If You Can't Say Anything Nice...

(Note: Another import from Cold Ground)

This past Sunday, while I was in Seattle for NASFiC, Douglas Barbour of the Edmonton Journal reviewed Wasps at the Speed of Sound. Apparently he liked it:

"These stories reflect the dark
expectations of a writer all too aware of an ecological devastation
that may already be too far gone, and their visionary
extrapolations are harsh, but beautifully rendered."

"Many feel satiric, while others are more
purely elegiac, quiet memorials for a world now lost. All are
solidly crafted, full of sharp observations, interesting
characters, and wholly believable ecological speculations
(believable as fiction, not necessarily as science: take the speedy
armoured wasps of the title story breaking through windows and
walls, easily killing people just by hitting them)."

"If all this
sounds a bit too pessimistic, it misses the fact that these tales
are savagely witty, as well as often compassionate and quirkily
comic."

"Actually, there's not a dud in this collection, although some
stories clearly stand out above the others. For anyone interested
in fine contemporary SF, or in the well-crafted short story, Wasps
at the Speed of Sound will fill the bill."

There's more, of course, but there's also an explicit embargo on posting the entire thing. The even better news is, I know for sure of one sale that has come out of this review.

// posted by Derryl Murphy @ 6:54 PM