The Fair Folk / Down These Dark Spaceways - Science Fiction Book Club, 2005 The stories included are:
This story is in his Diogenes Club series, in which a top secret British establishment keeps an eye on matters occult. Mr Charles Beauregard, in the opening sequence, is despatched to a rural community where two children have been kidnapped. The girl is still missing, but, bizarrely, a much older youth who claims to be the missing boy has turned up. How can it be that years have passed for him, whilst only days have passed since the boy went missing? Beauregard uses his skills to trace and rescue the girl, and all seems well.
However, the story picks up some time later, and the exact nature of the young girl he found in the woods is slowly revealed, and there is a pell mell race against the clock to prevent another young boy from meeting the same fate that the girl did all those years ago.
A page turning 80 pages, and if the others are of this quality, then a volume to look out for those of you who are happy with faerie stories of a more traditional sort (ie queens, princes, quests etc).
I read the latter first and was not impressed. His recent 'Shed Skin' (Analog Jan/Feb 2004) had a similarly creaky premise on which was built some fairly routine writing. That earlier story had someone uploading their brain to a shiny robotic body, and being a bit miffed that the original biological self isn't best pleased at the future mapped out for him in a retirement home - its just too preposterous a situation to accept in 2006. The same technology is used here, with, a quick five minutes under a tin helmet being all that is needed to transfer a mind to a more robust, robotic body, to set up a similarly silly conceit.
There is a dead body - or is there? The PI on the case has to work out just who the murderer is and in whose body, and it just felt way too similar to the kind of story Asimov would have written in the 1950s. But as I really am not minded to spot the clues throughout such stories, I suppose it is somewhat unfair to critique a story whilst excluding what is presumably a main feature of the story, but a Hugo nominee????????.
Much more like it, IMHO, was Robert Reed's 'Camouflage' set in his mind-bogglingly ginormous alien artefact-cum-spaceship which is wending its way through the galaxy with a very mixed group of passengers. Pamir is called out of retirement (a long retirement, as life is long to the extent of virtual immortality) to identify who it is who is murdering the ex-partners of a beautiful young human, who has been consorting with those of an alien persuasion. The setting, and the alien cultures and religions are much more what I like to get from SF.
Elsewhere in the volume are:
As with the first book, some big names herein, so if you do like your SF to have gumshoes, then doubtless worth seeking this one out. A pair of original anthologies of a high standard.
|
But as the SFBC had taken the effort to pack and post the books to me, I thought it churlish not to at least sample at least one story from each and also mention the other content. First up is 'The Fair Folk', edited by Marvin Kaye, cover illustration by J.P. Targete giving an ethereal, woodland setting.
Two stories in Down These Dark Spaceways grabbed my attention, despite its crime theme. One was a story by Robert Reed, in his 'Marrow' setting, an author I will always find the time to read. The other story was one by Robert J. Sawyer, which was up for a Hugo.