Gravity's Angels

Another excellent Arkham House collection issued under Jim Turner's tenure there. Michael Swanwick is nominally a scifi author, but these stories each have only enough science fiction as they need to express the author's ideas. As such, some of the stories are heavy into scifi and a few have none at all, with the majority having just a little bordering more on fantasy at times.

I think the standout story is one of the slighter ones: Foresight. The tale involves a man in a universe where memory has "flipped." One cannot "remember" the past but only the future. You are incapable of learning from your mistakes or successes but have almost perfect knowledge of what is going to happen (like real memory it gets hazier the farther away the show more horizon). The story of course goes on to explore the issues of determinism and fate. The tale has a disturbing Kafkaesque unbalancing effect that begins with the protagonists murder by lethal injection by the Reclamation Committee and proceeds backwards in time to a few days earlier. Of course, the protagonist has no idea why he is being killed, not being able to form any memories of the past, but understands it's inevitability right up to the point it occurs.

All in all a great collection. show less

These stories show Swanwick at about 10% below his best work, which means 10% better (at least) than most other authors' best work.