| Strange Trades | ||||||||
| Paul Di Filippo | ||||||||
| Golden Gryphon Press, 343 pages | ||||||||
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A review by Rich Horton
One of Di Filippo's favourite themes is people living on the edges of society, or in the cracks. In several
stories in this book, he depicts, with sympathy, a cooperative economy built in those "cracks."
One story, "Harlem Nova," mentions Levi-Strauss' term bricoleurs, for "a class of people who live as
scavengers, living on the odds and ends the rest of society discards." And the heroes of
"Harlem Nova," "Spondulix," "Karuna, Inc." and maybe even "Conspiracy of Noise," four of the best stories
in the book, are to one extent or another bricoleurs. "Harlem Nova" looks straightforwardly at
the clash between the utopian impulse and the wishes of people who really don't function well in society,
as the project leader of an urban renewal effort in what appears to be a very positive future
encounters some people he will be forced to evict.
"Conspiracy of Noise" is a bit odder, featuring a shiftless young man who gets a job working for
a mysterious company. The secret is in what the company is working towards, hinted at nicely by a
series of misreadings of simple messages as the story proceeds. Ultimately, the message here is that
a truly healthy economy must have a chaotic, or at least noisy, element, though in this story the
message is rather ambiguous in nature. "Spondulix" is a rather sunny story of a 40ish man, the owner
of a small sandwich shop, who gets involved in an extended scheme to create an economy based on
scrip. And "Karuna, Inc.", one of my favourite stories of the year 2001, is, as Di Filippo says, a
"dark cousin" to "Spondulix": dark because of some real tragedy, and because it features some truly
(even cartoonishly) evil villains. But it's also an optimistic story, in its view of basic human
nature, and in the depiction of the title corporation, with its mission:
Di Filippo also indulges in some classical SFnal extrapolation.
"Agents" looks at computer-based personality simulations which handle interactions in the "net,"
and at what might happen if one such "agent" became autonomous. "Skintwister" and "Fleshflowers"
follow the career of Dr. Strode, a very talented "peeker": a man who uses psychokinetic powers
to heal people by manipulating them at the cellular level. The first story deals with a crisis
in his career as, basically, a plastic surgeon; the second with his subsequent time on Mars
dealing with an alien infestation. "SUITs" is a mordant and effective fable about robotic
security personnel.
The other stories are perhaps less easy to fit into categories.
"Kid Charlemagne," as the author acknowledges, is a story strongly influenced by J.G. Ballard's
Vermilion Sands stories: it's set in an isolated lush resort, and features the inevitably doomed
romance of a mysterious musician and a spoiled rich girl. "The Boredom Factory" is a cynical fable
that is pretty well described by its title. And "The Mill" -- well, for one thing, "The Mill"
is my favourite story in this book: I read it and loved it in Amazing Stories back in 1991,
and I loved it as much on rereading it just now. It's a long story that in some ways seems
reminiscent of Jack Vance. It follows, sometimes indirectly, the life of a man named Charlie
Cairncross, as he grows up in the valley of the Mill. The Mill is a series of factory buildings
devoted to producing "luxcloth," which is bought by the immortal Factor for interstellar distribution.
In the background are such nice SFnal ideas as the interstellar milieu into which this colony
planet obscurely fits, the true nature of the Factor, the "luxcloth," and so on. But the centre
of the story is the close depiction of the circumscribed society of the factory villages.
This society seems real, and its eventual fate is well-portrayed, the characters are sympathetic
and worth reading about, and the concluding scene is truly moving. You couldn't call this story
ignored -- it did for example make the Locus Reader's Poll list of Best Novellas of 1991, but it
does seem under-appreciated (perhaps because of its publication in Amazing: at that time
a beautiful large-format magazine which published some striking material, but which never really
achieved much success as far as circulation is concerned).
I recommend this collection of stories very highly. Di Filippo is a compulsively engaging
writer -- witty and imaginative, and fond of his characters, so that they are fun to spend time
with, and fun to root for (mostly!). This book delivers on its implicit thematic promise,
offering a nice distribution of SFnal explorations of people at work, even while collecting
stories from all phases of the author's career. Excellent stuff.
Rich Horton is an eclectic reader in and out of the SF and fantasy genres. He's been reading SF since before the Golden Age (that is, since before he was 13). Born in Naperville, IL, he lives and works (as a Software Engineer for the proverbial Major Aerospace Company) in St. Louis area and is a regular contributor to Tangent. Stop by his website at http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton. |
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