This collection of literary short fiction combines fantasy, science fiction, and horror in vivid settings, peopled with ordinary humans with normal relationships, and the interaction of the mundane with the fantastic. In "Breathmoss," a young girl must cope with the relationship with her family, love, and a community set in rigid custom, where males are a rarity. In "Verglas," a man must decide to leave his humanity by going native on an ice world or abandon his family. The events leading to the formation of the current government, the repression of Jews and homosexuals, and the horrors of being a closet homosexual in such a regime are examined in "The Summer Isles." Other stories encompass a scientist who searches for extraterrestrial intelligence; a rigid, aged man finding magic by a pool; and an 18-year-old girl who gains the reputation of being a death flower during WWII.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The seven long short stories (originally published from 1996 to 2001 mostly in magazines like Asimov's Science Fiction) that make up this literate collection from British author MacLeod (The Light Ages) range from the pleasantly fantastic ("The Noonday Pool") to all-out, straight-up SF weird ("Verglas"). In the title tale, a girl named Jalila comes of age on Habara, a planet peopled almost entirely by women. Jalila befriends a boy and an old woman who navigates starships, both oddities on her world, and inevitably, the two clash, with disastrous results. The protagonist of "The Chop Girl," set during WWII, is so called because pilots who dance with her end up dead, killed in battle. Walt Williams, a golden pilot, the epitome of good luck, seeks her out, for reasons both simple and complex, and the chop girl finds out whether she's really somehow causing the deaths or she simply draws soldiers to her when they lose hope. Typically in each tale, a distinctive protagonist faces some task or challenge, goes through loss or some kind of trauma and grows from the experience. MacLeod sensitively explores the human condition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
""One of the very best writers working in the genre here at the beginning of the 21st century."
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Literary genre fiction at its finest.,
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This review is from: Breathmoss and Other Exhalations (Hardcover)
Breathmoss and Other Extractions is a superb short story collection by the British author Ian MacLeod. MacLeod uses Science Fiction and Fantasy to examine the human condition. These are classic short stories that harken back to an earlier time, where plot, setting and character all are given equal importance-a breath of fresh air from the 'epiphany' fiction that currently crowds mainstream magazines.
The titular Breathmoss is a novella about a young girl growing up in a far-future, mostly matriarchal society on a distant world. It's a slow-moving piece. The girl meets a rare human male and forms a friendship with him; falls in love with another girl, has her heart broken; and decides what her future destiny will be in the course of the novella. The imagined future is rich and strange, with sentient seas, strange aliens, and obscure technology. It bears the influence of Ursula LeGuin. The passage of time, and personal sacrifice-along with growing pains-are the major ingredients of this story. The Chop Girl, set in a World War II England, is a Typhoid Mary tale. The narrator is a young woman who has joined the war effort, and has gradually gained the reputation of having bad luck: every man she dates ends up dying in the various war missions. She meets up with a maverick pilot who appears to be indestructible. Period flavor and a solid first person narrative from the female point-of-view are the strong points. The Noonday Pool is brief story about the chance encounter with an aging composer and a wild child who may or may not be a fairy. Isabel of the Fall is an SF fairytale, set in the same world as Breathmoss. It is reminiscent of Gene Wolfe's excellent Book of the New Sun series in that technology and magic are indistinguishable from one another. It's a beautiful future myth about forbidden love and secret knowledge. The Summer Isles, the closing novella, is an alternate history piece about a closeted gay man in a fascist Britain (where they lost WW2) of the 1940's. Protagonist is an Oxford professor who was once the lover of the fascist leader. The plot twists and turns of the story are amazing, and MacLeod captures the voice of a repressed homosexual, and the since of dangerous desire, very well. The glory of Greater Britain, and the clandestine brutality of the alternate history are utterly believable. MacLeod writes beautifully. His style and sentences are pleasurable to read-he is as much influenced by Thomas Hardy as he is by Arthur Clarke (name-dropped in one of the stories, "New Light on the Drake Equation"). His style is musical, rich, and elegiac.
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