Charlie Stross contributes a well-considered introduction to this collection of his short stories. Though he is better known for his longer-length work, Stross is one of the writers that came up through the UK sf magazine Interzone and so cut his writer’s teeth on short stories. Having reviewed the place of the short story format in the history of science fiction, he then goes on to talk about the things he uses short stories for – mainly as a way to experiment with ideas, especially ones that don’t justify the time and effort to expand them into novel form (he says).
Which is odd, really. Because at least two stories in this collection – Missile Gap and Palimpsest have so many ideas in them and operate on such a large-scale canvas that you could imagine writers like, say, Harry Turtledove getting a series of doorstop-sized novels out of the ideas thrown off casually in these two pieces. Admittedly, in his afterword to Palimpsest, Stross does admit that it might still become a novel, some day. Another story, Trunk and Disorderly, an attempt to create a decadent post-human world, written as a P.G. Wodehouse pastiche, became a test run for Stross’ novel Saturn’s Children; whilst another, Down on the Farm, is one of Stross’ ongoing Laundry stories, and so in passing reflects a particular take on a peculiar British institution, the Civil Service.
Indeed, many of the stories have a particularly British flavour to them. They also date from the decade up to 2010, so in at least one case (Unwirer, co-authored with Cory Doctorow), the tech – and, indeed, the underlying legislative landscape that the story relies upon – has generally been overtaken by events and this story in particular feels seriously outdated. I know that it’s identified as an alternate history, and there’s immense scope for alternate realities based on the passage (or not) of all sorts of proposed legislation, but in this instance the end result is likely only to interest electronic frontier types. (It’s one of the stories that doesn’t share that British flavour I mentioned earlier, though.)
Throughout, Stross’ inventiveness never flags. And I spent more time reading Palimpsest, a deep future time-travel intrigue, than I would like to admit to because I wanted to finish it to see how it worked out, so it certainly gripped my attention. Recommended.
Deep Waters Reading 