Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo/The Star Pit

Two different authors, two different styles...from Delany's lyrical prose about family, belonging, and loneliness at the edge of the galaxy to Varley's straightforward approach to the same themes set much closer to home (and which, I might add, did not end anywhere near the way I assumed it would). Both authors paint a very broad canvas indeed for such short stories, their richly detailed world-building incorporating technical wonders both awe-inspiring and decadent.

(With some spoilers)

"The Star Pit" is regarded as one of Delany's best works, but it suffers from trying so hard, so self-consciously to be "literary" and fails. Delany uses symbolism and multiple plays on his themes (at least I took these to be his themes) of human society, parenting, self growth, and accepting one's lot in life. I liked a lot in this story. The characters were vivid, the slang intriguing (the burned out drug addict Alegra was particularly memorable with her projective telepathy but I also liked the other Kid Ratlit), the idea of the psychotic golden was intriguing -- though couched in pseudo-science babble, the descriptive passages were good (Delany's influence on the seaminess, underworld aspects of cyberpunk is show more obvious), the future society was detailed and interesting (group marriages and even a minor attempt to deal with future law), the narrative flowed well, the story was interesting. But Delany seemed to just drop the story unfinished, hanging, leaving me dissatisfied.

As to the Varley story, the main plot was suspenseful and compelling and, with Charlie Perkins-Smith eventual fate and distorted life of eternal childhood, tragic. However, my enjoyment of the story was contained in its relatively minor sidelights: the dress (or, rather, undress) of the Lunarians; the vivid, inventive splendor of the Mozartplatz; the kind, concerned parent of Tik-Tok a computer humanlike but unable to override what he realizes to be his inflexible, foolish instructions; the aesthetic-minded, poetry writing police probe; the chilling, perverse sex-changed, incestous murderous, amputated twins (very interesting and very minor characters); Megan Galloway's relationship with her ex-boyfriend that motivates so much of her actions. I liked Valey's conception of machine intelligence: endearing human qualities with a nonhuman, computer inflexibility (Tik-Tok's eloquent insistence he was never alive). show less

i love the tor doubles. i wish vintage ro penguin or someone would publish more like this.