Exo-review: Dave Hebblethwaite on The Solaris Book of New SF

David Hebblethwaite, a fine fellow who used to contribute regular and always-thoughtful reviews to the old TAO site, has a review of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction - which I mentioned myself a while back - posted over at SFSite.com.

It's interesting to note that we seem to share pretty much the same opinion about most of the content; particularly in the case of James Lovegrove's 'The Bowdler Strain' and Stephen Baxter's 'Last Contact'. Although in the case of the latter, whilst Dave and I both agree that it was an extremely powerful tale from an emotional and cathartic point of view, he had problems with the inherent science of the story, which I had to admit wasn't something that even crossed my radar when I was reading it.

I confess, though: I do have an extremely un-scientific background and so I do tend to read short fiction - even short science fiction - much more for the interaction of the characters than for whatever speculative and / or extrapolative scientific elements might be used to support the narrative. To be honest, I'm generally quite happy if everything is black-boxed neatly away, just so long as the principle protagonists are interesting.

All-in-all it's a very fair and well-balanced review with some good, solid analysis from Dave; worth reading if you're contemplating
picking up the anthology (which you jolly well should be...)

Edit, 17.04.07 Via the always-excellent Velcro City Tourist Board, a link to a David Soyka penned Strange Horizons review that compares and contrasts the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction with Pyr's Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge. Interesting reading again, well worth a look.

April 16, 2007 | Filed Under Books | Leave a Comment

Recommended Reading: The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction

The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, the debut release from Games Workshop's Solaris Books imprint, is a very good collection indeed: a good selection of varied and (on the whole) interesting stories, themes and tropes. The anthology also acts as a showcase for some of the best British authors currently writing in the field, with the honourable inclusion of one or two overseas guests to provide a shot of alternative flavour.

Personal highlights included James Lovegrove's wittily amusing 'The Bowlder Strain', Paul Di Filippo's 'Personal Jesus' - an eye-opening tale of techno-spirituality for the Apple age - the exotic and colourful 'Bioship' by Neal Asher, the vividly visceral 'The Wedding Party' by Simon Ings and Eric Brown's 'Last Party', which rounded things off quite nicely, and had me pining for a proper local pub to call my own. But my absolute favourite was Stephen Baxter's powerfully cathartic end of the world offering, 'Last Contact', which stayed with me long after I'd finished the rest of the anthology.

There was a couple of flat notes - based purely on my own subjective opinion etc. - as you'd expect from so wide and varied a selection of work, including what I couldn't help feeling was a rather indulgently self-referential piece, 'Jellyfish' from Mike Resnick and David Gerrold. Another one was Brian Aldiss' 'Four Ladies of the Apocalypse' snippet. I'm probably showing my ignorance here, and I fully expect that those better-read than me will look down their noses with utter disdain for my having the temerity to say so, but I really didn't get much out of it apart from a density-induced headache.

Definitely worth tracking this antho down if you'd like to sample a good selection of current writing, and I do hope that it goes on to become a regular feature of the Solaris list, preferably with companion Fantasy and Horror volumes to match: it's not like the market isn't big enough. It was published on Feb 5th so should be available right now from all good bookstores, Amazon.co.uk etc.