Another Interzone 212 Review

Writing on SF Diplomat, Jonathan McCalmont reviews Ack-Ack Macaque:

A young man is living with a Japanese Cartoonist, the creator of a biplane flying, cigar chewing cartoon ape. Suddenly, the cartoonist leaves the protagonist for a smug, handsome businessman who makes Ack-Ack Macaque a household name. This prompts our hero to attempt suicide and to wander round in a daze until the cartoonist returns and informs him that not only has she been dumped but an AI version of her cartoon character has escaped and is laying waste to the world around them.

This story owes its strength to the touching believability of a man who falls in love and then sees his life fall apart as he simply cannot come to terms with the fact that his girlfriend left him. We see the protagonist through a series of scenes wherein he attempts suicide and makes a spectacle of himself by begging his girlfriend to come back and taunting his ex's new lover. The SFnal elements of the fictional ape's adventures and the increasingly implausible, and possibly imaginary, events of the second half of the story feed the sense that the protagonist is slowly disintegrating both emotionally and psychologically. However, the inclusion of these SFnal elements make the story feel strangely up-beat and fanciful as... after all... it is all about an ape in a biplane, something that can't help but make you smile. The minor stylistic flourish of making the story feel upbeat is what ultimately makes it feel so intensely rewarding. It's something of an elderly chestnut to deal with a collapsing mind by introducing SFnal elements into a mundane setting but instead of leaving it there, Powell creates a fictional reality that might not only protect the protagonist by virtue of not being real but also by virtue of having the simple morality and feel-good ending of a colourful comic strip. Surprisingly thoughtful and emotionally intense, "Ack-Ack Macaque" is a lovely piece of work that is vaguely reminiscent of Jon Courtenay Grimwood's End of The World Blues. This was easily the issue's stand-out story as far as I'm concerned. Yes, it is that good.