Editor: Ian Whates
Publisher: NewCon Press
On a bit of a roll recently with the short-story anthologies, mainly because I find it increasingly hard to sit down and read a full novel cover-to-cover. Partly, that's the time constraints that come with adulthood and having a family, partly though I think my brain is being trained by social media--Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Reddit--to take things in smaller bites, so my attention wanders after ten pages or so.
What was I talking about again?
Oh right. The anthology. Like I said (I think?) I've been reading a couple of short fiction anthologies as a way to outsmart my own dwindling attention span, with mixed results (see my reviews of War Stories and Tor's best of 2015 anthology). While both contained some nice and engaging writing, looking back now they're both a bit dour and take themselves a bit too seriously. I read them and felt worse about myself, the world, the future and my place in it.
I wondered if this was a particularly American phenomenon, so I was eager to crack open this 2015 collection of 18 short stories by several prominent British authors--including Neal Asher (the "Polity" universe), Adam Roberts ("Salt" and "Jack Glass") and Dan Abnett (a DC comics and "Warhammer" novelist)--and see if they were having a bit more fun.
Sorry to say that, by and large, no they aren't. Not to say there aren't identifiable differences between American and British scifi--at least, judging from the completely unscientific sampling I've done--with the Brits less prone to spew Greek or Latin at you ("poiesis" was one I came across recently), more content to tell unapologetic, straightforward SF.
Despite the hoo-rah machismo of the title, this is a pretty diverse bunch of stories, and while there's conflict and claret spilled aplenty, there's not a lot of what I'd call "Military SciFi." Once I got used to the idea that "conflict" is here used in the widest possible sense in that there is some kind of opposition at work in each story, this proved a highly enjoyable collection, with almost every entry at least competent if not inspiring.
"The Maker's Mark" by Michael Cobley ("Humanity's Fire" series) is by far and away my favorite of the bunch, despite being the least conflict-y in the bang-bang shoot-em-up sense of the word. It's more of a woozy daydream of a story, reminiscent of Jack Vance or Matt Hughes, about a conman who runs afoul of assorted suzerains, prelates, assassins and concubines.
Dan Abnett's piece is a straightforward zombie actioner on board a space station, but again written in a very fun way, while Andy Remic's "PSI.COPATH" is easily the funniest, though at times it tries a little hard to be so. On the other hand, despite headlining the lineup I thought Asher's entry was absolute balls, consisting of soldiers running around a city filled with dinosaurs (which would have worked well if coupled with Remic's over-the-top silliness, but here is played completely straight), and Roberts' was just a bit dull, focusing on a futuristic submarine hiding beneath the Antarctic.
Even so, overall there's a wide variety of sub-genres, settings and tones provided in the anthology, which makes it easy to find something you like and easier to forgive those you don't.
If there's one beef I have with this collection, and others like it, it is the reliance on famous writers to sell the product. The fiction market is frighteningly small compared to the number of people writing, so it seems a shame the winner-takes-all world of WalMart and Amazon and Google and Disney should apply here as well--I would have hoped that short story anthologies were the one place where publishers could showcase new talent, not least because I'm a failed and bitter writer myself although yeah, that's mostly why. Shut up.
Anyway, mostly great fun, good and pulpy scifi. British writers rule, UK?
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