Shoreline of Infinity, Issue 11½: Edinburgh International Science Festival Special Edition

Shoreline of Infinity Science Fiction Magazine #11.5

by Noel Chidwick, Anne Charnock, Paul McCauley

Can Science Fiction Save Us?
Jane Alexander, Charlie Jane Anders, Eric Brown, Anne Charnock, David L Clements, Leigh Harlen, Ian Hunter, Ken MacLeod, Tim Major, Paul McAuley, Colin McGuire, Megan Neumann, Jennifer R. Povey, Juliana Rew, Peter Roberts, Michael F Russell, Holly Schofield, Marge Simon, Guy Stewart, Adrian Tchaikovsky, JS Watts, Davyne DeSye, Jane Yolen, Victoria Zelvin


A special edition of Shoreline of Infinity published in partnership with the Edinburgh International Science Festival in 2018 on the theme of sustainability.

“One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility
of mind.”
—Arthur C Clarke

Genres: Science Fiction

196 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 18, 2018

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

[Jack Deighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

In “Pull up a Log” editor Noel Chidwick puts the case for SF as a way to fulfil the question, “Can Science Fiction save us?” posed as the title of the spoken word Event Horizon the magazine was invited by the International Science Festival to put on in connection with the festival.

Some of the contents have appeared in previous issues. Charlie: A Projecting Prestidigitator by Megan Neumann and the poem The Morlock’s Arms by Ken McLeod appeared in Shoreline of Infinity (SoI) 2, We Have Magnetic Trees by Iain Maloney, Pigeon by Guy Stewart and the poem South by Marge Simon in SoI 3, Goodnight New York, New York by Victoria Zevlin and the poem Starscape by J S Watts in SoI 6, Message in a Bottle by Davyne DeSye in SoI 7, the poem Spring Offensive by Colin McGuire in SoI 8, while The Sky is Alive by Michael F Russell, The Last Days of the Lotus Eaters by Leigh Harlen and the poem the evening after by Peter Roberts in SoI 9.

We start with the poem Can Sci-Fi Save Us? by Jane Yolen and then the fiction kicks off with A Cure for Homesickness by Anne Charnock in which a contract employee ponders whether to extend her time.
Winter in the Vivarium by Tim Major is set in a future ice age. Ice statues suddenly start to appear outside the Vivarium for the rich and privileged whose upkeep is seen to by viewpoint character, the much less privileged Byron.
Charlie’s Ant by Adrian Tchaikovsky is about the dispute between Central Control and the ants of Charlie field over how maintain a farm’s production of grain. (Unbeknownst to both, the human society they were set up to service has broken down.)
In Candlemaker Row by Jane Alexander an unspecified disaster has hit Edinburgh. Our narrator is a woman who once lived there, now employed to verify its digital reconstruction – especially its aromas.
The titular Mémé of Juliana Rew’s story is one of the few survivors of her age group left after a flu epidemic wiped out older people. She becomes venerated and an influencer.
Monoliths by Paul McAuley looks to have been inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey and the phenomenon of crop circles. Set in the author’s Quiet War universe three conspirators contrive to build a monolith on the far side of the Moon. When touched it will activate a radio signal beamed at the galaxy’s centre. Thirty-six years later more such unattributed monoliths begin to spring up all over the Solar System.
In A Distant Honk by Holly Schofield, a research biologist is tracking the behaviour and habitat of the wild clown population, which is dying out.
The Day it all Ended by Charlie Jane Anders shows a worker for a producer of useless but made highly desirable items deciding to tell his boss where to stuff it all only to find that was what the company had been waiting for to put into effect its real plan.
The narrator of Last of the Guerilla Gardeners by David L Clements is exactly that. Big agribusiness corporations have taken over seed distribution with only a dedicated few guerrilla gardeners left to scatter wild seed about. And there has been a crackdown on them. This story does for plants what Number Ten Q Street did for food.
This is followed by the poem: Now a Ragged Breeze by Jane Yolen.
Then in “Working the High Steel” by Jennifer R Povey, Malisse is a female Mohawk used to being told to get back to the reservation. But she is a construction worker, on a kind of space elevator. The finished project is being tested when one of the transit pods hits a problem. She goes out to try to fix it. After all, “‘Mohawks don’t fall.’”
The Rest is Speculation by Eric Brown is set over two million years in the future when representatives of all the sentient species which have populated Earth are brought to witness the planet’s last moments. The story nods to James Blish’s Surface Tension.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid short stories all the way through wherever we're headed.