The selections in
The Neil Gaiman Reader were chosen neither by an outside editor nor by Gaiman himself, as he did with his earlier collections. Instead, apparently, the book was edited by the internet. In 2019, Gaiman invited his readers to name their three favorite Gaiman stories, and the result – from nearly 6,000 responses, we are told – was this selection of 52 short pieces, ranging from short sketches to major novellas, supplemented by five excerpts from novels. It probably says something about Gaiman’s popularity that so many readers would be familiar with his short fiction, but then his short fiction has been more widely visible than almost anyone else’s over the last quarter century or so (in addition to appearances in earlier collections, some 15 of these stories have been published in standalone chapbooks). Fortunately, the result is as varied and rewarding as if Gaiman himself
The Big Score sounds like a title from the golden age of sleazy paperbacks, or maybe a high-octane, low-budget action flick. In fact, it was both, and I suspect K.J. Parker either knew this or didn’t care in choosing it for the latest novella set in his hilariously corrupt version of Renaissance Europe, which has shown a remarkable consistency over the years, with its endless cast of scurrilous alchemists, rogues, scoundrels, liars, cowards, and double-crossers. We’ve grown familiar with the Studium, a university packed with self-important professors, with the religion of the Invincible Sun (founded as a scheme to fleece its believers), and with the legendary alchemist, philosopher, and wife-murderer Saloninus, who told his own story in
Gary K Wolfe Reviews Blackthorn Winter by Liz Williams locusmag.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from locusmag.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Privacy is a luxury in Cory Doctorow’s
Attack Surface
, a political technothriller that follows the questionable choices of former spy, government operative, and traitor, Masha Maximow, as she builds cyberweapons for authoritarian governments, greedy cyber firms, and progressive activists alike. Taking place a few years after the events of
Little Brother and
Homeland
, this standalone novel yanks readers through Masha’s turbulent life in a series of alternating flashbacks and present-day dilemmas. Masha serves as a slightly unreliable narrator. Her snarky and (sometimes) cringey first-person point of view conveys Doctorow’s unsettlingly realist perspective on surveillance and internet freedom quite well.
The Wall: Being the First Book of the Chronicles of Sumer, Gautam Bhatia (HarperCollins India 978-93-5357-835-0, INR399, 386pp, tp) August 2020.
The tale of a society long trapped in enforced stasis but finally destabilized by curious and rebellious youth is one of SF’s core narratives; think of Clarke’s
The City and the Stars, Heinlein’s “Universe”, or even Collins’s
The Hunger Games.
The Wall, Gautam Bhatia’s first venture into fiction (he’s apparently a respected constitutional lawyer in India, as well as a contributor to
Strange Horizons), at first seems intent on reducing this theme to its archetypal core, although Bhatia rather cleverly leaves open a number of SF trapdoors in a narrative that on its surface reads like classic fantasy. The city-state of Sumer has for thousands of years been surrounded by an enormous wall. No one knows what lies beyond it, and nothing enters or leaves the city except for giant birds called garudas, whose origins remai