F/SF

a bit dated ( )

Original review from 2004

A book of short stories by one of my favourite authors, set in the same world as other stories of his that I have read, a world where humans have spread throughout the solar system, but are exiled from the earth which has been invaded by aliens. People routinely change sex many times in a lifetime and other surgical body modifications are common - such as replacing your feet with peds (large handlike appendages) as an adaptation to free-fall.

The title story is a murder mystery set in a town populated by a religious sect all of whom have been surgically altered to look identical (like genderless barbie dolls), so that the police coming from a neighbouring town find it very hard to investigate a crime where the victim, purpetrator and witnesses are all identical. The barbies make things even harder for the police since they don't think of themselves as individuals and don't see why it matters if the wrong person is charged with the crime since they are all interchangeable.

Added after 2012 re-read

"I think we're being followed."
"Wha'?" He looked behind him as he bounced along in her wake. There was someone back there, all right. They turned a corner and Solace hauled Quester into a dimly lit alcove, bumping his head roughly against the wall. He was getting fed up with this business of being dragged. If this was an adventure, he was Winnie-the-Pooh following Christopher Robin up the stairs. He started to object, but she clapped a hand around his mouth, holding him close.
"Shhh," she hissed.

I found the stories in this collection much less memorable than those in " Persistence of Vision", as the only two that I remembered at all from my previous read were the title story and "Picnic on Nearside". In the case of "Bagatelle", when I heard an audio version on a podcast a few months ago, it didn't ring any bells at all and I had no idea that I had ever read it before (even though you'd think that a cyborg bomb threatening to blow up a city on Luna would be fairly memorable). "Manikins", which isn't set in the Eight Worlds, was one of the most interesting (I always knew there was something odd about men!), but my favourites were probably "Bagatelle" and "Picnic on Nearside". ( )

When Herb is good, and in his short stories he is very good indeed, there's no one like him. These are two very fine collections, and it was great to re-read them. While I like some stories better than others, they are all very good. It also struck me, reading them again after such a long time, that some of them seem risky now. I mean, adults (in children's body's) having sex with kids. Incest. None of this is smarmy. Or shocking. There's a definite whiff of Kij's Spar in Parameter and Solstice, but in a loving way. There's anarchy. Atheism. A fearlessness and joy. Dare I say optimism? I suddenly feel so retro. The future spread out like a dream before us. We are no longer able to fill his vision but have become small. How sad. ( )

A collection of some of Varley's fairly minor early short pieces. Doesn't hold a candle to the astonishing collection, The Persistence of Vision. ( )