1991 - Year in SF&F: Reviews

THE WONDER TIMELINE: SF&F RETROSPECTIVE Read other issues here ---------------------------------------------- Paul Di Filippo "Victoria" (Steampunk Trilogy) © Amazing Stories, Jun 1991 Steampunk Trilogy, 1995 --/ third place f novella --/ shock value --/ humour award --/ wonder award --/ style award Not only is the entertainment value of this novella is through-the-roof, the significance of its appearing as far back as 1991 is notable as well: it pushes the envelope in more ways than one, defining steampunk black comedy with its own brand of humour. Try not to grin as you read: naughty, improbable, grotesque, the tale bests itself at every turn, featuring such wildly bizarre concoctions as a homunculus/newt on the throne of England, nuclear train engines and "ideoplasm"-powered transdimensional prairie schooners, with inevitable Lovecraft monsters duly appearing in the "Hottentots" sequel. This is a highlight of any summer reading (for just like in the movies, there has to be a "Summer Blockbuster Reading Season"). You are not going to forget it, but some readers might think that Paul Di Filippo goes too far into the territory they can't follow. ---------------------------------------------- Ian R. MacLeod "The Giving Mouth" © IASFM, March 1991 Voyages by Starlight, 1996 --/ fourth place f story --/ wonder award --/ idea award --/ style award --/ shock value --/ rare find This is the most peculiar epic fantasy you ever likely to read (I realize this is quite a statement). Very stylish, very Ursula Le Guin-like at first (think of her low-key "Orsinian Tales"), it evolves into a ferocious Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique spawn, at once disgusting and irresistibly complex. Wonderful tour-de-force, liked it very much. "The Giving Mouth" features a fantasy landscape of mining, coal and smoke where knights in animated armor ride steamhorses made of "liveiron." Soon it enters highly-cinematic territory, later explored by Michael Swanwick and China Mieville: post-industrial monsters with weird eating habits, wonderfully detailed epic quest and gross-out ending. ---------------------------------------------- Richard Paul Russo "Celebrate the Bullet" (Subterranean Gallery series) © IASFM, Mid-Dec 1991 Terminal Visions, 2000 --/ fourth place sf story --/ style award --/ emotion award --/ rare find I really loved this noir psychological mix of creepy quantum mechanics, violence, J.G. Ballard's paranoia and "disaster on the beach" visions, infused with a palpable sense of doom. Wonderfully, smoothly written, with good underlying idea of "taking pictures" as means to handle rapidly deteriorating and unpredictable world (a certain detachment helping to deal with your fears), this story could've been made into a cool MTV music video, or an indie- film in the 1990s... oh well, an opportunity missed. ---------------------------------------------- Connie Willis "In the Late Cretaceous" © IASFM, Dec 1991 Impossible Things, 1994 --short story : 1992 Hugo --short story : 1992 HOMer W --short story : 1992 Locus /4 --short story : Asimov's Poll /10 --/ fourth place sf story --/ humour award --/ style award Very funny and smoothly-written story about University life and dinosaurs. Really, there is no point of describing what's it about. Extinction, I guess. Well-worth reading, though, for the sake of campus and human comedy contained inside. Plus contains some commendable dinosaur-related research. ---------------------------------------------- Return to the Wonder Timeline

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