Ian
Macleod is, point blank, one of the best sf&f writers in the field today. Each piece, from short story to novel, comes
fully considered, polished til shining, imaginative, multi-layered, and
persistently focused on humanity—no matter how wild the speculation may get. So why haven’t you read him? Macleod’s 2004 collection Breathmoss and Other Exhalations is an
excellent palette of stories to dig into.
Perfectly representative of the author’s range and talent, there may be
no better starting place.
Breathmoss and Other Exhalations opens with its
title story. We meet Jalili as a young
girl in the midst of a major family move from the sparsely populated highlands
to its more dense coastal lowlands of the planet Hebara. The move tough, Jalili nevertheless sees and
experiences things she’d never dreamed—rocket ships take off, new cultures and
peoples, and, as is strange in her all-female family, men. “Breathmoss” a touching coming-of-age story
that eschews most any paint-by-the-numbers idea the reader could throw at such
a story type, tragedy and comedy are only stepping stones to Jalili’s
self-realization. (For extended review,
see here.)
“Verglas”
opens on a macabre scene of a lone man on a barren planet burying his wife and
children. His wife and children having
moved beyond humanity, their bodies represent memories he has a tenuous
relationship with. Dealing with the
issue, he embarks on great climbing quests in the nearby mountains, and
ultimately finds what he was looking for.
But peace comes in different forms.
Building reader interest through the slow unveiling of setting, what
appears surreal at the beginning is let onto one tempting post-human detail at
a time. Another way of describing the
story might be: if Theodore Sturgeon met Iain Banks.
One
of Macleod’s most famous shorts, it is, rightfully, also one of his best. “The Chop Girl” captures a narrative voice
and doesn’t let go, telling of the exact opposite of a rabbit’s foot: a British
WWII woman who seems to be the downfall of every pilot and airman on r&r
she comes in contact with. Meeting her
match in a lucky pilot named Walt Williams (no relation to the poet,
seemingly), the fate of the meta-physical world is tested in the aftermath of
their meeting.
Tribute,
homage, flight of muse—however you want to label it, “The Noonday Pool” is a
fantastical vision of a day late in the life of British composer Edward Elgar
(indirectly known everywhere in the US for “Pomp and Circumstance”). Possessing the subtle essence of wildwood
faery, it finds a new dawn for the ageing composer.
“New
Light on the Drake Equation” is the story of astrophysicist, mathematician, and
drunkard Tom Kelly. Isolating himself in
the French Alps with a massive homemade radio antennae, he spends his days
bottle in hand, waiting for the universe to communicate. A surprise visit, however, is what changes
his world. With an occasional reference
to sci-fi of old, Macleod fully humanizes the search for extra-terrestrial
life—a paradox needing to be read to be believed. Not only one of the best stories in this
collection, it is one of the best of the author’s career. (For extended review, see here.)
A
beautifully bittersweet tale of a woman trapped in an institution unlike the
world has ever seen, “Isabel of the Fall” describes the fate of Isabel the dawn
singer in the mirrored cathedral and the destiny that follows upon her
auspicious meeting of Genya the dancing librarian. Heartbreaking in mood and outcome, this is a
story that can be re-read for value.
Closing
the collection is Macleod’s foray into alternate history. “The Summer Isles” is the story of Griffin
Brooke, a man diagnosed in the early going with terminal cancer. Flashing to moments in Brooke’s past as well
as present, the new context of his life serves to shake him from the tree of
self-pity he’d been clinging so tightly to.
Later expanded into the novel of the same name, Macleod’s examination of
pre-WWII Britain under a fascist regime also looks into whether we make
history, or vice versa, and makes a solid, solid note on which to close the
collection (For extended review, see here.)
While
seven stories may not seem like much bang for the buck, Breathmoss and Other Exhalations is comprised only of novelettes
and novellas. But its real value may be
in the tremendous range displayed. From
setting to premise, mode to genre, Macleod shifts effortlessly between
alternate history and planetary coming-of-age, realism and fabulism, faery and
Fermi, creating the impression that the reader has wandered more than one hall
in the mind of one of the most thoughtful writers working today.
Published
between 1996 and 2002, the following are the seven stories collected in Breathmoss and Other Exhalations.
Breathmoss
(2002)
Verglas
(1996)
The
Chop Girl (1999)
The
Noonday Pool (1995)
New
Light on the Drake Equation (2001)
Isabel
of the Fall (2001)
The
Summer Isles (1998)
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