A dud, and then some fun escape lit

kw: book reviews, fiction, crime fiction, science fiction, collections, short stories

The books now on my reading table are nearly all short story collections. I began to read one, then set it aside in favor of another, and didn't return to it.

Firstly, I picked up Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B. Kane and Marie O'Regan, a collection of murder mysteries, as the title clearly indicates. Alongside it I set Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow, edited by Kirsten Berg, Torie Bosch, Joey Eschrich, Ed Finn, Andrés Martines, and Juliet Ulman; a collection of stories from the Future Tense column sponsored by Slate and others. I don't care for a steady diet of crime stories, so I decided to intersperse them.

At the first sitting I read four stories in Exit Wounds. "The Bully", by Jeffrey Deaver takes a turn midway that makes you realize you are inside the mind of a serial killer. However, it is rather cerebral and pensive. The next three were also told from the killer's point of view, and each was progressively darker. Then, in Future Tense, I read first "Mother of Invention" by Nnedi Okorafor; a smart house with the directive, "Protect the occupant" does just that, to the detriment of the house's designer, but to the benefit of the occupant, his spurned lover. I didn't care for "No Me Dejes" by Mark Oshiro, though the technology of memory capture from a dying person for retention by a chosen descendant is intriguing. I had read "When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis" by Annalee Newitz, and re-read it with much enjoyment.

At that point, a day or so later, I decided to skim and skip in Exit Wounds to confirm a suspicion I had. While not all the stories are first-person-killer, nothing matches "The Bully" in quality. I decided, "enough is enough" and set it aside.

With the exception of "Domestic Violence" by Madeline Ashby, which I'd also read before and don't care for, the rest of the stories are full of interesting ideas. "Safe Surrender" by Meg Elison adds a dimension to the longing many adopted children have to know their natural origins, and "Overvalued" by Mark Stasenko explores ramifications of putting a monetary value on—and a futures market for—prodigies and other brilliant people.

I grew up on SciFi in the Campbell mold: "Pose a problem, then solve it." In more modern fiction, whether specific problems are solved, or even solvable, takes a back seat to the growth (or not) of those involved. Not all of the stories even end with an ending, seeming to be instead ending at a beginning. I am coming to realize that life is like that. What's the good of finishing a great task if you're left with no more than endless resting on your laurels? And life itself is a project without a definite ending, usually. Though it does end, all to often it ends ambiguously. Stories that reflect that may be less satisfying, but can be more gratifying.