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A review by aoc
Hladnije od pakla by Charles Stross
4.0
I have to be upfront about something – I like anthologies of all sorts. As Stross himself puts it they really are perfect for SF writers when you want to explore ideas but don't really have the time to write a novel about it which could take much longer to complete. Additionally, anthologies make it easy for anyone discussing them to not really go into excruciating detail and analysis because, well, they're collections of stories so you can just give an overall impression and summary of individual works.
Being the reluctant-to-work type I find myself being as of late, that's exactly what I intend to do. So let's mosey right along. Some of the works in the book include, but are not limited to, the following premises and scenarios:
What if planet Earth was mysteriously plucked away and spread over the surface of a huge disk elsewhere in universe with mass and size of untold number of Earths... and it all happens just following the events of Gagarin making it into space with USSR and US racing to figure out what's happening as well as who or what is responsible for it?
What if we attend a perfectly boring government Christmas party and events surrounding it, but the group in question deals with supernaturals threats threatening the world on daily basis and just as when things are heating up to celebrate good times one of their infallible precognitives reveals this will, indeed, be the last Christmas party for everyone?
What if one day you have to kill your past self as an initiation rite to become a trainee for a post-human society billions of years into the future, society that has been re-seeding Earth untold number of times with its use of time travel brought to a level of, well, science as we get to explore a marvelously intriguing period of time and future-history of the universe unfolding?
And those are just three out of plenty of stories to wet the appetite. Keep in mind not all of those are really substantial, some getting only twenty pages while one going into hundred. Which really kinda brings me to comment on Stross' writing style in that he really doesn't explain much and expects you to take it all in stride. Now, you might “what are you complaining about, they're short stories!”, but that's not really the problem here. It's that the author willingly gives you drops and loose threads of information only to never really go there or leave them hanging half-finished. Subplots ignored aside this permeates pretty much all of the stories except maybe a couple that get a definitive ending. Almost akin akin to The Twilight Zone endings, if you know what I mean.
I won't bore you any further. I enjoyed the anthology immensely and there are some absolute gems there, as well as one that didn't really fit in my opinion, but I leave that for you to discover yourself.
Being the reluctant-to-work type I find myself being as of late, that's exactly what I intend to do. So let's mosey right along. Some of the works in the book include, but are not limited to, the following premises and scenarios:
What if planet Earth was mysteriously plucked away and spread over the surface of a huge disk elsewhere in universe with mass and size of untold number of Earths... and it all happens just following the events of Gagarin making it into space with USSR and US racing to figure out what's happening as well as who or what is responsible for it?
What if we attend a perfectly boring government Christmas party and events surrounding it, but the group in question deals with supernaturals threats threatening the world on daily basis and just as when things are heating up to celebrate good times one of their infallible precognitives reveals this will, indeed, be the last Christmas party for everyone?
What if one day you have to kill your past self as an initiation rite to become a trainee for a post-human society billions of years into the future, society that has been re-seeding Earth untold number of times with its use of time travel brought to a level of, well, science as we get to explore a marvelously intriguing period of time and future-history of the universe unfolding?
And those are just three out of plenty of stories to wet the appetite. Keep in mind not all of those are really substantial, some getting only twenty pages while one going into hundred. Which really kinda brings me to comment on Stross' writing style in that he really doesn't explain much and expects you to take it all in stride. Now, you might “what are you complaining about, they're short stories!”, but that's not really the problem here. It's that the author willingly gives you drops and loose threads of information only to never really go there or leave them hanging half-finished. Subplots ignored aside this permeates pretty much all of the stories except maybe a couple that get a definitive ending. Almost akin akin to The Twilight Zone endings, if you know what I mean.
I won't bore you any further. I enjoyed the anthology immensely and there are some absolute gems there, as well as one that didn't really fit in my opinion, but I leave that for you to discover yourself.