The Wreck of the Godspeed: And Other Stories - Hardcover

Kelly, James Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1930846517 ISBN 13: 9781930846517

Publisher: Golden Gryphon Press, 2008

Synopsis

Providing new insights into the human psyche, this remarkable collection gathers 13 cutting-edge tales of science fiction that reveal both the dark and light side of progress. In the Nebula award-winner, "Burn," an idyllic planet wrestles with ecological responsibility and terrorism, while the problems and temptations of a happy virtual reality are examined in "The Dark Side of Town." Colorful pilgrims travel to new worlds until their ship’s artificial intelligence begins to act strangely in the namesake, "The Wreck of the Godspeed," and the extent that future television programs will go to get ratings is explored in "The Leila Torn Show," Combining hard technology with complex, character-based dilemmas, each inventive narrative shares the message that science is not a panacea and often leads to personal decisions that are neither clear nor easy.

About this title

About the Author

James Patrick Kelly writes for Asimov's Science Fiction and is the author of Burn, Heroines, Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories, Strange but Not a Stranger, and Wildlife, as well as the coeditor of Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, and Rewired: The Post Cyber-Punk Anthology. He lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire.

Reviews

Thirteen stories, all originally published between 2002 and 2007, examine the struggle for human survival and identity in strange places. In the title story, humans transmitted across space end up in a quasi-reality that may permit transcendence. The last man on earth in The Best Christmas Ever, a sorrowful abandoned house in Bernardo's House and a PI in a world without men in Men Are Trouble all plumb the depths of loneliness. In The Dark Side of Town, an estranged married couple find each other again in a drug-induced shared virtual reality, while in the Nebula-winning novella Burn, a man from an isolationist colony struggles to save it despite terrible revelations. Kelly frequently evokes a twisted, nostalgic America, and his characters seem contemporary and casual even in the prehistoric fairy tale Luck. Though this lends his stories a certain sameness, it also gives readers a way to connect with his surreal visions. (Aug.)
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Kelly’s stories depend on future technologies based on physics, information theory, genetics, and other au courant disciplines, but they’re about love, friendship, and loyalty. The exploratory colonizing craft Godspeed, which is an artificial and quite independent intelligence, nearly ends its thousand-plus-year career in disaster, with the loss of all crew; it’s the latter’s desperate unit cohesion that saves the day, also a burgeoning romance. A professional carrier of undeclared (hence, illegal) personality transplants decides to become gay to relieve the boredom of a long interstellar flight and winds up settling down with his previously unattainable female love interest, though he’s still gay. A hard-boiled PI in a future earth cleansed of men by alien invaders solves the murder of a newlywed (to another woman) and goes home to her own spouse. Those and most of the other 10 selections are fast paced and witty enough to offset their frequent mind-boggling nature, but exhilaration and amusement aren’t all Kelly provides. Check out “Luck,” “Bernardo’s House,” and the short novel Burn for quieter, more profound effects. --Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: Golden Gryphon Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1930846517
• ISBN 13: 9781930846517
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 350