A Son of the Rock

I blogged a while back about the BSFA’s latest mailing and the inclusion in its magazine for writers, Focus, of the successful stories in its 50th anniversary short story competition.

I have now read all six. My thoughts about them were jotted down before perusing the author biogs at the back of the magazine. A summating comment will appear after all the reviews.

Nestbuster by Roderick Gladwish

Set on a tidally locked moon orbiting a gas giant some time after a war which threatened to wipe humans out completely, a surviving hero of that war, along with his family, is subjected to a medical examination by someone from a central authority.

During the narrative and the two flashbacks to his war experiences we discover the life-changing choice he made. The story explores its ramifications.

Amid agreeable suggestions that beyond the bounds of the story other things are going on (the enemy has mysteriously disappeared but may come back) the central idea is fine. Unfortunately its execution isn’t. The writing is too often marred by lack of punctuation, a blizzard of dangling participles and a few instances of words wrongly used. (Examples: lightening for lightning, lead for led, loose for lose, breath for breathe and “in vivo” where the contrast was not with “in vitro” but to refer to a procedure which itself takes place in vivo later in life.)

These things do matter, as they interfere with comprehension. More than several times I had to go back and reread sentences to make sense of them. If you are trying to communicate to a reader and the concepts are not in themselves inherently difficult then this ought not to be necessary. Writing like this is comparable to the products of a carpenter who does not have full knowledge of his/her tools. The end result may be serviceable but it’s not quite as functional or satisfying as it might be. You might say the drawers don’t fit properly; they stick or squeak as you run them out or in.

I read this story – the overall winner of the competition – first, and began to wonder to what degree the BSFA has printed the six stories as submitted, without any amendment, warts and all.

Gladwish undoubtedly shows promise but his faults need ironing out. A good editor, perhaps, or a writing group that can help him eliminate them. (If someone of a similar standard applied to the group I belong to I would certainly vote for their inclusion.)

On this evidence Gladwish is almost there as a professional standard writer, but not yet quite. In that sense, the competition has succeeded in identifying promise.