Short story collections are a dead format. This is not only my opinion, because Charles Stross himself writes the same thing in the foreword to his collection «Palimpsest». So when the publishing house «Uchytelna Knyha — Bohdan» offered me this book for a review, I initially refused for purely pragmatic reasons. It’s not a novel, so it’s clear that there are risks of less popularity for both the collection itself and the material about it. But then I read the reviews and decided to give it a try. In my opinion, it was worth it, because this is a really interesting and rare publication in our time, which I would like to tell all lovers of hard SF, as well as its various subgenres and branches, about.
Pluses:
a quality edition with a clear cover in the style of the Golden Age of Science Fiction; there is a convenient binding; there are illustrations; stories of different genres from satire and classic SF to cyberpunk and Lovecraftian madness; author's comments on some stories or novellas that help to understand them better
Minuses:
in the format of a collection, some people will definitely not like some of the stories or individual novels; the dimensions of the book could be a little smaller
This book will be interesting to people 30+ who remember the worn-out books by Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, or Windham in the local library, because there was almost nothing else. This flavor of childhood and nostalgia made me start the collection. And now you will learn about it, and I hope you will pay attention to it as well.
«Palimpsest»
Author Charles Stross
Translators Bohdan Stasiuk and Ruslana Yashchenko
Publisher Study book — Bogdan
Language Ukrainian
Number of pages 416
Cover Solid
Year of publication 2023
Size 170×240
Website bohdan-books.com
Since we are looking at a collection of short stories, there will be no classic lure of revealing the beginning of the story. And while it is possible to tell something about some great stories in the collection, such as «Palimpsest», without spoiling the whole idea, other stories will definitely lose their interest even with one sentence.
I will only say that this is a very diverse collection, with relatively large novels and tiny stories. And one of them is literally a few pages long. All the stories are diverse. There is classic space science fiction in the spirit of «Golden Age», time travel adventure, satire, post-apocalyptic fiction with a fantasy flavor, close-range cyberpunk, hard SF combined with Lovecraftian motifs, and so on.
The stories in this collection were written by the author between 1998 and 2008. Therefore, all of them are not only of different genres, but also reflect different moods in Western society, different political circumstances, famous tragedies, or some significant events in human history.
After some stories, the author talks about the context of their writing, his mood, and thoughts at the time, his idea, etc. This helps to understand a story better, and it increases the pleasure of reading it. In one case, I didn’t like a story, but after reading Charles Stross’s commentary on it, I changed my mind because I saw a deeper meaning that I recognized while reading it.
Some stories are about the Cold War between the US and the USSR, which from story to story turns into something much worse than it actually was. These reflections of the author are very depressing, but no less cool. Especially the story where the Soviet Union arranged a secret «Project Koshchei» — Kremlin’s key to the gates of Hell on the territory of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Interesting? So.
Of course, all readers cannot like all the stories. And this, in my opinion, is the most important disadvantage of not only this collection, but all collections of short stories. No matter how great an author is, someone will definitely not like a story or two. And this is a significant part of the book. Therefore, when buying something like this, there is always a risk of negative impressions.
However, it is through collections like this that it is best to get to know an author before moving on to his larger works. And Charles Stross has a lot to offer readers. For example, the novels «AceleRando» and «Singularity sky» published by the same publishing house «Study Book — Bohdan». This British writer is also quite an award-winning author, having won several «Hugo» and «Locus» awards, as well as «Prometheus», «SkyLark», and others.
Charles Stross is a technical author whose ascetic style resembles works by Liu Qixin. Here, too, the idea and its revelation are primarily important, and the characters are only tools, so their development and experiences are secondary.
I liked the main cover and the flyleaf of the book, which are made in the same style. The cover not only shows what genre we are looking at, but also conveys the mood of that classic SF, for which I am especially grateful to the publisher.
I liked the quality of the publication, the nice paper, the normal and easy-to-read font, and the so often needed but so few places implemented gusseting. There are also stylish one-color illustrations, some of which open each subsequent story or short story. This is a definite plus to the memories of those old picture books of fiction that we used to borrow from the children’s library.
I was surprised by the dimensions of the book (170×240 mm), which is much larger than standard formats. It is not thick (416 pages) because it is notRothfussIt’s a large book, but it’s not very big. However, inside there are many almost empty pages with a paragraph or two of text. In my opinion, this could have been combined with other similar pages because they all refer to the same stories. Probably, this would have partially reduced the size of the book, which would have made it more convenient to read. Perhaps I am wrong and this would not have affected the chosen dimensions or thickness, but it seems to me that it could still be made a little thicker but smaller. I should note that this is a matter of taste because some people like large books, and some people like medium or standard books. I am writing purely about my impressions.