George Alec Effinger’s “When Gravity Fails”

I wondered if the world ever got tired of its jokes; no, that was too much to hope for.  The jokes would go on and on, getting worse and worse. Right now I was certain that if age and experience couldn’t stop the jokes, there was nothing about death that would make them stop, either.

There’s a fairly good review of this book at IROSF, which was what prompted me to read it.  I have to say, the people who’ve described this series as the “best cyberpunk ever” aren’t really exaggerating.  Like most people, I went through the cyberpunk phase in college, and its good practitioners create stories that are intricately detailed and whip along as fast as your pulse, but they also feel kind of…plastic.  They’re set in worlds whose descent from the present day can be easily traced, but yet they’re so different that everything has to be explained.  But in “When Gravity Fails”, the storytelling Read more »

China Mieville’s “Looking for Jake”

“Have you guessed yet?” she said.  “What your present is?” She was staring at me, very seriously, very intensely. It made me quite emotional.

I thought of everything that had happened that day, and of my reactions. Everything I’d been through and seen — been a part of.  I realized how different I felt now than I had that morning. It was an astonishing revelation.

“Yes…” I said, hesitantly. “Yes, I think I have. Thank you, my love.”

“What?” she said.  “You’ve guessed?  Shit.”

She was holding out a little wrapped package.  It was a tie.

–‘Tis The Season (Socialist Review, 2004)

Honestly?  I never cared for China Mieville.  I’ve heard people sing the praises of “Perdido Street Station”, and I tried to read it, and…I just didn’t care.  I think that’s the biggest sin a book can commit for me, to leave me just completely indifferent.  At least if a book sucks, I can get righteously worked up over the author selfishly wasting my time.  I managed to get about 70 pages into “Perdido”, and then my dishwasher went off and I went to open the door to dry the few things that might spot, and then…I forgot I was reading the book.  That’s right: I forgot I had been reading it.  That’s how disconnected I was from the characters, the plot, the everything.  That’s frightening.

When I read a recommendation for Mieville’s short story collection “Looking for Jake”, my initial reaction was to say, Read more »