association-list

Three down, four­teen to go. I think. This time, we mostly have stuff from people that I’ve read before. There are two stand­outs in this issue, John Kessel’s “Sun­light or Rock” and Jack Skillingstead’s “The Girl in the Empty Apart­ment”. Rucker’s “Postsin­gu­lar” is enter­tain­ing, but there’s some­thing that I just don’t get about Rucker. Per­haps we’re coming at SF from two entirely dif­fer­ent angles. I mean, we’re both com­puter people, both, from what I’ve read of his non-​​fiction on guest­blog­ging at var­i­ous places, inter­ested in much the same things. But there are two things that bother me about him, really. For Rucker, a story seems to be a string upon which to hang shiny bright ideas. The ideas might be fas­ci­nat­ing, but with­out a really solid nar­rtive to drive them, they just seem unre­strained. Plus, I think that he prob­lablty writes too fast, with­out enough thought as to what’s actu­ally going on with the story and paying far too little atten­tion to the music of his lan­guage. I don’t know. The ideas are great, no doubt, and there’s no lack of them. He’s kind of a soft edged, stoned out Char­lie Stross in that way, I guess, although Char­lie is better, usu­ally, at putting a story together.

“Sun­light or Rock” is a story set on the moon, in a kind of down and out little place where cap­tial is king and life is a little cheap and seedy. It fol­lows on a another moon story of his that I read so long ago that I don’t really remem­ber it. Or maybe I just think that I’ve read it, bea­cuse look­ing back, it was in 2002 and I wasn’t read­ing the mag­a­zines then. Maybe it was in the years best? I’ll have to look it up, I remem­ber read­ing it for some reason. I blather (writ­ing too fast). It’s about a kid strug­gling to sur­vive with­out enough money or work far from home and with­out any real friends. It doesn’t have a proper, sat­is­fy­ing ending, and for the most part it all swings around sports bet­ting, which I couldn’t care less about. At the same time, it’s well writ­ten and the tone of the story is excel­lent. There’s some­thing to be said for sto­ries that don’t go any­where. It’s like a pause in a novel where the author is doing noth­ing but moving the char­ac­ter from set­ting to set­ting and man­ages to make it beau­ti­ful anyway, just for the joy of writ­ing good words.

“The Girl in the Empty Apart­ment” is some­thing of a slip­stream piece which isn’t usu­ally my bag, hon­estly, but some­thing about this one caught my atten­tion. Since the action is more than a little sur­real, it’s hard to say defin­i­tively what’s really going on here, espe­cially as I don’t think that I’ve read any of Skillingstead’s other Har­bin­ger sto­ries. It’s felt, though, which is impor­tant. It’s a good read, and I’ll have to find more of his stuff.