From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Sun Aug 11 2002 - 07:45:41 MDT
I just finished "Toast", a collection of short fiction by Charlie
Stross, and recommend it quite highly. I'd read a couple of these
before ("A Boy and His God" and "Extracts from the Club Diary") -- which
must have been on the Web somewhere, as I can't recall reading any short
SF on paper in ages. Over-all the stories in this collection reflect
and explore many of the ideas we discuss here in a creative and often
quite funny way.
Of special note is the last and longest story, "Big Brother Iron", a
"sequel" to Orwell's 1984, set in 2018 in the same world inhabited by
Winston Smith. I could not put this piece down, enjoying the great job
Charlie does of picking up on lots of small details from the original
and projecting them into a realistic and believable consequence of the
premises laid down by the master. I found myself wishing the ideas and
writing had the room available in a novel!
As a Yank who's spent more than a little time in the Mother Country, one
thing I found a little funny was Charlie's occasional faltering American
voice when he is depicting the speech of colonials -- it's amazing how
hard this is, even for an accomplished writer!
[BTW, I'm still barely skimming the list -- having many unopened
messages from here -- and wish I had more time to participate in the
threads that would otherwise be of great interest to me, especially the
ones about law :-( ]
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
http://www.gregburch.net
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