BSFA Short Story Competition 6
Posted in BSFA, BSFA Short Story Competition, Reading Reviewed, Science Fiction at 10:00 on 24 May 2009
Rescue Stories by Andrew West
A space ship crewed by descendants of humans whose make up is of various blends of mixed gender and hence use non-specific personal pronouns, who call themselves numwyn and communicate by âmeldingâ (actual spoken words are very much infra dig) has suffered damage and landed on a planet unknown and too far from numwyn civilisation for rescue to be possible. Neither are they able to carry out the necessary repairs themselves.
They come up with a plan to accelerate, by means of propagating myths among the indigenous inhabitants, the advancement of these locals from their copper smelting stage of development to a point where they will be able to help the stranded numwyn.
While Rescue Stories is well enough written, there are unfortunate instances of characters telling each other things they must already know and a huge info dump sequence describing the advancement of the indigenes and – somewhat unnecessarily I thought, as the nunwyn surely wouldnât care – comparing it to Earthâs. (This last seems to be present to allow West to get something off his chest.)
Again, the ending more or less writes itself and is not really any sort of surprise.
The theme is of course similar to Theodore Sturgeonâs Microcosmic God, which I mentioned in my review of the BSFA Award nominee Crystal Night by Greg Egan, except this one is played out through the medium of memetics.
Rescue Stories is not a bad effort, though.*
*Note:- In case you thought it was, this is not meant to be patronising. âNot badâ is the best accolade someone who comes from the West of Scotland bestows on anything they rather like.
————————————————–
Was I asking too much of these stories? Presumably they were submitted in the hope of publication or at the least of attracting attention to the author for the future. However, taken as a whole they failed to meet what I think of as professional standard. In the previous issue of Focus its editor, Martin McGrath, contends that only around 10% of the 120 stories submitted to him âwere obviously incompetent in the basic mechanics of writing.â Yet I found at least three of the six on the short list lacking in this regard. Hence I shudder to think what the stories that made up that 10% were like. Perhaps my expectations for this sort of competition are too high.
Of the six stories I much preferred Nina Allanâs Timeâs Chariot. On turning to the authorsâ published histories it was not surprising to find she has the most widespread portfolio of previous appearances in print. It seems she may not be one to watch but rather has already arrived.