Imaginings, edited by Keith R.A. DeCandido (Pocket Books, 2003)

Editor Keith DeCandido approached this project with a simple goal: to provide a home for the much-maligned bastard child of the short fiction world, the novelette. With the guidelines set that all stories had to have a fantastic element, and be between 8,000-15,000 words, he opened the floodgates and chose the very best of the resultant deluge. The result is Imaginings, ten stories which threaten to redefine the novelette as we know it.
With stories by Harry Turtledove, Janet Berliner, Craig Shaw Gardner, Sarah Zettle and Adam-Troy Castro among the mix, it’s obvious that Imaginings is a high-octane, boundaries-stretching anthology right from the get-go. Now, the novelette isn’t my favorite form of short fiction; I prefer the all or nothing method, either a story is short and to the point, or it’s an actual novel. Longer stories require an unusual commitment, and raise various questions: how much time do you set aside for a 15,000 word story, and is it okay to stop in the middle if time runs short? That said, I decided to give this book a shot. The question soon turned from ‘when do I stop’ to ‘do I have to stop?’ There’s an intriguing mix of stories collected here, making it hard to put this book in any one category or subgenre.
In “Inescapable Justice,” Aaron Rosenberg tackles a particularly difficult subject for fiction: a superhero story that’s not set in an established comic book universe. Without the familiar four-color imagery already set in our subconscious, it can be hard to convey the superheroic action properly; Rosenberg gets around that problem by keeping the story on a personal level. When one of the world’s greatest heroes hangs up his cape and turns away, he’s forced to live with the tragedies he could have prevented. But what will force him to decide once and for all the course of his future?
Nancy Jane Moore’s “Walking Contradiction” is an unusual – no, make that experimentally odd – tale involving a private detective, a subculture of ambigendered people, a radical cult espousing neutering, and a cloning plot. To be honest, I’ve read the story several times, and I’m still not sure I completely get all of its intricacies. It’s still an unsettling exploration of gender and sexuality in a future where both have become a lot more fluid.
What can one say about Craig Shaw Gardner’s “A Planet Called Elvis” than “Thank yew. Thankyewverymuch.” Seriously, when space travel and pop culture collide, the results are bound to be unexpected. A pair of law enforcement agents are about to find out the hard way how hard it can be to find one Elvis among millions. Toss in some psychedelic drugs, a truly innovative (and fattening) way to die, some hip-swiveling music, and you have a far-out adventure that reads like Austin Powers meeting the King himself in a groovy futuristic setting. Thank goodness it wasn’t a planet named Hanson.
Charles Harness’ “The Thalatta Thesis” combines radical terraforming on Venus and vicious funding battles in a gripping story that goes from the halls of academia to the planet next door, where a world will be changed forever. In “Amends,” by H. Courreges LeBlanc, a love triangle between a telepath and two telekinetics turns deadly when jealousy and infidelity become issues. Sex has never looked so inventive, or so complicated. The true victims of the conflict have to be the ethical issues surrounding the misuse of psychic abilities, and the way in which things unfold makes this story one to think about long afterwards.
These are just some of the varied offerings to be found in Imaginings. As imaginative, experimental, provocative, thought-expanding and downright taboo-threatening as the legendary Dangerous Visions or the more recent Redshift, Imaginings is bound to have at least one story that appeals to any given reader. While not every story will please, that’s to be expected in an anthology with such variety. Special mention should go to Adam-Troy Castro’s Nebula-nominated story, “Of a Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs,” a somewhat-surreal journey through a stream-of-consciousness mindscape and a twisted sense of reality. Check out Imaginings, and support a new home for longer short fiction.


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