Agog!
Terrific Tales review by Lisa Dumond
About
a year ago I was asked to review Agog! Fantastic Fiction. It was so
enjoyable that I didn't hesitate to Cat Sparks' latest anthology. Again,
I found that Sparks has a talent for finding the some of the most entertaining
fiction Australia has to offer, snaring not only familiar names, such
as Jack Dann and
Sean Williams, but uncovering "new" authors readers
may never have encountered. What more could you ask of an anthology?
Kyla
Ward
starts off the collection with a story of magic, belief, and the dark
side — of humans and other beings. "Kijin Tea"
painfully evokes the grief of a family drawn apart and priceless things
tossed aside. Lord and Lady Tooth skate that whip-thin line between
our perceptions of good and evil as the story masterfully tugs at our
perceptions and fears. Beliefs of an even stranger sort unite even as
they divide the languid residents hoping to see "Moonflowers at
the Ritz."
Family
relationships like no other you've encountered come to life in Kaaron
Warren's downright creepy "Bone-Dog." Violence and
madness simmer just under the surface of poor Robert in "Tigershow,"
but the question remains as to which reality in the grisly tale is the
true one. Deborah Biancotti turns in a
devilishly playful myth in "The Singular Life of Eddy Dovewater"
that only adds to her already impressive body of work.
Glimpses
of the future — or several futures — come to us in "Sigmund
Freud & the Feral Highway," a snowballing bundle of laughs
and sly winks to readers. "The Butterfly Merchant" carries
us to the strange disaster of an existence from The Stone Mage and the
Sea.
Pondering
the end of our world, Dirk Flinthart introduces
a group of extreme sports fanatics that are not nearly as unbelievable
as we wish they were. See if the behaviour in "The Big One"
really seems so absurd when compared to what fills the TV schedule these
days. A very different closing is proposed in "Eden." Jack
Dann offers us a quick peek at a possible first contact that
has its sights squarely on the same black humour readers have become
accustomed to finding in Cat Sparks' anthologies.
The
true standout of the collection may well be Scott
Westerfeld's chilling "That Which Does Not Kill Us."
Rather than merely asking if there are some things worse than death,
Westerfeld goes far beyond that old bromide to examine the hypothetical
question from both sides of the grave, making it less and less hypothetical
with every beautifully chiselled word.
Whatever
the subject matter, the stories in Agog! Terrific Tales are precisely
are promised. Does Sparks have an unerring eye for quality or is ripping
fiction thick on the ground down in Australia? Either way, it's time
to bring this talent out onto the world stage where everyone can marvel,
and chuckle, at the gems they produce.
Copyright © 2003 Lisa DuMond
http://www.sfsite.com/10b/ag162.htm
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Agog!
Smashing Stories review by Lucy Sussex
This
book is the third in the attractively designed Agog! series, which collects
Austral(as)ian stories of the speculative ilk. Cat Sparks mixes established
writers and new, including here the first graduates from the Clarion
South workshop. The result is a smorgasbord for most fantastical tastes,
ranging from genre horror to magical realism. Some defy categorisation.
Simon Brown blends the police story with
folklore. Dirk Flinthart uses Michael Moorcock's
Jerry Cornelius (with permission). Kim Westwood
entertains stylishly. Years Best anthologists take note!
Copyright
© 2004 Lucy Sussex
Melbourne
Age, June 27, 2004
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Locus:
the Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field, August 2004 issue.
p56 excerpt from Short Fiction Review by Gary K Wolfe: The Year's Best
Fantasy eds Hartwell & Kramer
This leaves us with three tales unlike anything
else in the book. Octavia E Butler's "The Book of Martha",
in many ways a very old fashioned, posthumous fantasy, has a novelist
summoned by God and offered the power to make any single change which
might improve the world; as with many such morality tales, much of it
is a dialogue in which the Lord shows her how difficult it is to manage
a population cursed by free will. Brendan Duffy's
ingenious but overly complex "Louder Echo",
the only tale in the book to reflect the secret/alternative history
themes that have been so popular among novelists of late, describes
the efforts of an 18th-century scientist involved in the preformation-vs
ovism debate to create generations of homunculi that will provide him
a glimpse into the future * all the way down to Robert Oppenheimer.
p65
New and Notable Books:
Agog! Smashing Stories : an all-new anthology of original stories from
down under, third in a series offering an excellent overview of the
latest in Australian SF.
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Agog!
Smashing Stories review by Ben Payne
Smashing
Stories is the third volume in the Agog! franchise, following the Ditmar
and Aurealis Award winning Terrific Tales. In a remarkably short time,
these books have developed a reputation, both in Australia and overseas,
as the benchmark for Australian speculative fiction writing. Many readers
are likely to approach Smashing Stories with high expectations, after
last year's collection. Fortunately, this anthology delivers the goods.
The
anthology contains twenty stories from some of the country's most talented
authors. Technically, as one might expect, the writing is airtight.
There are a number of stories from well known authors — Rob
Hood provides a nice horror tale in a scifi setting in Regolith;
Sean McMullen gives us an original look
at the future of the space race in The Cascade; Richard
Harland delivers a creepy horror tale that rings of old folklore
in The Border, and Marianne de Pierres
breathes life into the tired genre of outback cop stories by
placing Gin Jackson: Neophyte Ranger in a futuristic setting
reminiscent of the one depicted in her novels. Smashing Stories also
contains a number of newer authors and authors who, largely as a result
of collections such as this, have emerged over the last couple of years
as forces in their own right. Claire McKenna
and Paul Haines have combined on Warchalking,
a look at refugees from an information apocalypse; Dirk
Flinthart looks at fiction and revisionism in a dark speculative
tale featuring Sherlock Holmes in Gaslight à Go Go; Kim
Westwood (Temenos), Bryn Sparks
(Seven Wives) and Trent Jamieson
(Endure) provide moody sketches of societies quite removed from
our own; Jeremy Shaw gives us a bar story
that most (as far as I know) won't have heard before in Humosity;
and Martin Livings' Maelstrom presents
us with elemental forces doing battle on an epic scale in Prague. Iain
Triffit's Porn Again is a humorous punctuation mark to
end the anthology.
Suffice
it to say that only the pickiest of readers would find nothing of interest
within. The stories are well crafted, the writing of the highest standard.
There is perhaps an overall preference for science fiction, although
fantasy and horror are represented by quality yarns. Thematically, the
overall impression of this third Agog collection is a somewhat bleak
one — there is a recurring sense of dislocation among the stories
here, of protagonists not quite in synch with the worlds they inhabit;
and a sense of pessimism seems to underscore a large number of the tales.
Fluffy bunny readers beware!
On
a more critical but perhaps related note, there were a few stories which,
despite their craftsmanship, didn't really drag me in, most often as
the result of a tendency toward unsympathetic or unclearly motivated
central characters. While there isn't a story in here that I didn't
enjoy, the best stories for me were the ones which gave the above-mentioned
pessimism and dislocation the sharpest focus, either through tight,
well-characterised relationship studies — as in Deborah
Biancotti's haunting evocation of conflicting expectations and
desires in Number 3 Raw Place; Justine
Larbalestier's encounter with the strange other that shares one's
bed in Where Did You Sleep Last Night?; Grace
Dugan's tender and subtle tale of friendships and love against
an involving background in Inside the Mountain, and Paul
Haines' dark vision of jealousy and revenge in They Say It's
Other People — or through vicious and powerful comedy —
as in Ben Peek's witty rebuttal of censorship
in R, or Brendan Duffy's acidic
tale of juvenile crime and the darker things that cause it, Come
to Daddy. Other favourites were Simon Brown's
Water Babies, which interweaves family drama and horrific menace
with expert skill, and Louise Katz's Weavers
of the Twilight, a classy fable that conjures a fascinating otherworld.
Other
readers will no doubt discover other favourites. Such is the strength
of this collection that I suspect each and every story will resonate
with some reader, somewhere. The best, as with last year's collection,
will capture the minds of many. Smashing Stories, like its predecessor,
is comparable to the world's best. If you don't have a copy, buy one
now. You're only hurting yourself.
Copyright
© 2004 Ben Payne
Orb
Magazine # 6, 2004
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Agog!
Smashing Stories review by Lisa Dumond
In
this fourth volume of the Agog! series of anthologies, editor Cat Sparks
has trumped herself again with a collection of the very best in speculative
fiction from Down Under. As always, the anthology offers the perfect
introductory course to the geographically locked-in, with familiar names,
such as Deborah Biancotti, Sean
McMullen, and Simon Brown, and "new"
authors, ready to be "discovered" by the rest of the world.
The stories range from science fiction to fantasy to the darkest of
horror -- all in every mood imaginable and every approach never imagined.
To
put it simply: bad work does not make it into Sparks' books. That's
not to say, however, that some stories don't shine even more brightly
than the rest. There is the haunting imagery of a world lost in Trent
Jamieson's mournful "Endure." The echoes of loss and
fear in "Water Babies," a murder mystery lyrically unwound
by Simon Brown, in his own blend of grit
and fantasy that never fails to snare the reader. And Biancotti
does not disappoint, either, with her perplexing and pain-filled story
of hope and the loss of hope, in "Number 3 Raw Place." Each
work carries its own, distinctive resonance that lifts it to another
level against some stiff competition.
Consider
the somber mood of the Moon's last hope in "Regolith." One
last shot to establish something, anything, on the barren landscape
-- an attempt that may have failed or succeeded beyond the engineers
wildest dreams. Such stories make you look at that cold rock shining
down on us with more than the usual curiosity. It is one chance to grab
a foothold on far-away Mars that motivates the "terrorists"
in McMullen's "The Cascade."
The images he creates sparkle as brightly as the space particles of
his story.
It
may be that the world as we see it is not meant to last. Ask the undetected
sentients working to build a new and better world in the short-short
"Porn Again." Before we decide anything final on the cloning
issue, we might all want to read Bryn Sparks
thought-provoking "Seven Wives." There may be some aspects
we haven't taken into account. Genetic material may save us in "Humosity,"
but is it a trade-off we are willing to make simply to survive? At what
point is it better for everyone if we just vanish from the Earth? Is
life really worth fighting for in the future nightmare of "Warchalking"?
Will
technology be our salvation or our undoing? What does it mean to be
"human"? Are we, any of us, every anything but alone in this
world? Many writers have posed the same questions, but seldom as entertainingly
as the talent displayed in Smashing Stories. Too paraphrase "Mr.
Magoo's Christmas Carol"... Ah,Sparks! You've done it again!
Copyright © 2004 Lisa DuMond
http://www.sfsite.com/12a/ag189.htm
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