Everything Belongs to the Future, Laurie Penny

Received to review via Netgalley

I found this a pleasant short story on a fairly familiar theme, which never really got past the point of being readable and good enough to while away some time with. I think my problem was that I essentially knew where it all was going, and the social commentary was pretty obvious. Thus, I find that I have correspondingly little to say about it. It’s competently written, and the conflict of the central character between his deceit and his love was perhaps the best thing about it. His mixed feelings and confused decisions made sense and seemed very human, which is always important to root any story into reality, and especially useful with something speculative.

Overall, I wasn’t incredibly impressed, but I wasn’t bored either — I’d read more by Laurie Penny, though probably not more set in this world. I think the story said all that needed to be said about this concept.

Rating: 3/5

How To Traverse Terra Incognita, Dean Francis Alfar

I can’t remember why exactly I picked this up, ages ago, but it’s an interesting sampling of stories from a writer from the Philippines; at first, I expected the stories to all be around a theme in the sense of being set in the same world, but while they all explore unknown worlds in some way, they aren’t linked one to another. I wasn’t specially wowed by some of the stories — in a way, I expected the endings they had, despite the sense of them being intended to be clever/surprising. They were definitely competently written, all of them, and some of them were more than competent, but I didn’t really get drawn in or mesmerised by the words in any of the stories.

The range is interesting, and given that I did enjoy the collection while not finding it exceptional, I’m going to put the author’s other anthology on my list — Goodreads reviews suggest people, in general, preferred Kite of Stars.

Rating: 3/5

Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang

I’ve been meaning to read Ted Chiang’s stories for ages, since his work is clearly adored by a lot of writers I admire and whose taste I trust. And I wasn’t disappointed at all: there’s a reasonably formal feel to the writing in these stories, something careful and precise, and for me that makes them particularly engaging. I guess other people might find that makes them fall rather flat, but to me it added to the poignancy.

My favourite stories of the bunch, by far, were ‘The Tower of Babylon’ and ‘Story of Your Life’. The others explore some interesting ideas, but those two interested me the most. ‘The Tower of Babylon’ is just a fun what-if — what if the Tower was real? What if the world was shaped differently to ours? And also, what kind of expertise and building would be needed to make this tower? How long would it take, and how would people cope? Examining all of this fascinated me, because Chiang obviously thought it through.

‘Story of Your Life’, well. I’m not sure how Adams and Renner’s film Arrival is going to deal with it, because for me the whole point is the narration, the calm regret and acceptance of the narrative voice. I’m not sure about the idea of language working that way (i.e. the different perspective to time being an aspect of the language, not of the structure of the aliens’ brains, and one which is transmittable to another species). But emotionally, the story really works, and of course it also leaves you wondering about the aliens, about what exactly they intended, what they wanted from humanity, and whether they got it.

Rating: 4/5

The Paper Menagerie, Ken Liu

Received to review via Netgalley

The Paper Menagerie is a collection of stories by Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award winner Ken Liu. Some of the stories deal with issues of Chinese-American heritage, and one in particular goes into a lot of detail, in a very interesting documentary format, about events in China during Japanese occupation, issues of experimentation, and then through the lens of spec-fic, history and who owns it, who controls it, how we can interact with it. Some of the stories are quite long, and come with footnotes about how they originated or further sources if you’re interested in the story.

There was nothing I specifically didn’t like about the stories, in general; one or two were weaker, others stronger. I was surprised that I felt ‘The Paper Menagerie’ to be a little… trite, given the awards and praise it has received, but it does evoke the feelings well. There are some moments where that comes out very strongly in Liu’s stories: there’s one story which uses a lot of descriptions of Chinese food and culture, and I could almost taste the dumplings, the rice, the vegetables, when reading that one. For the most part, though, I felt like Liu’s voice was very even in tone; I didn’t feel passionately one way or the other about quite a few of these stories. I felt like there were a few obviously great stories, and others that were entertaining enough but definitely not as strong.

I’m interested to read The Grace of Kings, Liu’s novel, and his translation of Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem; I’d like to see how Liu’s voice comes across there and how it flavours a work in translation. I’m not put off Liu’s work, just not quite enthused about it.

Rating: 3/5