By sheer
coincidence that they were listed back to back in the short story collection I was
reading yesterday, today’s authors are both Australian. I occasionally bump
into online articles or a review focusing on Australian genre authors.
Apparently it’s a niche in genre publishing, a specific look at the writers
from down under. It’s nice to see praise thrown as a group of writers like
that. It helps with your perspective. Not all English language writers are from
the US or the UK. Overall, the Year’s
Best SF 16 has been pretty good for its diversity in writers. On to the
reviews!
“Under the Moons of Venus” by Damien Broderick
Read in Year’s Best SF 16 (2011), edited by
David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Originally
published in Subterranean (Spring2010), edited by Jonathan Strahan (guest editor)
Broderick has been
writing science fiction stories since the 1960s but this is the first time I
read one. It’s not a simple read, there is a lot of information thrown at the
reader and you have to be active in putting things together in order to
properly understand the story. I’m not sure I understood it completely, to be
honest. Who can blame me when the story uses advanced mathematics and
geomorphology to try and solve the mystery of the Moon’s disappearance? The
characters, all four of them, are straddling the line between insanity and
genius. One of them happens to be an intelligent talking dog (he was surgically
altered).
The plot, as best
as I could tell, is about a small group of characters living on an abandoned
Earth. Someone or something has moved most of the population to Venus, after
terraforming it to allow for its colonisation. A man, Blackett, was on Venus
for a short time but inexplicably ended up back on Earth. He’s either trying to
figure out how to get back to Venus or solving the mystery of the disappearance
of two moons (Earth’s and one of Jupiter’s). He’s quite depressed and talking
with his potentially insane psychiatrist probably isn’t helping much. His
mystery solving skills involve a lot of reading and plenty of complex
conversations with one of his neighbours and his psychiatrist. Oh, and the
talking dog I mentioned before also talks about really complex things. The
story ends with Blackett succeeding in one of his goals or going completely
mad. It would take a smarter or more attentive reader than me to figure it out,
I think.
Ranking: 2 stars
The story has a
neat idea at its core. Broderick is working in the vein of J. G. Ballard
(according to the editors’ introduction and, based on the little that I know of
Ballard, that is accurate). The subject matter is complicated and Broderick’s
writing style doesn’t help as it’s very dry and lacks any real emotion. It’s
almost as though this story is trying to prove what the term speculative
fiction really means as the science is heavy, and readers are forced to follow
along closely in order to understand what is really happening in this story. I
really don’t think I’m the intended audience with this one. It’s certainly not
bad. Broderick clearly has skill as a writer and enjoys playing with big ideas,
but the lack of emotion or any narrative momentum made it difficult for me to
enjoy “Under the Moons of Venus”.
“All the Love in the World” by Cat Sparks
Read in Year’s Best SF 16 (2011), edited by
David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Originally published
in Sprawl (2010), edited by Alisa
Krasnostein
Originally
published in a collection of short stories by Australian writers, Car Sparks’s “All
the Love in the World” is a post-apocalyptic story. The plot doesn’t concern
itself with the cause of the apocalypse or even the details of civilization’s
collapse afterword. It’s a character-centric story. A woman (I don’t think we
ever get her name) tells her story of living in a barricaded little
neighbourhood. People live a crowded lifestyle because of their fear of the
outside. There haven’t been any shootings or large scale violence in many
months, but the fear remains and it seems like a good idea to stay behind the barricade
and try to develop a self-sustaining community.
The problem with
that kind of lifestyle is that even small changes can cause devastating, even
life changing or deadly, consequences to the community. Jeannie’s arrival did
that for our main character. It didn’t take long for Jon, the main character’s
partner, to move on and replace her with Jeannie. The main character’s life,
the life she created for herself post-apocalypse, slips away simply because of the
presence of a new person in her little community. When Jon and a couple other
people fall ill with typhoid, the woman sets out into the city to try and trade
for some medicine. On the other side of the barricades she encounters many
different kinds of people and ways of living. It’s essentially a new world. She
comes to the realization that living behind barricades might not be for her.
The world has ended, but life hasn’t.
Ranking: 3 stars
Sparks uses the
post-apocalypse setting to tell a life-affirming tale. The woman’s pettiness
early in the story leads to a well realized change of character by the end. The
idea that a large scale, worldwide catastrophe wouldn’t put an end to life is
explored. Living in this story means specifically doing things that would seem pointless
in a world focused on surviving. Things such as serving pancakes for free at
the community market, surfing, or playing guitar and singing songs by The
Beatles. This story won’t change how you feel about post-apocalypse stories but
it might delight in its unusually positive take on the end of the world.
Next Sunday: I enjoyed my break from Robert E.
Howard’s Conan and I think I’ll continue with some more science
fiction stories.
No comments:
Post a Comment