Strange But Not a Stranger by James Patrick Kelly

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Strange But Not a Stranger by James Patrick Kelly

Pub: Golden Gryphon. 297 page hardcover. Price: $25.95(US). ISBN: 1930846126

Check out website: www.goldengryphon.com

A new book by James Patrick Kelly is always a reason to be happy. It has been five years since JPK's 'Think Like a Dinosaur' was released and a disheartening eight years since his latest novel, 'Wildlife', came out.

It is quite depressing how some of the best authors in SF seem to be relegated to small press releases at long intervals. Most of JPK's output is in the form of short stories and since single author anthologies are difficult to sell, this dooms him unfairly to the margins of the SF water-hole.

At least publishers like Golden Gryphon, founded by the late Jim Turner (1945-1999) in 1997, are willing to step to fill a role larger publishers are barred from filling by market realities. I could go on at great length about why people should buy good single author anthologies but instead I will let this collection serve as an example of what people are missing.

This collects works from the 1980s, 1990s and the 2000s with a bias towards later works. Two of the works included appeared as portions of JPK novels. 'The Prisoner of Chillon' appeared in a slightly different version in 'Wildlife' and 'Glass Cloud' was incorporated as the first section of 'Look Into the Sun'. My favourite story in the collection is '10^16 to 1', in which a young boy is given the chance to avert a future and terminal WWIII at a terrible cost to himself and his world. There are other gems as well.

From 'Lovestory', which examines some effects of an off-stage humanity on a marsupial alien race to the creepy 'Unique Visitors' which examines one often ignored possibility of the 'modern man wakes up in far future society' story to the humorous 'Fruitcake Theory', where a First Contact is sabotaged by an innocent appearing trip to the mall one Christmas.

'Unique Visitors' is one of only two examples I can think of off-hand where the future human derived society is both incomprehensibly alien to a modern human and unwilling to put forth any particular effort to help the time traveller adapt. (The other example is a Poul Anderson short story from the 1960s, where the up-timers are not nearly as enigmatic as the ones in 'Unique Visitors', making up for it by being utterly useless at handling mental illnesses after the fact.)

Of course, one can see why this is, because it is difficult to sustain incomprehensibility at length without inspiring the reader to put the book down in preference to re-reading 'Solaris'.

The sole story in this collection I did not derive great pleasure from was 'The Propagation Of Light In A Vacuum', which in its way reminded me of Blish's 'Common Time', which was another short story I didn't care for. Thus I betray myself as a tragically middle brow reader. Even with 'The Propagation Of Light In A Vacuum', I did manage to get some value out of it, a pretty good recipe for meat loaf that appears on page 143.

I will admit I didn't care for the introduction by Connie Willis either but I have resigned myself to the fact that on the topic of Willis fiction and humour, the mainstream of SF fandom is well out of step with me. At least it was shorter than her comedy routine at MilPhil's Hugo presentations which was in turn far shorter than the comic-opera antics surrounding the Seiun awards, which I could describe but you wouldn't believe me.

Just take my word that if you discover that the Seiun Award is going to be granted at a ceremony you must attend, get Novocain for your arse because you are going to be trapped in your seat long enough to read Peter Hamilton's 'Reality Disfunction' series cover to cover. Twice!

The introduction aside this is a near perfect collection of short works, one that you will never see in paperback due to the unfortunate perception that single author anthologies don't sell, a perception that is based on past poor sales of single author anthologies.

The best way to fight that belief is to provide publishers with counterproof by buying this book and books like it.

James Nicoll

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