This is a good one, too. Sturdy. Clear narrative voice (Scotsman seeking his fortune among the stars), interesting setting (two settings, actually, but the main one is Atlas B, a heavy-metal-rich planet with a suitably adapted ecosystem), well-paced (including a couple of good action sequences), knowing (planet called Midas, group called the Robinsonade Guaranteed Lashup Company), cold-eyed about where its premises lead (brutal colonialism). It would feel wrong to ask for anything more.
Month: January 2010
“Coat of Many Colours” by Dominic Green
Better. “Coat of Many Colours” is pretty much a pure old-fashioned idea story, nicely done. In an ecologically devastated South America, Jurassic Park-like tech is being used to engineer “a better, cheaper burger machine” — a food animal that can thrive in the desertified Amazon basin. But, in Experiment 2308, they appear to have accidentally created an intelligent creature. The Australian protagonist, Mullen, is ostensibly brought in to prove that Experiment 2308 is not intelligent, so that she can be killed and eaten without qualm; and there follows much Egan-ish discussion of the nature of intelligence, but in a pleasingly sardonic key:
Mullen bent down close to the bars, looking into the unfathomable eyes.
“I hope you don’t imagine,” she said, “that I am any sort of white knight. I am a cognitive psychologist, and it is my job to torture animals that are on the wrong side of mankind’s current designated threshold of nervous complexity by cutting their nervous systems apart and watching what parts twitch. I’m not allowed to do it to monkeys any more in most countries, but sea slugs and squid are still fair game.”
“Butterfly Bomb” by Dominic Green
A “story-sized set of reasons” why our universe might be a space opera universe, according to the introductory notes. Sadly, neither the story nor the set of reasons is particularly exciting. An elderly man, living alone on an alien world, hitches a ride on a passing slave ship (by selling himself into slavery) in order to track down his granddaughter: the main things we learn along the way are that (a) AIs tend to think themselves into logical-philosophical blind alleys, which puts a crimp in civilization’s style but creates jobs for those who, like the protagonist, can mediate such quandries; and (b) ancient races left behind AI-based weapons that can mimic, infiltrate and destroy any societies they encounter. It’s not as perfunctory as proof-of-concept tales can be, and Green’s playfulness mostly carries it —
The superintendent scratched his forty-year service tattoo thoughtfully. “In that case, you might be of help to us. Our own mediator had arranged a system of non-overlapping magisteria between the nihilist and empiricist factions in our ship’s flight systems, but we were infected with a solipsistic virus several days ago. The accord has now broken down into open sulking. Wehave been becalmed insystem for two days while our vessel argues with itself. Our astrogator is muttering cray talk about learning to use a slide rule.”
— but I’m still somewhat surprised to see it showing up in the table of contents for a best-of-the-year volume. (And “the bunks clearly built for Svastikas, a radially symmetrical race previously conquered by the Proprietors” was pushing it a bit.)
JG Ballard: Art, Environment and Film
Over Christmas, BSFA members should have received the latest mailing, including the bumper-size Vector 261, and a copy of Winter Song by Colin Harvey. Mine arrived while I was away, and sat outside getting soggy, which is why it’s a bit rumpled; fortunately, Vector protected the novel.
Torque Control — editorial
Letters to Vector
The BSFA Awards — Donna Scott
Landscapes from a Dream: how the art of David Pelham captured the essence of JG Ballard’s early fiction — James Pardey
A Benign Psychopathology: the films of JG Ballard — Jonathan McCalmont
JG Ballard’s CONCRETE: thoughts on High Rise and Concrete Island — Lara Buckerton
An interview with Jose Carlos Somoza — by Ian Watson
First Impressions — book reviews edited by Kari Sperring
Progressive Scan: Ashes to Ashes, season 2 — Abigail Nussbaum
Foundation’s Favourites: The Voices of Time by JG Ballard — Andy Sawyer
Resonances 57 — Stephen Baxter
The New X: Careering — Graham Sleight
This issue was somewhat delayed, so the next two mailings (as mentioned in the previous post) should be following fairly hard on this one’s heels. Contributor copies of this issue of Vector will go out this week.
We’re using a new printer/mailing house, which seems to have had some teething problems. Most seriously, members have reported receiving torn envelopes and damaged or even missing contents — please contact us if your mailing was damaged,and we’ll sort out a replacement.
The thread for this issue on the BSFA forum is here; there’ll be a full news update, addressing the mailing delays and outlining plans for 2010, in the next mailing.
2010
I’ve decided 2010 doesn’t start until 17th January — that is, the day after the end of the nominating period for the BSFA awards. So no best books of 2009 from me just yet, but they will come, fear not.
In the meantime, I have more half-formed plans for 2010 than I can plausibly keep up. I would like, for instance, to read the back-catalogues of Mary Gentle and Bruce Sterling, two writers whose work I keep thinking I should really be more familiar with than I am. I want to read some of the big books lurking on my shelves: Brian Aldiss’ Helliconia trilogy, Nicola Barker’s Darkmans, Dos Passos’ USA trilogy, Paul Verhaeghen’s Omega Minor, among others. Taking advantage of my shiny new Sony Reader, which makes it much more convenient to read short fiction, I have grand plans of writing a monthly short fiction review post, as well as potential story-by-story reviews of more anthologies. I want to keep posting short reviews of books here, as I’ve been doing over Christmas, and save longer reviews for elsewhere; though I suspect I will creep back to longer and less frequent as the year goes on. I want to organise more round-table discussions of new books, of course (any suggestions?), and another run of short story club, independent of discussion of award-shortlisted stories.
On top of all that (or even: before I get to any of that), there’s two issues of Vector coming relatively close together (ie both in the first quarter of the year), which still need some work; and the survey book should be mailing to BSFA members with one of those issues, assuming I get all the author bios done; maybe we can get a new Vector website up and running at some point this year; and there’s the Strange Horizons reviews department (plus new Clute column) to keep on top of, of course.
Anyway. I had an excellent holiday break; hope you all did, as well.
vector-bsfa.com 