ruth EJ Booth

Book Reviews

The Corporation Wars: Dissidence, Ken Macleod
Central Station, Lavie Tidhar
Children of Earth and Sky, Guy Gavriel Kay
Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee
Winter, Dan Grace
Tracer, Rob Boffard

SF Caledonia by Monica Burns on Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Parabolic Puzzles.

163 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 17, 2016

About the author

I'm Editor-in-Chief of Science Fiction magazine, Shoreline of Infinity (www.shorelineofinfinity.com), published in Scotland.

I've been a reader for as long as I can remember, my tastes tending towards the fantastical rather than the realistic. After all, isn't that the point of a story, to be taken to a different place?

Science Fiction and fantasy is where I have lived and dreamed since I first read Grimm's Stories. My teenage years were spent absorbing every word I could find by the likes of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Wyndham, Bradbury, McCaffrey, LeGuin, Moorcock, Ballard, Priest.

I loved the early stuff from the 30s and 40s with writers such as E E Smith, Olaf Stapledon and the many other writers who earned their keeping bashing away at typewriters in dark, dust attics.

And my enjoyment in SF continues unabated with the writings of Stephen Baxter, Charles Stross, Ken MacLeod, Eric Brown, Peter Hamilton.

And many more. Many, many more.

I've written on and off over the years, dabbling in SF as a teenager when I had some stories published in fanzines. I have recently returned to the words with greater relish, and have released a couple of small collection of tales based on my adopted home town of Edinburgh.

I was shortlisted for a short crime story competition for Bloody Scotland, and the story is available, along with its fellow shortlistees, as an ebook published by Blasted Heath.

Reviews

[Chris Marchant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some really good stories by authors I'm going investigate further. One story that I didn't get the gist of at all.Interesting reviews, hopefully one of my stories will get reviewed there in the future. The interviews again lead to the 'I want to find out more' feeling.

Have started writing a story that I hope might get published in a future issue.

[Jack Deighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this issue there are interviews with Ken Macleod and Tricia Sullivan by Gary Dalkin. Duncan Lunan reviews Ken Macleod’s The Corporation Wars: Dissidence mainly by way of discussing other works; Iain Maloney mystifyingly likes Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit and praises publisher Unsung Signals for taking a punt on Dan Grace’s long short (or short long) piece of fiction, Winter, not to mention the work itself. Elsa Bouet likes Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station, Benjamin Thomas eulogises Guy Gavriel Kay’s Children of Earth and Sky despite its tendency towards info-dumping, Ian Hunter is less generous to Ian Boffard’s Tracer. Ruth EJ Booth’s first column discusses the effect of winning a first award on a writer. Russell Jones’s introduction to Multiverse (the poetry section) manages to tell us what the poems are about before we read them.
As to the fiction:-
Well Enough Alone by Holly Schofield depicts the cognitive decline of an elderly woman. Keen to get rid of her electronic minder by damaging it, she persuades the repair technician to download its programming into her smartcane while awaiting a replacement. The smartcane has programming of its own.
In Senseless by Gary Gibson a future National Unity totalitarian government perverts a medical breakthrough by using a device to remove senses from the prisoners it detains. A blind inmate who has developed compensation mechanisms and concocted an escape plan is suspicious of a new cellmate.
Andrew J Wilson’s The Stilt-Men of the Lunar Swamps is a typically exuberant piece of Wilsoniana, a Vernian/Wellsian pastiche in which our intrepid adventurers travel into a cavern in the Moon to meet the titular stilt-men and their even more alien controllers. There’s also a character named MacGuffin.
Model Organisms by Caroline Grebell relates the last yearnings of a dying life-form.
In Note to Self by Michael Stroh a wannabe Science Fiction writer busily piling up the rejection slips receives a package in the post: his first novel, sent to him by his future self.
Robert Neilson’s From the Closet is the somewhat predictable story of a man who tailors himself – literally – to the profile required by his internet dating partner.
The G4.A of geefourdotalpha by Clive Tern is a fighting robot which achieves consciousness when brought down in its final battle, surviving hundreds of years before being unearthed by a human anxious to preserve her hunting grounds.
Beachcomber by Mark Toner is a continuation of the graphic/comic strip series introduced in Shoreline of Infinity 3. This episode manages to combine 1950s UFOlogy with the Broons!
Gay Hunter by James Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon) is an extract from that author’s novel of the same title, the latest to be considered under Monica Burns’s7 SF Caledonia umbrella.

[Mark Toner · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Shoreline of Infinity goes on. More good stuff in this handy little anthology. I'm looking forward to number 6 coming out in time for Christmas.