Archive for the 'Review' Category

So, as I mentioned on Monday (in a post written last Friday, confusingly enough) I was in Idaho for the past week in order to take the LSAT. As for how that went, well, ask me on July 2nd when I get my score. The trip involved a lot of long drives, and so it was the perfect chance for me to check out a podcast I had been meaning to for a while, Escape Pod. This is a weekly podcast of SF short stories. They pay the writers and accept previously published stuff, so the fiction is quite good. And over the month of April, they did a bunch of this year’s Hugo nominees. In fact, they did four of the five stories nominated in the short fiction category. I had actually read the fifth one, Neil Gaiman’s “How to Talk to Girls at Parties,” in an issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction earlier this year, so I’ve now read or heard all of them. So I thought I’d share my thoughts. You definitely shouldn’t take my word for it on any of these, though. Download the podcasts yourself at Escape Pod, or in the case of the Gaiman story, you can read it or listen to it from his web site here.

Here’s the list, with my thoughts on each:

• “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” by Neil Gaiman

I was pretty surprised to hear that this was one of the nominees. Not that I necessarily should have been–Gaiman’s American Gods won the Hugo in 2002. But I was found this story pretty forgettable, frankly. Not bad, certainly, but far from the greatest the genre has to offer. I remember the characterization being very solid and believable, but I just didn’t care about the story that much. I guess I’m generally not as into Gaiman as a lot of people. By the time I got into comics, Sandman was, while still good, nowhere near as singular as it had been when it came out. Once you’ve read Berlin and From Hell and Phoenix and Y the Last Man and Fables and all the rest, it’s hard to see Sandman as all that special. I feel the same way about Gaiman’s prose work that I’ve read, only more so. Good but not great.

• “Kin” by Bruce McAllister

In a futuristic world where aliens visit regularly and the continent is vastly overpopulated, a poor kid scrapes together 200 bucks to hire an alien assassin to kill a man who threatens his sister’s life. There’s more to both the boy and the hired killer than would appear at first glance. Like the Gaiman story, this one stands out more because of its interesting characters than because of the story. But where Gaiman’s story excels in its characterization of normal, recognizable people, this one works because of the uniqueness of the characters. But also like the Gaiman story, this one didn’t give me enough that I could really apply any superlatives to it. Another “good, not great.”

• “The House Beyond Your Sky” by Benjamin Rosenbaum

Here we see some of the vast imaginative scope that SF is capable of, where “universe” is only a small unit of measure. Large parts of the action take place in what are explicitly metaphors for highly advanced algorithms and such. This worked well for me, a kind of beautiful merging of concrete and abstract. There is a definite lyrical sense to this piece. It’s not surprising that it was published in Strange Horizons, a professional SF webzine that does a lot of more lyrical SF and fantasy stories. Sometimes they even go a little too far in the direction of poetry for me and I have trouble sussing out the story underneath, but this one definitely worked for me–the story is clear. But the appeal of this one is the vastness of imaginespace it takes up.

• “Eight Episodes” by Robert Reed

I could possibly have guessed without knowing where the previous story came from (although I could also have seen it being published in Fantasy and Science Fiction). But this one surprised me. It was published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, known generally for having stories where strong characters are emphasized. This story, perhaps the most formally inventive of this years nominees, doesn’t really have characters at all. At least not in the traditional sense. The story is a description of the short-lived science fiction television series “Invasion,” aired by a doomed fledgling network sometime in the mid-2010s. Slow-moving and running contrary to most television conventions, it is canceled after only 8 episodes. But the series holds some secrets that guarantee it a place as one of the greatest cult classics in history. Anyone who can make what is essentially an encyclopedia entry from the future this compelling deserves a serious pat on the back. I highly recommend this one.

• “Impossible Dreams” by Tim Pratt

Man, if you have even a little sliver of movie love, this one is for you. Actually, if you’re a geek at all–or even an appreciator of any art, I think you’ll recognize something here. Ok, I basically recommend this one to everyone. Pete is a serious film buff–it’s basically his reason for getting out of bed. So when he finds a video store a few blocks from his house that he’d never seen before, he knew right away that something was off. He stepped in and began browsing. Then he saw it: “The Magnificient Ambersons: The Directors Cut….”

Seriously. Go read it or listen to it. It’s just delightful. That it coincidentally shares a name with one of my favorite Iron Maiden songs just makes it perfect