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VANISHING ACTS

Name: VANISHING ACTS
Author: Ellen Datlow
ISBN: 0-312-86962-2

A SCIENCE FICTION ANTHOLOGY

edited by Ellen Datlow ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2000

Worth a try.

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Datlow's latest themed anthology (Off Limits, 1996, etc.) headlines endangered species, and sometimes the endangered species is humanity itself, as a result of its own behavior. Of these 16 pieces, 4 have appeared before. The reprints range from Avram Davidson's classic `Now Let Us Sleep,` the callous exploitation of a primitive sapient race, to Suzy McKee Charnas's stunning masterpiece, `Listening to Brahms,` in which a handful of bewildered and deeply disturbed survivors make contact with an alien race, the rest of humanity having exterminated itself. Unfortunately, the remaining stories—Neanderthals, gorillas, Arks, ecosystems, beetles, and all—tend to pale by comparison. There are two exceptions: Joe Haldeman's heartfelt poem, “Endangered Species,” about gods, men, and war; and Ted Chiang's `Seventy-two Letters.` The latter, an impressive feat of extrapolation and ruthless logic, is set in an alternate world where kabalistic magic works, and the notion of preformation—creatures are created embodying all future generations of development—is literally true. In consequence, once the last preformed generation is born, humanity faces extinction.

Worth a try.

Pub Date: June 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-312-86962-2

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Tor

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000

Categories:

SCIENCE FICTION

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Awards & Accolades

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New York Times Bestseller

DEVOLUTION

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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Awards & Accolades

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615

Our Verdict

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New York Times Bestseller

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.