I have
come to think of Charles Stross as sci-fi cocaine; for sheer effervescence of
imagination, there may be no writer in the field these days who can apply such
a jolt. Lines chopped and cut on a
mirror, the stories collected in his 2009 Wireless—virtually
a best of covering works from first decade of the 21 st century—send the brain reeling into genre
candyland. Freedom inherent to the
title, insect overlords, time travel, Lovecraftian aliens, zombies, alternate
worlds, pirate internets, f-f-f-f-f-f-f-far future, dwarf mammoths, the occult,
spies, sexbots, weed smoking dogs, insane asylums, outer space spam, and much,
much more are open to the mix—not always to deep purpose, but at least zing the brain stem for a moment.
Wireless is bookended by two strong novellas. Missile Gap opens the collection and will appeal to fans of the abstract side of
Stross’ Cthulu-minded imagination. The
story begins with humanity realizing that Earth, in either virtual or real
form, has been ‘peeled like a grape’ and transferred/transposed onto a disc
somewhere in space. Instead of being
globular in shape, the geography of Earth is now laid out like a 2D map. Due to
the physics of the disc and lack of proximity, the US and USSR give up the Cold
War and look to expand into the unknown territories at the either edge of known
reality. The reason behind the disc,
however, is as cheesy as can be. (See here for a longer review.) Continuing with Cthulu-shaded tensions
between the USA and USSR, “The Colder War” focuses on the Iran Contra
Scandal. Likewise a fragmented story,
things remain in standard Earth format, however. Bizarre alien bodies excavated from Antarctic
ice in parallel to escalating arms tension in the Middle East, Stross openly
attributes the story to Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. (Where
Stross has such a large number of stories uncollected, it was a bit surprising
to see “The Colder War” in Wireless
as it was already included in Toast,
his first and only other collection.)
Though not
directly stated, it’s obvious the horror elements of the Laundry Files series of stories, of which “Down on the Farm” is
one, likewise owe something to the neurotic recluse from Providence. A blender mix of the occult, robot nurses,
sci-fi, spell-enhanced chess, and the outright supernatural, Bob Howard
examines a case in a mental hospital where not all is as it seems (as if you
expected anything different). Taking the
title of the collection to heart, “Unwirer” (a collaborative effort with Cory
Doctorow) works with an alternate history wherein network traffic is entirely
government monitored. Combining
Doctorow’s Big Brother paranoia and Stross’ ability to string words together, the
two dream up a pirate network that is cyberpunk without the noir.
Nearly
impossible to describe, “Rogue Farm” is a piece about post-humans trying to cut
it as bio-farmers in futuristic England.
Approached by a group-mind robot at the beginning, trouble brews when
the rejected ‘bot literally sets down roots just outside the farmstead. Building plot coherently, the story will
require a re-read, settling into a nice position of eccentric ambiguity. (See here for the nicely done
animated version.) “Snowball’s Chance” is
a one-off deal with the devil in which a thickly-accented Scot gets one over on
Satan—and a few pints to boot. An even
briefer one-off, “MAXOS” is a two page joke about galactic wave transmissions. “Trunk and Disorderly”, an acknowledged
experiment in style for Saturn’s Children,
is the story of Ralph McDonald and his no-holds-barred tour of our
post-singularity universe. More for
laughs and imagination than any meaningful storyline, Stross’ creativity is
truly let off the leash (as if it wasn’t in the other stories) to take in the
luxuries of the future with a wise-cracking butler at hand.
The
bookend at the close of the collection is Palimpsest¸
and is the strongest piece collected. I read, however, a review
on Strange Horizons in which the reviewer called it the “most
conventional”. A highly contentious
thought (if the premises of “Down on the Farm”, “Unwirer”, and “Snowball’s
Chance” aren’t tried and true, than I don’t know what is), what I found more
interesting is that its “conventionality” was viewed as something that made Palimpsest less worthy than the other
stories. Such thoughts lead me to
believe the main draw to Stross is the gonzo-ness, the over-the-top
imagination, the fist-over-fist wadding of one unpredictable idea after another
onto his stories. I say this because, Palimpsest, despite containing vast
quantities of imagination, is the most relevant piece in the collection. Working from the template of Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity, Stross tells his
own tale of time traveling and far future humanity, in the process
incorporating ideas with more tactility than the genre master’s. Palimpsest
follows the development of Pierce, agent-to-be in Stasis, guardians of humanity
through time. Vignettes on humanity’s
futuristic survival confluent with Pierce’s tale, the novella is colorfully
salient and focused on the viability of human destiny despite the tangents that
manifest. The best story in the collection for
its humanist elements, Palimpsest is
a superb note to close matters and make it plain Stross is able to channel his
quicksilver imagination into terms applicable to the here and now.
In the
end, Wireless is more brain candy
from the corner-dealer with the hardest-hitting stuff. The nine stories selected exhibit the wacky
wildness that Stross says in the introduction is “buzzing around in my head”. Veering away from relevancy and heading to
abstract land, the Fermi paradox, secret agents, post-humanism, post-post
humanism, and tech that more often strays into fantasy than sci-fi land fill
the collection. A good one-time read,
there are few footholds in humanity. Palimpsest the strongest piece, all
others float in a haze of obtuse conceptualization that, if my understanding is
correct, is precisely the reason many look to get a noseful of Stross.
Published
between 2000 and 2009, the following are the stories in Wireless:
Introduction
by Charles Stross
“Rogue
Farm”
“A Colder
War”
“MAXOS”
“Unwirer”
(with Cory Doctorow)
“Snowball’s
Chance”
“Trunk and
Disorderly”
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