Eclipse Two: New Science Fiction and Fantasy

Rating NR Genre anthology Author Various Publisher Night Shade Books

Science fiction and fantasy are two sides of the same coin.  Orson Scott Card once boiled the distinction down to this: if you do magic by pushing a button, it’s science fiction; if you do magic by rubbing a tree, it’s fantasy.  That overlap is on full display in Eclispe Two: New Science Fiction and Fantasy, and the collection is all the better for its diversity.

Jonathan Strahan has assembled a familiar cast of authors in this collection, and they are impressive as always.  Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation” puts us in the head – literally – of a robotic scientist whose curiosity about his inner workings and the fate of his people overrides his sense of self preservation.  Paul Cornell’s “Michael Laurits Is: Drowning” and David Moles’ “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdon” both riff on social media and online interactive spaces, but from opposite sides of the coin.  Cornell’s protagonist finds himself underwater and gasping for breath, and in an act of desperation, uploads his entire consciousness to a futuristic MySpace or Facebook, creating legal and ethical problems for all involved.  Moles’ story is a kind of cross between The Matrix and World of Warcraft, with characters who sell their identities to serve as non-player characters in a vast online world.  When the game world is sold to an AI who wants to create a more “immersive” atmosphere, people start dying and looking for a way out of the game, only to find that the game goes even deeper than they thought.  Tony Daniels’ “Ex Cathedra” is a tour de force, a riffing, stream of consciousness, hard boiled time travel story about the end of the world that asks if the future of humanity is worth the lives of your own children.

The stories that, on the surface, seem to belong in this collection least are the most powerful.  Nancy Kress’ “Elevator” uses a set up that sitcoms have done to death – a group of people trapped in an elevator – almost as if she’s daring us to dismiss the story as trite.  An old woman named Cindy sits in a wheelchair, accompanied by her nurse, and as the occupants of the elevator try to open the doors (they can’t) and get their cell phones to work (they won’t), Cindy’s repetitive sing-song babbling begins to drive them all insane.  But after the elevator doors open, each of them find that being trapped with Cindy has changed their lives – and in some cases, ended them.  In Peter S. Beagle’s “The Rabbi’s Hobby,” a young Jewish boy named Joseph is forced to spend his afternoons with Rabbi Tuvim preparing for his Bar Mitzvah.  The rabbi collects old magazines, and one evening Joseph finds him staring at a cover.  In the corner of the scene is a young girl, and both Joseph and Rabbi Tuvim become obsessed with discovering this girl’s identity.  As they track down the photographer and learn more about his family, they slowly piece together the young girl’s identity, and the result is a haunting coming of age story.  The genre trappings are incidental to the larger story; though the fantastical elements are clearly meant to be taken literally, the story would work just as well if they weren’t.

The only flaw in this collection does not lie in the stories, but in the format.  The author biographies are collected at the end of the anthology instead of their usual place at the head of each author’s story.  As a reader, skimming past a bio you’re not interested in reading is not nearly as frustrating as flipping to the back for one you are interested in reading.  Compounding the frustration, once you do flip to the back, you will find that the bios are in alphabetical order rather than order of appearance.  Since none of the bios are more than eight lines, there is no logical reason to move them off to the end of the book.

This collection celebrates the short story, my favorite form of science fiction and fantasy.  That alone recommends it.  While a novel lets you dive into another person’s imagination and watch a story slowly unfold before you, a short story collection is a kind of sampler platter, allowing you to bounce from idea to idea so quickly you might not even realize the combined effect until much later.  The power of Alastair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter, and Nancy Kress’ prose only amplify the pleasure of reading this collection.