| Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1998 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A review by David Soyka
Then again, I somehow doubt that Asimov's SF and The Iowa Review share the same target audience.
Ironically, in his "On Books" column, Norman Spinrad worries about the continued commercial viability of
the very type of mainstream SF you'd expect from a magazine christened for Isaac Asimov, namely:
What comes closest to a fringe work here is Ian McDonald's "The Days of Solomon Gursky," while still keeping
a foot in the "traditional" SF camp, i.e., speculation on the origins of the universe drawn from current
cosmological theories, a likable protagonist, a happy ending. My favourite story of the issue, this is a
wonderful riff on the "If I could do it all over again" theme. As you might expect with a character
named "Solomon" and a novella that is divided into the seven days of creation, there are also biblical
motifs about division and birth. The writing is wonderfully imaginative, although at times you have to
work a bit to figure out what's going on (a characteristic of "fringe" work), but that's half the
fun. The issue is worth the purchase price for this story alone.
A close second is "Lovestory" by James Patrick Kelly (who also inaugurates a regular column about surfing
the web, a subject that should be of interest to SF Site readers). Kelly effectively portrays a society of
furry humanoids who have three sexes, the result of a division in the female role between the conceiver
and the gestater. Kelly draws a vivid picture of this tri-gendered society (much more successfully than,
say, Ursula Le Guin's vaguely depicted hermaphrodites in The Left Hand of Darkness). However, his
ruminations on the difficult decisions and sacrifices a mother makes on behalf of her child would strike
me as more radical -- and hence more on the fringe Spinrad celebrates -- had it appeared during the New
Wave era when feminist SF first began shaking some the genre's foundations.
But, enough of this academic posturing. Wherever they belong on the literary continuum (if you care
about such things), these are two damn fine stories.
Equally worth attention is Paul J. McAuley's "17." More firmly rooted in the mainstream, it's a fine
evocation of how the underclass is exploited by technocracy, featuring a character with the street cunning
and opportunity to rise above her circumstances. The story ends with the character exchanging one form of
exploitation for another, although one half-expects that she'll find a way to beat the system. This reads
like the opening chapter of a novel -- if that's not McAuley's intention, I hope he's at least considering
additional stories centred on this character.
"Red" by Sarah Clemens is a werewolf story set in the 1960s
South which succeeds in establishing parallels between the end of a destructive monster and the emerging demise
of institutional racism (at least de jure with the historic passage of the
Civil Rights Act). You have to think a bit about this nicely written story
before you get it (or at least I did), so in that sense it's a more "literary" work. Not SF in the
traditional sense, but it reminded me of the type of story that would pop up among the legendary
collections of Judith Merril. Again, the story's meaning would have had a more radical resonation
had it appeared during that time (but, then again, wasn't everything more radical in the 60s?). I
wonder if a reader who either didn't grow up then or hasn't at least passing familiarity with its
gestalt will fully understand it.
Things go downhill a bit from here. "The Moon Girl" by M. Shayne Bell relates the narrator's discovery
of an 18th century explorer's notes about an encounter with an alien. Needless to say, this has been
done before, and unless I'm missing something, it doesn't add much to the literature beyond mimicking the
form. Similarly, "Target of Opportunity" presents a "time travellers going back to the dinosaur age"
scenario, and while there's some imaginative description by Stephen Dedman, I didn't find the denouement
overly fulfilling or original. Besides, I think Ray Bradbury did this best way back with his
"A Sound of Thunder," and without need of a bunch of techno-speak to make it interesting.
This kind of retread stuff fails to reinvigorate mainstream SF in a way that effectively evokes the
"sense of wonder" that attracts new (traditionally male adolescent) fans and boosts circulation. Admittedly,
it was easier to do this in the days before the Star Wars trilogy, PalmPilots, and NASA websites
featuring the latest vidcaps from Outer Space. Thus in his regular "Reflections" column, Robert
Silverberg in "The Science Fictionalization of Everything" echoes David Hartwell's
complaint (from Age of Wonders -- recommended reading) that "When science fiction comes true, it's no longer fun":
David Soyka is a former journalist and college teacher who writes the occasional short story and freelance article. He makes a living writing corporate marketing communications, which is a kind of fiction without the art. |
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