Brandy Danner is a librarian specializing in young adult services.
The Inner Inner City
A million years ago (October 1998, according to Google) I read a short story in the magazine Realms of Fantasy (yes, I had a subscription; yes, you can shut the hell up about that) called The Inner Inner City. It was good enough that I still remember it all these years later--but I couldn't tell you a single other story I'd read in there now, so it must have been something.
Because it's still on my mind 8 years after the fact, I did a bit of sleuthing. Turns out it was written by Robert Charles Wilson, and it's included in his ollection The Perseids and other stories.
I got it from the library. I didn't have high hopes for it--what stories can actually hold up the appeal 10 years later? And how many short stories will actually seem good when you're reading them immediately after finishing the new Kelly Link collection? (Which is AMAZING, by the way; if you're not already reading her, get thee to a bookstore!) And I have to say... I was pleasantly surprised. I wasn't inclined to read the rest of the collection, so I skipped ahead to The Inner Inner City. And it was good--better than I remembered, even. The writing is tight, yet lyrical. His ideas are fully developed, as are his characters. (Most of them, anyway. The ones that matter.) The story is so much more fascinating than I remember it being, maybe because I'm older now and can better understand the impact of inventing one's own religion. And now I'm reading the rest of the collection.
I'm still not sure I'm inclined to read his novels--they sound a little too mass-market sci-fi-y for my tastes--but this collection is actually really good. Some of the stories sound mildly familiar, but not quite like I've read them before--more like similarities to other authors' short stories I've liked. It's almost savory, for want of a word; it's not the kind of writing that deserves cover art of spaceships and large-breasted women with ray guns.
It's funny how easy it is to forget that I like science fiction, even though I've been reading it all this time. I'm completely in love with Jonathan Lethem, and it never occured to me that Girl in Landscape, or Amnesia Moon, or even As She Climbed Across The Table were sci-fi (see: absense of spaceships, large breasts, and/or ray guns). And now I'm preaching with the faith of the converted, but... dang. You should be reading these people. Are you?
