Aquarionics

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The “The weird shit all around” genre – Part II

Posted on | January 13, 2010 | 1 Comment

Okay, only just “Tomorrow”, but I’ve been busy. Dragon Age, as a wise man once said, does not play itself.

The other two short stories in the Mean Streets anthology I mentioned yesterday were Remi Chandler and John Taylor. In the other order, then:

Into the Nightside, by Simon R. Green

Take Neverwhere. Neverwhere is one of my favourite books in the world, so this is a good start. Take the central conceit – a world parallel to London that is full of weird shit – and literalise it. The Nightside is a hidden world within London town, a classic fantasy subcity of out of time adventurers and out of universe horrors; of evil beyond your mind and technology beyond our ken; a world that normality may occasionally stumble into, but never lasts long within. Then put a PI there, give him a hidden backstory and a genre awareness, season with mixed metaphors, and continue into the future. It’s a darker side of the same concept Neverwhere explored, with back story and structure where Neverwhere had whimsy and flow. Where it occasionally trips over is a need to explain the world around it, though this builds a deeper universe you feel you comprehend. In both cases, you understand the world you’re in as the character does. Oh, and there’s always the rising tide of bad juju.

A Kiss Before the Apocalypse by Thomas E. Sniegoski

An angel gave up on heaven and came to live on earth. He works as a private eye. He can understand his dog. Heaven occasionally needs his help to interact with humanity. There’s a rising tide of bad juju. It’s exactly like that, yes. It suffers somewhat from a lack of characters with a “normal” viewpoint, but given that this is a story about an immortal angel fighting his basic nature and trying to stay human against the background of aforementioned juju, that’s excusable. Possibly the weakest of the Mean Streets stories, but still pretty damn strong.

Now you should start recommending things at me :-)

Category: Books

Comments

One Response to “The “The weird shit all around” genre – Part II”

  1. Ben
    January 14th, 2010 @ 1:44 am

    You know what I am like with books, but strangely I picked up Crichton’s Prey 2 nights ago and have almost finished it already. I would expect you have already read it though. If you haven’t, its about the evolution and worrying combination of nanotechnology, micro-biotechnology and computer programming, and the ultimate creation of self replicating, self sufficient and rapidly evolving, flying nano-bots…Sounds a bit crazy doesnt it.
    Howabout ‘The Moscow Vector’ or ‘The Lazarus Vendetta’ which are both Robert Ludlam books but co-written (or you could say actually written) by Patrick Larkin. They are both Covert One novels and are basically about terrorist threats and a super army general/spy/batman hero. Sounds a bit cheesy but they are well written.

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