“dark rooms”

[sergebroom]

Good stuff in Asimov’s October/November issue. Among the stories I enjoyed the most was Greg Egan’s Dark Integers, where people on our side came into contact with an alternate reality after our side started playing with some mathematics that were blowing things up on the other side. That has meant a somewhat tense relationship between the others and our Reality, which they call Sparseland due to the scarcity of life over here. Things have been tense and are becoming worse, with the others’s hawkish people now starting to wreck things in Sparseland. Suspenful.

Part One of Galaxy Blues, Allen Steele’s latest Coyote novel, is quite entertaining. One has to accept that, a few centuries from now, people will still make jokes about 1939’s Wizard of Oz, but that’s ok. The story is fun and breezy, about a political refugee from Earth who makes it to the planet Coyote but immediately winds up in jail and will be shipped back unless he joins a mission to go meet the first aliens ever encountered. Can you guess what he chooses?

Highly recommended is Lisa Goldstein’s Dark Rooms. In the early days of cinema, a young American with aspirations to be a painter has been living in Paris, not quite sure he has what it takes. Then he goes to a movie house where he notices an older man fascinated by the screen’s illusions. He follows him, loses him, and finds him again by accident.

”(…)You know how they did it, don’t you?”

“The pictures, yes.” He smiled, the same smile Stevens had seen at the theatre. “You love them as much as I do, don’t you? I didn’t see that then – I was in a hurry, I had to prepare for my first show here… But we were supposed to meet, weren’t we? That’s why you found me again. Coincidences are the world’s magic tricks.”

Stevens laughed, catching his enthusiasm. He would believe in coincidences if this man wanted him to; hell, he would believe in unicorns. “I don’t know your name,” he said.

”Georges Méliès.”

Together, they create great illusions, but Stephens becomes more and more uncomfortable when he realizes that Méliès truly believes in Magic and, one day, he leaves, stealing from his mentor some of his movie tricks that’ll help establish him in America’s own burgeoning dream factories. For years, he ignores Méliès’s repeated pleas for financial help. Then he goes back to Paris.

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

A nice summary of those stories. I like the 'Coyote' novels (I think I've read them only in series), and I'm wondering what's going to happen next.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I don't really say much of what I think of stories, when I do this. On the other hand, that I mention them means that they gave me pleasure so why say more than what a story is about?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.