re:mote voices: literature

Title: What You Make It
Author: Michael Marshall Smith
Publisher: Harper Collins

What You Make It is the first collection of Michael Marshall Smith's short story work following on from three successful novels. The collection contains 17 stories, some of which have been printed in anthologies and some of which are available for the first time.

The collection starts with the first piece of work by Michael Marshall Smith that I read. The story is called More Tomorrow and is easily the most chilling story I have ever read. Bringing a sick feeling to my stomach even though I have read it before and know what is going to happen. Many of the factors in this story underline the strength the author shows in all his work. There is some sense of mundanity - the main character is just another computer geek moving from job to job and getting on with his life - normality and something that you can relate to, to a degree. Mostly told in first person the stories exhibit a personal quality - communicating with you. Michael Marshall Smith portrays his characters as witty which evokes a strong sense of humour, so that even with their evident flaws they remain decent people for the most part.

But you have been set up, led in, hoodwinked. Michael Marshall Smith is the master of the slap in the face - with his novels providing several shocks. With a collection like this every story is a set-up to that punch line - that final page that takes you aback. This stems from the strong sense of real horror that he manages to instil into stories like More Tomorrow, More Bitter Than Death, Foreign Bodies or the title story What You Make It

To accompany the stories of real horror are the author's take on some classic themes. There are vampires, zombies, ghosts and killers featured in stories like Later, A Place To Stay and Hell Hath Enlarged Herself. Horror also comes from fear and tension which reality can offer - this idea is offered up in The Fracture and The Owner. Fragmentary head fu/-/cks.

Like his novels which combine horror and humour the other key element of science fiction is evident. From mad scientists to tech gone wrong to nano ware. Or how about time travel in the wonderfully funny Diet Hell? Or the disorientation of the alternate reality of The Darklands ? One of Michael Marshall Smith's favourite devices is the rise of the talking devices with which he has a field day in What You Make It

While I am wary about giving too much away, I'll offer a brief run through of my favourite stories. More Tomorrow - first contact and hard punch. A Place To Stay for the way it dislocates you as much as it does the character. Save As, a reflection of the way things are, with the SF extension and the final irony - cause its always the bloody same. Diet Hell for the sheer unlikeliness of the lead character:

"So I built a time machine.
It wasn't so hard. Just muse on magnetism and tachyons a while and you'll be on the right lines."

Another unlikely tale is When God Lived In Kentish Town, for a change not horrific, more touching. Also touching is the story Always, though how could it not be that little bit odd? Finally, there are some things that are What You Make It, but sometimes that's just a little bit further than you want to go!

RVWR: PTR
June 1999

Title: Queen City Jazz
Author: Kathleen Ann Goonan
Publisher: Harper Collins

"Information theory applies to DNA as well as to all forms of communications. There is a certain mathematically predictable loss."

Like a sink full of water, by opening the cover of Queen City Jazz you pull the plug. Initially you don't notice the difference, but the forces build steadily as pages spiral relentlessly from right to left. A countdown to a compelling suction, a point of no return. Where a very finite number of pages lie ahead and those must be read and read now!

As a child Verity was taken from the Edge Town of Cincinnati to live amongst the Shaker community. Despite the fact that she is deemed clear of nan plague, there are strange lumps behind her ears which suggest she is different. She is brought up by this community free of technology, a reaction to the nan plagues and information wars which followed the rise of the Flower Cities. Eventually a time comes when Verity must return to Cincinnati - the Queen of The Flower Cities.

Blaze has been shot and is being kept alive by a nan contraption. As Verity's best friend, she hopes that the City will hold the secret to his recovery along with that of her dog Cairo. Almost like The Wizard Of Oz, Verity follows the river to the magical and enlivened city of Cincinnati with Blaze and her dog Cairo in tow. Once there she finds herself immersed in the cycles of the bess, flowers and people of the city gone wrong. In search of information she starts to become involved in the City's history and the designs of its architect. Coming to the realisation that she is in fact significant to the City's development and that her arrival is part of the endless cycle.

The three main characters Verity, Blaze and Sphere are all seekers. Looking for their own gifts and solutions from the power of the city. Each character works well for the reader and integrates into the essential plot in the transformations that their seeking causes. While the characters are strong and drive the plot, there are many technological devices which catalyze the story. We are offered the development of a complex informational structure. Engineered bees and flowers run the intelligent city - transmitters and manufacturers of nanotechnological programs in the form of metapheromones. One of the prime subtexts of the story is the examination of life and technologies affect on it. A classic theme of SF, which is shaped by Goonan's nan. A technology able to imitate and generate any material - even flash. A technology able to imitate and generate any emotion and memory. Given that what do we become - especially when we become he mechanism that feeds the mechanism intended to feed us?

Immensely readable story - flowing well through engaging characters - post apocalypse to future hope. Easily entering my favourite book list and all based on reading the short story Sunflowers in the Nanotech collection.

RVWR: PTR
June 1999