Solaris, 2007, £7.99
reviewed in Interzone 209, April 2007
An anthology of original stories from a new
imprint inevitably stands as a harbinger of what we might expect from that
publisher, particularly as the first and last stories are by authors featured
on the initial list from Solaris. It doesn’t help, therefore, that ‘In His
Sights’ by Jeffrey Thomas, set in the
‘Punktown’ location of his forthcoming
novel, is such a sadly old-fashioned affair. It is a story about the effects of
war, but the jungle warfare, the tactics used, even the alien names are a
direct borrowing from the Vietnam War. Moreover the central idea is that sweet
little fallacy of sixties comic books: that mutation means everyone acquiring
their own unique super power. It is possible that forty years ago this story
would have seemed right on the button; but an awful lot has happened since
then.
Closing the book is ‘The Farewell Party’ by Eric Brown, which reads like the final part of his Kéthani Sequence. These stories have been among the best things that Brown has written, but this episode seems to be running out of steam, and it highlights the one thing that has been missing throughout the sequence, the failure to let us follow the story beyond earth. This story clearly demanded that final step, and Brown’s hesitation is ultimately what lets down what is still one of the better stories in this collection.
In between, Mann has rounded up the usual suspects, too many of them with below-par stories that show all the hallmarks of having been disinterred from long-forgotten bottom drawers. I’ll only name-and-shame Mike Resnick and David Gerrold, whose collaboration, ‘Jellyfish’, starts as a clumsy satire on Kurt Vonnegut, turns into an even clumsier satire on the old-guard of sf writers (and since all too obvious avatars of Resnick and Gerrold appear here, we know the attack isn’t meant to be taken seriously), and ends up as simply one of the most embarrassingly bad stories you’re likely to encounter in a long time.
I also notice a reluctance to describe. Neal Asher’s ‘Bioship’, for instance, is crammed full of the strange, but there isn’t a single word of description anywhere in the story, which means it is impossible to get any clear picture of what these strangenesses might actually be. Simon Ings also eschews description in ‘The Wedding Party’, but in this instance it is a deliberate effect, forcing us to imagine for ourselves the horrors in this tale of all too human monstrosity.
There are better stories here. ‘C-Rock City’ by the ever-reliable Jay Lake and Greg van Eekhout presents an intriguing space future that cries out to be further developed. ‘Zora and the Land Ethic Nomads’ by Mary Turzillo has too little story for its well-constructed Martian setting but is still a solid, readable story, as are ‘The Accord’ by Keith Brooke and ‘Third Person’ by Tony Ballantyne. But alongside the Brown the best pieces here are ‘Last Contact’ in which Stephen Baxter again destroys the universe but at least demonstrates his increasing ability to handle the human scale beside the epic; and ‘Cages’ by Ian Watson which, like just about every Ian Watson story, shoots off in too many directions at once, but which still comes loaded with as many startling, original and intriguing ideas as the whole of the rest of this collection put together.
If this collection really is a true mirror of the new imprint, then we can expect just a few tantalising glimmers of gold amid an awful lot of tired old dross.