Customer Reviews

The Perseids and Other Stories

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Robert Charles Wilson's fictions are always a great pleasure to read: populated by heartbroken, sometimes courageous, sometimes tragic characters caught in the galactic spinning wheels not of their design, depicted in elegant, spare and caustically witty prose, and addressing heavy metaphysical questions without losing sight of human-scale sufferings and losses. I sort of regard him as Graham Greene of contemporary science fiction, a healthy antidote to all the postmodern ironies and self-congratulatory razzle-dazzle that infect fictions of every genre these days. His first collection of short stories is, if anything, sparer and tougher than his epic novels like MYSTERIUM or DARWINA. Without employing unnecessary pyrotechnics (although he does kill off all life on earth in "Infinity Divided by Infinity") or dangling his attitude in front of our noses, Wilson draws us into the realm of horrors and wonders both cosmic (like Lovecraft minus the baroque intimations of "unspeakable") and personal. Potentially dreary subjects like alien abduction ("The Observer") and mineral-based life form ("Pearl Baby") are reworked into strange and unexpected touching meditations on the nature of mystery and the human ambivalence toward it. On the other hand, the collection's intimate scope might turn off fans of BIOS and DARWINIA, the stories being firmly rooted in the physical and emotional geography of Toronto. Some may also feel that science is not "hard" enough; others may object to the author's somewhat strenuous effort to construct a "shared world" around the stories that seem to have very little in common. I for one am quite satisfied, and am eagerly looking forward to his second collection.

The alternating fragile and strong linkages between the stories makes them more fun to read and think about than if they were all completely separate. Even down to giving the same phrases and similar ideas to new characters and their different perspectives. Even the lightweight stories, like Ulysses Sees The Moon..., find a nice fit in the whole. A few of them even end positively, which is a refreshing change from most modern short stories.

Wilson is a brilliant story teller. Each story stands on its own as a compelling and scary experience with full bodied characters you easily come to like, hate, even fear. His rendering of Toronto is such that I feel I have walked its streets. There are several sub-plots that weave together, not in a way that disrupts each tale but rather come together in a surprising, amusing and satisfying way toward the end of the work. Highly recommended.

One of the previous collections of random short stories I had read lead me to find more of Wilson's work, and I'm glad that it did. The stories in this book are all somewhat tenuously connected to some version of Toronto evidently, but I was more intrigued by the stories (three of them in particular - as I read the book a couple of weeks ago I want to say that the stories in question were "The Fields of Abraham," "Divided by Infinity" (?) and "Pearl Baby") which are more obviously linked both in terms of both characters and theme.

The stories are all well written but not all necessarily all equally enthralling; I was less impressed with "The Inner Inner City", "The Observer," "Ulysses Sees the Moon..." and "Plato's Mirror" - they weren't bad stories, just not nearly as to the point (both in terms of pacing and actual plot revelations) as the other stories I had mentioned.

In short, a good one to get from your local library, but I wouldn't have been pleased to purchase.

I'm a BIG fan of Robert Charles Wilson books, and ordered this collection of short stories with great anticipation. After finishing the book, however, I must admit that I was somewhat disappointed. A couple of the stories are what I'd call good, the rest left me hoping that the next story would be better. RCW's stand alone novels are excellent and I'd recommend them to anyone, but I can't say that I'd recommend this collection.

Robert Charles Wilson has long been one of my favourite authors both in long fiction and short. As a Canadian, I've been able to see his wonderful short fiction as it appeared in various Canadian venues, such as the _Northern Frights_ and the _Tesseracts_ series of anthologies. Now they are collected here and they are fabulous. Wilson writes with heart and soul and a staggering intellect that is never show-offy. His fiction is a joy to read. My favorite of the stories is the title one, "The Perseids," which quite rightly won Canada's top sci-fi prize, the Aurora. For readers who know Wilson's work, his short fiction is much more in the vein of his Hugo nominated _Darwinia_ rather than in that of the more recent _Bios_. I recommend this book highly and hope it is only the first of many collections from RCW.

This is a fascinating science fiction anthology that centers on a small bookstore, Finders, as if that place is the vortex of the universe. Each story is well written and connects back to the bookstore, some more so than others. Three tales are new though if readers are like this reviewer they were unaware that the author had written any short stories so all the tales are new. As with his novels, Robert Charles Wilson has written an exciting book that showcase why this writer is one of the centers of the genre as short science fiction is rarely as good.

Harriet Klausner